The United Kingdom Advertising Standards Agency (UK ASA) have banged their drum on Viagogo and demanded that they change a number of their wording and advertising process on the site.
Viagogo were told to start publishing the total costs of tickets for sale on its platform upfront on the first screen. This is because consumers are clicking through the process and having a number of prices such as VAT, Booking Fees and Delivery added to the ticket sale price. Also, there have been some confusion over certain words used which are misleading, for example that a particular ticket is an ‘official’ one or words like ‘guarantee’ are used that confuses the purchaser.
Viagogo have apparently not made the requested changes by the ASA which were originally made in March 2018 and had a deadline of the last weekend in May 2018. Because they have missed this deadline, the ASA have reportedly notified the National Trading Standards Authority which would lead to further investigation that could result in sanctions or worse.
Its not all over for Viagogo coming off the ASA radar. They are also reportedly being sanctioned on where they can advertise, specifically platforms like Google, and includes slapping details in the form of a campaign to outline certain issues with Viagogo as a ticket purchasing site.
As previously reported, there is an anti-touting Fanfair alliance of which the campaign is headed by Adam Webb. On this matter, he said “This is yet another step towards forcing the biggest ticket resale sites to follow UK consumer law and stop their misleading marketing practices. We’ll need some time to assess the full impact of today’s ASA announcement – but perhaps the most positive result for fans would be if Google and other search engines exhibited corporate responsibility and stopped taking Viagogo’s advertising spend. Cutting them off from search would dramatically transform this market, and help audiences locate face value tickets from authorised sellers.”
Yet again, the touts are getting a hammering, and is another big push to stop ticket reselling all together. Legally, there is a constant development to tackle this, but with authorities investigating sites such as Viagogo, it could mean the end of secondary ticket selling unless using unregulated websites, which would be a much bigger gamble for buyers.
