Viagogo

Viagogo, stylized by the company as viagogo, is a multinational ticket exchange and ticket resale brand. It is headquartered in the United States and owned by StubHub Holdings. It was founded in 2006 by Eric Baker, the co-founder of StubHub.

Viagogo is backed by venture capital investment firm Index Ventures as well as Brent Hoberman, the co-founder and former CEO of lastminute.com, and Jacob Rothschild, 4th Baron Rothschild. In February 2020, it acquired StubHub.

The company has been criticized for inflation via ticket resale, lacking transparency, and in some cases, having sold counterfeit tickets. These controversies have led to legal action in some of the countries where Viagogo operates, and also led the UK Competition & Markets Authority to order changes to Viagogo's operations.

History

Viagogo was founded in 2006 in London by Eric Baker, the co-founder of US-based StubHub. It was established to provide an online marketplace that allows consumers to buy and sell tickets to sports, music, theatre and comedy events. The company's launch included partnerships with Chelsea F.C. and Manchester United F.C. offering season ticket holders the chance to sell tickets to matches they could not attend to other club members, without having to lend their season card. Manchester United ended its commercial agreement with Viagogo in 2011.

As unauthorized reselling of football tickets was illegal under British law in 2006 with the purpose of preventing hooliganism, Viagogo's official reselling authorizations with Chelsea FC and Manchester United FC marked the first time Premier League tickets were legally resold in the United Kingdom.

In 2012 in the UK, Labour MP Sharon Hodgson's proposal that legislation be introduced to cap resale prices at 10% higher than their face value was rejected by the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport leaving Viagogo free to continue operating in the country without price caps.

In 2012 Viagogo extended its European ticketing agreement with ESPN.

In September 2013, Viagogo launched in Australia. The launch was accompanied by two new partnerships with Melbourne-based AFL clubs Collingwood and Richmond.

Viagogo was the official ticket marketplace for the various music festivals in 2013, including the Isle of Wight Festival, the Boyzone 20th Anniversary Tour, the Benicàssim Festival and Weekend Festival. In 2014, Viagogo partnered with SFX Entertainment and in 2015 with the Australian Soundwave festival, and Ultra Beach Bali. In 2016, Viagogo was announced as the official ticketing partner of Ultra Singapore 2016.

After a website "glitch" reportedly overcharged dozens of UK customers, in 2017 Viagogo was criticized for allegedly denying prompt refunds. In February 2018, Viagogo was found to have been marketing tickets for a non-existent performance by a Hungarian stand-up comedian for about twice the normal price.
By 2012, Viagogo's ticket pricing policy had become a frequent subject of controversy in the United Kingdom. After a number of Mumford & Sons tickets, one reportedly marked up from face value of £23.50 to £200, proved invalid in November 2012, Viagogo assured the BBC that it was a rare occurrence and the tickets would be refunded or replaced.

In March 2019, the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport warned consumers not to buy or sell tickets through Viagogo. In July 2019, Google ceased paid advertising by Viagogo for breaching Google's internal advertising policies. Google resumed advertising for Viagogo in November 2019, after Viagogo made "suitable changes to their account."

In November 2019, StubHub disclosed having sold $4.75 billion in tickets in 2018 with $1.1 billion in annual fees, while Viagogo had not disclosed its financial details. Based in Geneva, Switzerland, Viagogo operated in 70 countries and was particularly popular in Europe and Britain, while StubHub sold tickets in 44 countries and was most popular in the United States.

After announcing its intent to purchase StubHub from eBay in late 2019, Viagogo agreed to purchase StubHub for $4 billion in February 2020, with Viagogo's owner Pugnacious LLC to become the holding company for both. The deal was put on hold in 2020 by the Competition & Markets Authority (CMA) over competition concerns, as combined, the two companies held a 90% market share of secondary ticketing in the United Kingdom.

As part of the deal, StubHub agreed to sell its business outside of North America, including its UK business, to Digital Fuel Capital LLC. Through the merger, Viagogo and StubHub became owned by the new entity StubHub Holdings.

Operations

The Viagogo brand facilitates the sale of live sport, music, and entertainment tickets through an online platform. The company charges a variable booking fee on top of ticket price, and a service fee from sellers. Viagogo has a policy to "provide comparable replacement tickets or a refund".

Along with partnerships with entertainers and music festivals, the company has partnerships with various sports properties.

