In my humble opinion companies like Viagogo are, in simple terms ticket touts that have somehow become legitimate. These companies refer to themselves as “ticket resale agencies” a rather cuddly and friendly title for what feels like industrial-level scalping. But there are other “ticket resale agencies” I hear you say. Yes, there is Stub Hub, but did you know they merged with Viagogo? There is also Seat Geek which has branched out beyond resale and is now a ticket agency in its own right. In fact, it is the ticketing partner for numerous sports teams and venues in the USA and in 2020 signed a similar deal with Liverpool Football Club in the UK. There are other scalping agencies, perhaps too many to mention.
Recently Taylor Swift tickets for her Eras tour became available on Viagogo at pretty much the same time they went on general sale, including pre-sale tickets, that smacks of some kind of high-level scam. Some were on sale for more than £3,500. The price for most legitimate tickets for her UK tour were reasonably expensive to start with, between £100 and £200. Cris Miller who owns Viagogo was asked at the time to justify the huge price of Taylor Swift tickets for her ERAS tour on his site, According to MyLondon, the BBC, and other press publications, he said that Viagogo was “ensuring that there’s a secure, safe transaction“. So does this mean safer than the more legitimate ticket agencies like Ticket Master (another company I am not a huge fan of, but they will be covered in a future article). He also stated that “There’s not going to be enough seats. So, from our perspective, ensuring that there’s a secure, safe transaction that takes place is the single most important thing“. Well, there never are enough seats to satisfy demand when artists on the scale of Taylor Swift tour, unless she played three shows a day every day for six months that is unlikely to ever change.
So, the bottom line suggested by that comment is that Viagogo is all about creaming as much money from fans as possible right? Well, that is certainly my takeaway. Miller went on to claim that “fans prefer to buy more expensive tickets on Viagogo”. Seriously? What the actual fuck is that about? How many people do you know who would honestly prefer to buy tickets at ten times the face value? I know people do, but do they prefer doing that? Of course, they don’t. Miller said, “I wake up every single day, as does everybody else that works at the company, thinking about one thing, and that’s getting fans into these events all over the world”. That might be true, but it is more likely about how much money they can scam off said fans.
Scammers like Viagogo and their ilk pay a lot of money to Google and other similar sites to promote themselves as legitimate ticker agents, falsely in my opinion. This enables them to show up on the top of page one of a Google search when you search for gigs and shows. They operate in an incredibly devious and sophisticated way to give genuine fans and ticket buyers the impression that your tickets are direct from the authorised seller. They often charge an increased base price for tickets and add an inflated booking fee. There have also been many incidents of fans buying tickets for shows only to find that on arrival at the event their tickets were not valid. This impacted fans of the Rolling Stones and Take That in the years leading up to Covid. In 2018, even the UK Government expressed negative thoughts about Viagogo when the then Minister for Digital and the Creative Industries, Margot James stated clearly on BBC Radio “Don’t choose Viagogo. They are the worst.” However, the company is now legal in the UK and that statement from Margot James was possibly the last sensible thing a UK Minister has ever said in public.
A few years before Covid I used Viagogo to purchase a ticket for the Reading Festival, that is the one and only time that I have ever or will ever use them. I had left it a bit late to get a ticket and weekend tickets had sold out. So, believing Viagogo to be a genuine fans resale company I purchased via their website. It cost me almost double the face value. Never again! I would rather not go than pay ridiculously inflated prices. This happens for almost every major event not just Taylor Swift. The same thing has impacted recent shows by Harry Styles and many UK festivals. What makes it even worse for me is that since Covid many shows struggle to sell out and having large tranches of tickets in the hands of legitimised touts and scalpers will not help change this. Late last year Rammstein mounted a successful legal fight that forbids Viagogo from selling tickets to their shows, let’s hope more artists do the same. Also last year UK independent TV channel ITV worked with the Fan Fair Alliance to discover that nearly all tickets on Viagogo’s site are supplied by just three traders, which means that only around 10% of tickets on the site were on offer by what we might call ordinary punters.
Meanwhile, there is the NME who, back in the day, were bastions of positive and liberal thinking and even recently they have written some quite strong pieces that slagged off Viagogo. But now, presumably thanks to advertising revenue, the once proud NME who, back in the day, really knew how to “stick it to the man” is licking Viagogo’s tarnished golden rim by publishing paid-for advertising features for Viagogo. Is Viagogo legitimate? Sadly, it is in most places, they currently have operations in more than 60 countries. Is it ethical? Well for me that is at best a very grey area, personally, I don’t believe that they are. Can I stop anyone from using Viagogo? No, I can’t. Can I implore people to avoid the company forever? Yes, I can and I really believe you should do some research into this awful organisation before you consider using them!
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