Viagogo: Difference between revisions
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== Legal Cases == |
== Legal Cases == |
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In July 2011, The Hamburg District Court ruled that viagogo had not violated the injunction prohibiting the “commercial” secondary sales of personalised tickets. The court clearly stated that simply offering the online platform does not make viagogo liable for any kind of commercial sales by others. viagogo was only prohibited from claiming that the validity of the Take That tickets is “100 % guaranteed” <ref>{{cite news | title= Decision by District Court Hamburg | url =http://www.slideshare.net/krsmith80/0711-decision-by-district-court-hamburg?from=share_email| work= Slideshare}}</ref>. |
The organisers of the Take That concerts in Germany imposed a number of unfriendly restrictions in an attempt to prevent fans from re-selling tickets they could no longer use. In July 2011, The Hamburg District Court ruled that viagogo had not violated the injunction prohibiting the “commercial” secondary sales of personalised tickets. The court clearly stated that simply offering the online platform does not make viagogo liable for any kind of commercial sales by others. viagogo was only prohibited from claiming that the validity of the Take That tickets is “100 % guaranteed” <ref>{{cite news | title= Decision by District Court Hamburg | url =http://www.slideshare.net/krsmith80/0711-decision-by-district-court-hamburg?from=share_email| work= Slideshare}}</ref>. |
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As a marketplace, viagogo provides a platform for consumers to trade tickets for the majority of live events ranging from rugby to festivals, concerts to comedy. In March 2011, the [[Rugby Football Union]](RFU) obtained a court order forcing viagogo to reveal the names and addresses of people who sold on Six Nations tickets and tickets to other England rugby matches via viagogo’s website. |
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However, in May 2011 viagogo won the right to appeal a recent court order brought by the Rugby Football Union (RFU), which would have seen consumers' personal information handed over to the body <ref>{{cite news | title= viagogo strike back in black market crackdown| url = http://www.espnscrum.com/england/rugby/story/139992.html| work= ESPN Scrum}}</ref>. |
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In February 2012, it was announced that viagogo has been granted the right to appeal to appeal to the Supreme Court <ref>{{cite news|url=http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/article-2096143/John-Terry-downfall-linked-Heather-Rabbatts-CHARLES-SALE.html |publisher=[[The Guardian]]|date= 3 Feb. 2012}}</ref>. |
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In 2011, the [[Rugby Football Union]] (RFU) was granted a [[court order]] by the [[High Court of Justice|High Court]], forcing Viagogo to reveal the names and addresses of people who sold on tickets to [[England Rugby]] matches via its website, after the RFU argued that the conditions printed on the tickets explicitly forbade resale of the tickets for profit.<ref>{{cite news|url=http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/2011/mar/31/rugby-football-union-twickenham-tickets-viagogo|title=RFU wins court order to help identify Twickenham ticket touts|title=RFU wins court order to help identify Twickenham ticket touts|publisher=[[The Guardian]]|date=31 March 2011}}</ref><ref>{{cite news|url=http://www.guardian.co.uk/money/2011/may/07/high-court-ruling-ticket-touts|title=High court ruling could kick ticket touts into touch|publisher=[[The Guardian]]|date=7 May 2011}}</ref> Viagogo appealed the ruling, but the appeal ruling was won by the RFU in Dec. 2011, and the company is now required to reveal the names and addresses of those who placed tickets for sale on its website for the 2010 [[End of year rugby tests|Investec Internationals]] and the [[2011 Six Nations Championship]].<ref>{{cite news|url=http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/2011/dec/20/viagogo-appeal-rfu-ticketing-secondary|title=Viagogo loses appeal in RFU ticketing secondary-sale case|publisher=[[The Guardian]]|date=20 Dec. 2011}}</ref>. |
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===[[Dispatches (TV series)|''Dispatches'']] TV investigation=== |
===[[Dispatches (TV series)|''Dispatches'']] TV investigation=== |
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Revision as of 17:34, 14 March 2012
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| Company type | Private |
|---|---|
| Industry | e-commerce |
| Founded | London, UK (2005) |
| Headquarters | London, UK |
Key people | Eric Baker, Founder & CEO |
| Products | online secondary ticketing, online ticket exchange |
| Website | [1] |
viagogo is an online ticket marketplace that enables people to buy and sell tickets to live events. Established in 2006, the company operates local language websites in over 25 countries. [1] viagogo is backed by the venture capital investment firm Index Ventures.[2]
History
The company was founded by Eric Baker, the co-founder of Stubhub in the United States.[3] Baker left StubHub in 2004 due to a falling out with his co-founder.[4] He then decided to take the business model to Europe, and founded viagogo.[3]
viagogo was launched in late summer 2006 with partnerships with Chelsea F.C. and Manchester United F.C.[3][5][6][7][8]. These deals were intended to allow season ticket holders to sell tickets to matches they could not attend to other club members. In return, the clubs would receive yearly six-figure sums from viagogo.[9] Manchester United ended their commercial agreement with viagogo in 2011[10].
