Industry News

Viagogo handed €1m fine by Italian antitrust body

Italian antitrust body AGCM has fined Viagogo €1m for misleading consumers and unfair commercial practices.

The action dates back to April 2017, when the AGCM found that Viagogo.it was harming consumers by failing to indicate the face value of a ticket being resold, the seat number of the ticket and misleading people on the total ticket price.

Viagogo was given 60 days to respond to the claims and in June submitted a full report detailing a set of initiatives to address these issues. However, since then, numerous consumers and consumer associations have continued to complain about the lack of transparency regarding the total ticket price, with many consumers paying above what they were led to believe they had to pay and claiming that the seat number was not made clear.

As Viagogo did not meet the provision taken by AGCOM on April 5 2017, which required the Swiss company to include the information requested within six months from the first notification, the Italian antitrust decided to fine the secondary ticketing site €1m.

Viagogo sent a report in which it presented initiatives to be submitted in order to comply with the Authority’s resolution. Viagogo described some changes made to its website, proposing further in the definition phase, to be implemented in the following months.

Last summer, Live Nation, Seatwave and Viagogo were banned from reselling tickets for U2 concerts in Italy by a Rome court.

The Civil Court of Rome told the companies they were not allowed to directly or indirectly sell tickets for the July 15 and 16 gigs on the secondary market. They were fined €2,000 for any tickets that were resold.

Earlier in 2017, Ticketone was fined €1m by the AGCM after an investigation by Italy’s competition authority into the secondary ticketing market.

AGCM also handed out fines totalling €700,000 to three other resale platforms – Seatwave, Viagogo Ticketbis and Mywayticket.

Image: Picjumbo.com

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