The UK’s Advertising Standards Authority has upheld complaints made against two advertorial pieces produced by secondary ticketing platform Viagogo and published on the NME website.
The regulator said in a ruling this morning that the ads “omitted material information about the validity of tickets purchased through Viagogo and the risk of venues refusing entry to consumers” if they bought tickets from touts. Therefore, the ads were misleading.
The two advertorials - each of which was billed by NME as “a paid-for ad feature for Viagogo” - were published last summer. The first was an overview of bands playing the BST Hyde Park shows and the second was focused on how to get tickets to Taylor Swift’s sold out UK tour. The gist of both articles was that readers should get their tickets from touts on Viagogo.
However, the terms and conditions on tickets for all of the featured shows prohibit resale, meaning that fans who buy those tickets could be refused admission. And this restriction was not mentioned in the articles. It was the anti-touting campaign group FanFair Alliance that made the complaints to the ASA, arguing that the advertorial pieces were misleading.
Viagogo, unsurprisingly, rejected those claims. It argued that the restrictions were listed on its own site where people would actually buy tickets. And the chances of a ticket buyer being refused admission were actually very low - even if the terms of the ticket technically allowed for such a thing - and that it would refund the buyer if they didn’t get access to a show.
In its ruling, the ASA notes that its code states that “marketing communications must not mislead consumers by omitting material information”. But did the fact that tickets bought for the featured shows on the Viagogo site could be cancelled constitute “material information”?
Yes, it did. “We considered that the prohibition of resale tickets, as outlined in both the BST Hyde Park and Taylor Swift Era’s tour terms and conditions, was material information which was likely to affect a consumer’s decision to purchase tickets through Viagogo”, the ruling continues.
And failing to include that information was “misleading”. Meaning Viagogo has been told that the offending ads must not appear again and future ads must not omit material information.
Welcoming the ruling, Adam Webb from the FanFair Alliance told CMU: “This is an important ruling by the ASA, which highlights how websites like Viagogo continue to mislead consumers and mis-sell them touted tickets. British audiences deserve greater protection from these rip-off merchants. It is high time the UK followed the example of countries like Ireland and France and outlawed their parasitical practices”.