Sport partnerships
viagogo holds partnerships with sports properties in football rugby, tennis and wrestling. Under British law, unauthorized re-selling of Premier League and other football tickets is illegal, a restriction introduced by the Government to prevent hooliganism.[11] By working with the Premier League clubs to obtain official authorization, viagogo is permitted to resell tickets to the clubs it works with.
In addition to Chelsea FC, viagogo holds partnerships with
- Aston Villa FC,[12]
- FC Bayern Munich[13]
- FC Kaiserslautern.[14]
- Tennis - Barclays ATP World Tour Finals,[15] as its official premium and secondary ticket exchange partner. The partnership was renewed in 2011 which will run up to and include the 2013 edition.
- The French Tennis Federation (FFT). In 2009, viagogo partnered with the FFT to become the official secondary ticket exchange of the French Open and the Paris Masters. [16]
- In 2010, the company became the official secondary ticketing partner for World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE)'s European live event tour in the Autumn of 2010. This was the first time the WWE had worked with a secondary ticketing partner on its major European tours. [17]
Music partnerships
In February 2012, viagogo was named as the official premium and secondary ticketing partner for Madonna's 2012 summer tour dates across Europe [18]. viagogo was also the official premium and secondary ticketing partner for Madonna’s Sticky & Sweet European Tour in 2008, marking the first ever partnership of its kind with a major concert tour [19].
In 2010, viagogo was announced as the official premium ticketing partner of Live Nation for the Roger Waters tour [20]. In August 2010, viagogo announced it was the exclusive ticket exchange partner for music media brand NME [21] and Aloud.com, Bauer Media Group's ticketing partnership.
Legal Cases
The organisers of the Take That concerts in Germany imposed a number of unfriendly restrictions in an attempt to prevent fans from re-selling tickets they could no longer use. In July 2011, The Hamburg District Court ruled that viagogo had not violated the injunction prohibiting the “commercial” secondary sales of personalised tickets. The court clearly stated that simply offering the online platform does not make viagogo liable for any kind of commercial sales by others. viagogo was only prohibited from claiming that the validity of the Take That tickets is “100 % guaranteed” [22].
As a marketplace, viagogo provides a platform for consumers to trade tickets for the majority of live events ranging from rugby to festivals, concerts to comedy. In March 2011, the Rugby Football Union(RFU) obtained a court order forcing viagogo to reveal the names and addresses of people who sold on Six Nations tickets and tickets to other England rugby matches via viagogo’s website. However, in May 2011 viagogo won the right to appeal a recent court order brought by the Rugby Football Union (RFU), which would have seen consumers' personal information handed over to the body [23].
In February 2012, it was announced that viagogo has been granted the right to appeal to appeal to the Supreme Court [24].
Dispatches TV investigation
On February 22, 2012, Channel 4 announced that it had defeated an injunction from viagogo which attempted to prevent the showing of an episode of Dispatches entitled "The Great Ticket Scandal". The announcement read in part
- "Channel 4 Dispatches programme has defeated an injunction in the High Court today (Wed 22 Feb) and can now reveal an important public interest investigation into how real fans are paying the price for hidden practices used by live event promoters and a major ‘fan-to-fan ticket exchange'. Dispatches, which will air on Channel 4 on Thursday 23 February at 9PM, went undercover inside one of the UK's biggest ticket reselling websites - viagogo - and found that major promoters allocate hundreds or even thousands of tickets to be sold through their website at well above the face value."[25].
The episode aired on February 23, 2012 and revealed a number of issues. The programme claimed that;
- viagogo were receiving their own primary 'allocations' of tickets to certain events whose organisers agreed to, and selling them back to their customers at heavily inflated prices, receiving a 10% cut of the profit (the rest going back to the promoter on top of the face value).
- viagogo employees were obtaining tickets for other events using a large number of company credit cards immediately as they went on general sale, and immediately presenting them for resale at inflated prices. This claim had also been made by a former viagogo employee in 2011.[26]
- despite claiming that most of its tickets were being sold by fans who no longer needed then, viagogo works with 'powersellers' (brokers) who have already secured large numbers of tickets.
The result of these issues, said the programme, has been a legal money laundering system where, instead of tickets remaining available to fans who may have made every effort to beat high online traffic and access the order pages at the very moment of release, many have been simply transferred to viagogo and listed under the guise of the secondary fan-to-fan resale that the website promises, where significantly higher prices can be expected for tickets that the primary companies will inevitably report as supposedly 'sold out' sooner than they would have otherwise.
