According to campaigners, Viagogo is continuing to engage in “misleading and potentially unlawful practices”, even while a consultation is underway to crack down on abuses in the secondary ticketing market.
FanFair Alliance is a music campaign against industrial-scale online ticket touting. It quoted recently commissioned research by O2 showing that dedicated ticket touts operating through platforms such as Viagogo, StubHub International, Gigsberg and Vivid Seats cost UK music fans alone an extra £145m per year.
Since 2016, FanFair Alliance has routinely sent evidence of breaches of UK consumer law by Viagogo to the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA), National Trading Standards (NTS), and the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA).
The Government announced in January that it will carry out a consultation into the secondary ticket industry, with plans to clamp down on ticket touts and cap the price of resold tickets for gigs and sporting events.
Since the announcement, FanFair Alliance has catalogued a range of potential offences committed by Viagogo. These include speculative selling for gigs such as Bastille and Central Cee.
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Regarding Bastille, Viagogo is reported to have listed tickets for sale a day before tickets were publicly available – and promoting those listings via sponsored Google posts.
According to FanFair Alliance, Viagogo also allowed a group of overseas traders to “resell” tickets for Central Cee – despite those same tickets still being listed as unsold on Ticketmaster.
Another accusation is that Viagogo allowed Ukraine-, US- and Spanish-based touts to systematically target small-scale events at iconic independent music venues including The Louisiana (Bristol), Brudenell Social Club (Leeds), the Adelphi Club (Hull), and The Moth Club (London).
FanFair Alliance also claims that Viagogo breached the Consumer Rights Act 2015 by permitting professional touts to list tickets with non-existent seat numbers, non-existent row numbers, and wildly incorrect face values.
‘Really damning evidence’
Adam Webb, campaign manager at FanFair Alliance, said: “Viagogo’s belligerent disregard for UK audiences never ceases to surprise. But to continue promoting such exploitative and unlawful practices during the consultation period really takes the biscuit. It reiterates why we urgently need a price cap to stop this ongoing exploitation of fans, and to allow a fair and consumer-friendly model of ticket resale to flourish.”
Annabella Coldrick, chief executive at Music Managers Forum (MMF), said: “This is really damning evidence, and I’m sure the Government will share our outrage at how these offshore resale platforms continue to exploit and rip off British gig goers. It was MMF members who established the FanFair campaign in 2016, and we believe that a price cap on ticket resale is the only way to end these abuses.”
FanFair Alliance has advocated for new measures to stop law-breaking touts ripping off fans and to boost consumer-friendly ticket resale. These include a cap on ticket resales, bolstering existing legislation to prevent speculative ticketing and fraud, and a dedicated approach to enforcement.
A Viagogo spokesperson said: “Viagogo takes its obligations under the law seriously and is fully compliant in the UK and with the CMA order. Our policies prohibit speculative listings.
“Any alleged speculative listing that we identify as being speculative is removed from our platform in line with our policy. Sellers found to be in breach of our policy will be dealt with including permanent suspension from using our platform. We remain committed to operating a safe, transparent, and lawful marketplace for fans to buy and sell tickets.”