Pricing and sales tactics

The company has been criticized for its use of "drip pricing" in certain countries, where not all charges are shown until the end of a transaction. According to Swedish newspaper ''Göteborgs-Posten'', during purchases of secondhand tickets in 2018, one price was shown up front, while additional costs such as value-added tax or booking fees were shown to buyers later in the checkout process. The newspaper criticized the practice as disingenuous. In 2018, a CMA order dictated that Viagogo's UK portal include all-in pricing to make the platform more transparent to customers.

At that time of the CMA order, customers were presented with several messages about tickets being about to run out and in the user interface, the "continue" button jumped and a timer kept counting down. According to executive Chris Miller, the messages were intended to show customers they were visiting a "dynamic market place" and helped buyers "make an informed decision".

During a test where three tickets were purchased, the average transaction took about ten minutes to complete which did not leave time to read the purchase conditions. Once the transactions were completed, the average price paid was about twice that charged by official ticket sellers.

Although Viagogo offers some tickets at face value it is well known for vastly inflating prices for events.
In 2018, the Swedish Consumer Agency received 132 reports about the company, making it the seventh most reported business operating in Sweden. A frequent criticism was that customers felt stressed and pressured into finishing their purchases. Pressure marketing and countdown timers were removed from the UK website in 2018.

Legal action

They have also faced criticism after they resold charity tickets to an Ed Sheeran cancer benefit concert at highly inflated prices.

After the company failed to appear before the Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee of the UK Parliament in March 2017, Hodgson and fellow committee member Nigel Adams visited its London headquarters the following July, but the party was turned away.

In early 2011, Viagogo sold personalised tickets for Take That's 2011 ''Progress'' tour to German customers. Some people were not able to enter the concerts in Hamburg and Munich. A German court banned Viagogo from claiming that the validity of the Take That tickets is “100% guaranteed”.

They were involved in a legal battle with the UK Rugby Football Union (RFU) after they sold tickets which the RFU had forbidden from being resold for profit. Viagogo lost the initial trial and an appeal in the lower courts in December 2011, resulting in the issuing of a Norwich Pharmacal order.

In August 2017, the Australian Competition & Consumer Commission launched legal action against Viagogo with "allegations it made false or misleading representations, and engaged in misleading or deceptive conduct by failing to disclose substantial fees included in the price of tickets."

In August 2018, New Zealand's Commerce Commission sued Viagogo after it sold non-existent tickets for a Bruno Mars concert for NZ$700.

On 27 November 2018, the UK Competition & Markets Authority stated that Viagogo had, effective 17 January 2019, agreed to perform a "comprehensive overhaul" of its services in order to improve their transparency, and strengthen the guarantees it provides to consumers. Among other changes Viagogo agreed to list the identity of the seller and whether they are a professional trader (defined as performing more than 100 sales in a year), as well as seat numbers and the original face value of the ticket, and any risk that the ticketholder may be turned away due to resale restrictions. In addition, the company was required to cease using misleading indications of how many seats remain for an event, and not to advertise ticket sales for events whose ticketing policies restrict resale.

The company is the only ticket resale site to have refused to work with Ed Sheeran to prevent ticket touts reselling tickets for his tours.

In May 2018, the UK's Minister for Culture, Communications and Creative Industries, Margot James, told BBC Radio 5 Live listeners planning to buy from secondary ticket sites, "don't choose Viagogo - they are the worst". She gave this advice after the Advertising Standards Authority asked National Trading Standards to investigate Viagogo's alleged breaches of UK advertising rules about making any additional fees clear. Viagogo is no longer under investigation by trading standards after complying with the ASA ruling.

In August 2018, the UK Competition & Markets Authority confirmed it would be seeking court action against Viagogo following concerns that it is breaching consumer protection law.

In July 2019, the UK Competition and Marketing Authority began legal proceedings against Viagogo for contempt of court as a result of the company ignoring repeated warnings to comply with consumer law.

In October 2020, the Australian Competition & Consumer Commission fined Viagogo AU$7 million for misleading consumers, stating that they were an "official" seller of tickets to particular events, that certain tickets were scarce and for failing to disclose a 27.6% booking fee until late into the booking process.

In 2021, complaints were received by the agency WellingtonNZ concerning Viagogo overpricing tickets to the musical Jersey Boys and the art event Van Gogh Alive. As at February 2021 the New Zealand Commerce Commission is continuing to pursue legal action against Viagogo for false representations about ticket prices, their scarcity and the validity of tickets sold.

Legal and government actions

See also

* Better Online Tickets Sales Act
* List of United Kingdom Supreme Court cases
* Online ticket brokering

References

External links

*{{url, https://www.viagogo.com

Ticket sales companies
Companies based in Geneva
Companies based in London
Internet properties established in 2006
2006 establishments in England
Online marketplaces of the United Kingdom