Last Thursday (17 January) was the deadline set by the UK’s competition watchdog the Competition & Markets Authority (CMA) for secondary-ticketing sites to change the way they listed tickets offered for resale.
New rules included the requirement to show what seat in a venue a ticket is for, as well as the identity of the seller if it’s a business.
The deadline applied to Viagogo, StubHub and Ticketmaster (which has shut its GetMeIn and Seatwave subsidiaries to focus on its own fan-resale site), with a few extra rules – based on a court order – for Viagogo including the need to “prevent customers being misled by messages about the availability and popularity of tickets” as well as making it easier for customers to get their money back if necessary.
Viagogo claims it now fulfils all the requirements. “We have met the deadline and are now compliant. All tickets on viagogo are valid and it is perfectly legal to resell a ticket or give it to someone else if you want to,” tweeted its PR account. “We are now doing our own checks of Viagogo. If we find evidence that the court order has been breached, we will not hesitate to take action,” shot back the CMA, which will also be checking the other sites.
Campaigning body the FanFair Alliance claims Viagogo has only made “a few minor changes” and is preparing to submit evidence to the CMA, so this argument has some distance to run still.
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