In April, we saw Ticketmaster named in a £5m ($6.5m/€5.8m) lawsuit following the major data breach on its sites in the UK in 2018.
The suit was filed by law firm Hayes Connor at the High Court in Liverpool, and claimed that its legal action is on behalf of more than 650 of the ticketing firm’s customers that were affected by the security breach.
Up to 40,000 UK Ticketmaster customers were believed to have had “some personal or payment information” stolen following the data security breach that became public knowledge in June 2018.
More big news broke in April after the European Parliament voted in favour of a landmark ruling to ban ticket bots that circumvent purchase rules.
MEPs discussed the resale issue for the first time, officially outlawing the use of software used to evade any imposed limits on the number of tickets that a person can buy or any other rules applicable to the purchase of tickets.
The legislation requires resellers to identify if they are professional traders.
Elsewhere, Singapore-based multi-service platform Grab expanded its ecosystem by adding Booking.com, BookMyShow and Agoda.
Grab launched in 2012 as a ride-hailing service, but has developed into an expansive platform offering food delivery, ticketing, hotel booking, on-demand video streaming, integrated public transport planning service, and more.
The firm launched its ‘Tickets’ service with BookMyShow in June 2018, giving customers access to cinema tickets. In April, Grab said it hoped to expand this service to include ticketing to other events and entertainment.
Later in the month, Wimbledon confirmed it would move over to an online public ballot system from the 2020 Championships.
Wimbledon currently sends out paper-based tickets but had been trialling the online system with its overseas ballots.
The Public Ballot, introduced in 1924, does not automatically entitle applicants to tickets for Wimbledon, but to a place in the draw for tickets. It is not possible to request tickets for specific days or courts, as a computerised selection process chooses the day and court offered randomly, and sends offers via letters.
The All England Lawn Tennis Club said in the online ballot announcement in April: “Ensuring the accessibility of Wimbledon tickets for spectators of all ages and geographical locations remains a primary focus and importantly the ballot will retain the principle that applications may be submitted at any time during the application window; there is no advantage to being the fastest to apply.”
Click here to see the May 2019 review and here to see the March 2019 review.
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