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Viagogo MD defends the ticket resale business again, but admits snubbing MPs was an error
By Chris Cooke | Published on Wednesday 28 June 2023
The Managing Director of often controversial secondary ticketing platform Viagogo has been doing some media interviews, defending the ticket resale business and insisting that websites like his protect consumers from fraud.
Although he does admit that snubbing the culture select committee in the UK Parliament when it was investigating the secondary ticketing market a few years back was a mistake.
Cris Miller has spoken to both the Daily Telegraph and City AM, perhaps aware that, with the upper end of the live sector – where ticket touting is most common and most controversial – pretty much back to normal post-pandemic, ticket resale is becoming a talking point again.
While the UK government doesn’t currently seem in any mood to further regulate secondary ticketing in the short term, campaigners within the music community remain vocal.
And regulation is increasing – or being better enforced – in some other countries. That includes the US, where secondary ticketing has traditionally been less controversial, but where demands for tighter regulation are now becoming more prolific.
Platforms like Viagogo – and especially Viagogo – have long been criticised for facilitating industrial-level ticket touts, who hoover up tickets for in-demand events and then sell them on at a significant markup.
The platforms have also been criticised for their own conduct; for using language that heavily implies people are buying from official sellers; for covering up the high fees until the final stage of a purchase; and for allegedly making it hard to get a refund when a touted ticket doesn’t get the buyer entry to a show.
Miller would likely argue that, in terms of Viagogo, a number of those issues have been addressed in more recent years. Which is true. Though usually because the company was forced by regulators to drop the more anti-consumer practices.
In the UK, it was the Competition & Markets Authority that enforced the regulations that were designed to address some of the issues raised by anti-touting campaigners.
In his interview with the Telegraph, Miller says that his company has “engaged” with the CMA a lot over the last five years and, as a result, “it’s a much different, more mature, business”. For example, he adds, all-in prices are now advertised on the Viagogo platform with no hidden fees that are only declared at the final stage of a purchase.
In both interviews, Miller relies on two of the defences that the secondary ticketing companies have always employed.
First, that plenty of tickets are sold by touts at below face value in addition to those with massive markups. And secondly, if tickets weren’t resold via platforms like Viagogo, they’d be sold on websites and forums with few consumer protections, where outright fraud would become rampant.
“If you look at the UK, prior to us launching the service, it was catastrophic”, Miller says. “I mean, there were scams all over the place, and there are bad actors that will take advantage of people”. The aim of Viagogo, he insists, was to provide consumers who wanted access to ticket resale with a “good alternative” to buying from potentially risky websites.
Although these arguments have all been made plenty of times over the years, Viagogo famously chose not to make them in front of MPs on the culture select committee when they were investigating issues around secondary ticketing in 2017 and 2018.
The company snubbed the select committee not once but twice. Miller has actually admitted that was a mistake before, and he does so again in the new Telegraph interview.
“We got that one wrong”, Miller says. “When you look back on that, you know, we were pretty naive. [We] didn’t really understand it”.
“[We were] Americans that came over and started the business”, he goes on, “and didn’t appreciate the sort of opportunity that it was to be able to explain how the service worked and answer the questions. Looking back on that, we got that one wrong, and we apologise for that”.