Viagogo responded to the claims on the day after programme aired, and although it did not address a number of points it defended its use of powersellers, saying ""We allow anyone to sell on our marketplace and the overwhelming majority of our sellers are individuals but it also includes larger sellers which can include concert promoters."[27]. Many gig and festival fans have expressed outrage at the practices witnessed by the Dispatches reporters[citation needed], and Labour MP Sharon Hodgson is expected to step up her campaign urging the current UK Government to pass new anti-tout legislation, where a cap of face value + 10% would be placed on secondary ticket sales.[28].
In March 2012, a few days after tickets went on sale for the Madonna concert at the Turk Telekom Arena in Istanbul, Turkey, about 25,000 of the tickets were being offered for sale on the viagogo website, which was nearly half of the arena's capacity[29]. The primary ticket seller for Madonna in Istanbul was Billetix, the Turkish subsidiary of Ticketmaster.
References
- ^ Growing Business Success Stories - Viagogo: Eric Baker
- ^ "viagogo Raises Over $20MM From Investors Led by Index Ventures". Index Ventures. Retrieved 11 January 2012.
- ^ a b c Auchard, Eric (17 August 2006). "European sports ticket reseller Web site unveiled". Reuters. Retrieved 2006-08-20.
- ^ Charny, Ben (17 August 2006). "Online ticket scalping comes to Europe". Marketwatch from Dow Jones. MarketWatch, Inc. Retrieved 20 August 2006.
- ^ The Times (18 August 2006). "Football ticket resales kick off". The Times. Times Newspapers Ltd. Retrieved 2006-08-20.
- ^ Sweney, Mark (18 August 2006). "Clubs launch ticket resale site". The Guardian. Guardian Newspapers Limited. Retrieved 2006-08-20.
- ^ "Tackling the touts". bbc.co.uk. BBC Manchester. 18 August 2006. Retrieved 20 August 2006.
- ^ "Ticket exchange: clubs target touts". ITN News. 18 August 2006. Retrieved 20 August 2006.
- ^ Bowers, Simon (18 August 2006). "Fans condemn 'legalised touting' of season tickets". The Guardian. Guardian Newspapers Limited. Retrieved 2006-08-20.
- ^ "Why can't we sell unused Manchester United season tickets any more?". The Guardian . 9 Sep. 2011.
{{cite news}}: Check date values in:|date=(help); Cite has empty unknown parameter:|1=(help) - ^ "Q&A: Ticket touting". BBC News. 16 April 2007.
- ^ "Aston Villa sign new ticketing agreement with viagogo". sportspromedia.com. 09 August 2010.
{{cite web}}: Check date values in:|date=(help) - ^ "VIAGOGO SIGNS UP FC BAYERN MUNICH AND EVERTON FC". sportbusiness.com. 30 January 2007.
- ^ "viagogo & FCK starten Ticket-Zweitmarkt-Partnerschaft". fck.de.
- ^ "viagogo extends deal with Barclays ATP World Tour Finals". sportspromedia.com.
- ^ "French Tennis Federation Teams Up With viagogo". PRWeb. April 2004.
- ^ "Viagogo Signs Deal with World Wrestling Entertainment". www.euticketnews.com.
- ^ "Madonna Sets 2012 World Tour Dates". Billboard.
- ^ "Madonna ticket deal so sweet for secondary market". Financial Times.
- ^ "Viagogo secures rights for The Wall". PRWeb. June 2009.
- ^ "NME to use Viagogo for ticketing". musicweek.com. August 2010.
- ^ "Decision by District Court Hamburg". Slideshare.
- ^ "viagogo strike back in black market crackdown". ESPN Scrum.
- ^ . The Guardian. 3 Feb. 2012 http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/article-2096143/John-Terry-downfall-linked-Heather-Rabbatts-CHARLES-SALE.html.
{{cite news}}: Check date values in:|date=(help); Missing or empty|title=(help) - ^ "Dispatches defeats High Court injunction". Channel 4 . 23 Feb. 2012.
{{cite news}}: Check date values in:|date=(help); Cite has empty unknown parameter:|1=(help) - ^ "Viagogo staff 'traded tickets on company cards'". This Is Money. 18 May 2011.
{{cite news}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter:|1=(help) - ^ "Viagogo defends sale of promoters' tickets". BBC News. 24 Feb. 2012.
{{cite news}}: Check date values in:|date=(help); Cite has empty unknown parameter:|1=(help) - ^ "Dispatches - The Great Ticket Scandal". Channel 4 . 23 Feb. 2012.
{{cite news}}: Check date values in:|date=(help); Cite has empty unknown parameter:|1=(help) - ^ "Viagogo Gets Half The House?". Pollstar. 9 March 2012. Retrieved 13 March 2012.