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Viagogo “disappointed” about culture select committee’s live music report
By Chris Cooke | Published on Wednesday 20 March 2019
Viagogo has responded to the live music report published by the UK Parliament’s Digital, Culture, Media & Sport select committee yesterday. Needless to say, it is disappointed with the MPs’ conclusions on secondary ticketing.
Although the report covers various aspects of the live music business, its statements were bluntest when it came to secondary ticketing, and Viagogo in particular. It said that the often controversial ticket resale site “has yet to prove itself a trustworthy operator given its history of resisting compliance, court orders and parliamentary scrutiny, and flouting consumer law”.
Urging the Competition & Markets Authority to proceed with its latest legal action against Viagogo as fast as it can, the committee said that, in the meantime, “we advise the public not to buy or sell tickets via Viagogo”.
Responding, the ticketing site said in a statement yesterday: “We are disappointed that the DCMS have singled us out particularly, when hundreds of thousands of British citizens use our service to buy and sell tickets to their favourite live events every day and never experience any problems. We provide an invaluable service to UK consumers by giving them access to events in the UK and all over the world”.
As for those tickets bought on the Viagogo site that then don’t get the buyer into a show, it added, “the overwhelming majority of cases are due to the unfair and potentially illegal restrictions the event organisers pose simply because customers have chosen to purchase tickets from a competitor of theirs”.
That is a reference, of course, to those promoters who cancel touted tickets, which they are allowed to do providing the terms of the original ticket sale says so.
Viagogo concluded: “We have been complying and will absolutely continue to work constructively with the CMA to make further amends where necessary, all the while putting all of the buyers and sellers who use the platform first”.
