Viagogo

History

The company was founded in 2006 in London by Eric Baker, the co-founder of US-based StubHub, and is now the world's largest ticket marketplace.

viagogo was established to provide a secure online ticket marketplace that allows consumers to buy and sell tickets to sports, music, theatre and comedy events.

viagogo ticketing marketplace is designed to give consumers access to tickets that were often previously difficult to get hold of, in particular where events are sold out at the box office. However, viagogo often sells tickets in advance of events at multiples of their face value prices. It also charges both buyers and sellers proportionally large transaction fees.

viagogo launched with partnerships with Chelsea F.C. and Manchester United F.C. offering season ticket holders the chance to sell tickets to matches they could not attend to other club members, without having to lend their seasoncard. Manchester United ended their commercial agreement with viagogo in 2011.

viagogo now partners with hundreds of the biggest names in sport and entertainment in the world, including Premier League teams Manchester City FC, Paris Saint-Germain, the Roland-Garros French Open and several global music festivals.

In September 2013 viagogo officially launched in Australia. The launch was accompanied by two new partnerships with Melbourne-based AFL clubs Collingwood FC and Richmond FC.

Sport partnerships

The company has 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. By working with the Premier League clubs to obtain official authorization, viagogo is permitted to resell tickets to the clubs it works with.

Barclays Premier League

viagogo holds partnerships with

Bundesliga

In 2014, viagogo ended its partnershiphs with Bundesliga teams. The contract between viagogo and Hamburger SV was terminated in December 2012; viagogo and Schalke 04 ended their contract one week after it had started. According to an article in German daily Süddeutsche Zeitung, viagogo was criticized by team representatives for pretending to have closer partnerships with some teams than actually existed. Bayer Leverkusen successfully took this matter to court. The judge ruled that viagogo has no right to claim a partnership with Bayer Leverkusen. Numerous organizations of German football fans expressed very critical positions towards relations between viagogo and their respective teams. Specifically, they bashed viagogo for causing inflated ticket prices on the secondary market. On 12 August 2014 viagogo and FC Augsburg ended their relationship.

Ligue 1

Eredivisie

Tennis

AFL

Rugby

Music partnerships

viagogo was the official ticket marketplace for the 2013 Isle of Wight Festival, the Boyzone BZ20 Anniversary Tour, 2013 Bilbao BBK Live, 2013 XO Belgium, 2013 Benicassim Festival and 2013 Weekend Festival.

In the summer of 2014, viagogo partnered with SFX Entertainment, the largest live events company in the world and owner of several major EDM and festival brands such as Tomorrowland (festival), Electric Zoo and Stereosonic.

In February 2015 viagogo announced their partnership with Soundwave. In 2015, viagogo also announced partnerships with Ultra Beach Bali, Ultra Japan, Djakarta Warehouse Project and Sunburn Goa 2015.

In January 2016, viagogo was announced as the official ticketing partner of Ultra Singapore 2016. Tickets for Ultra Singapore were made available exclusively through viagogo's 60 global websites. Ultra Singapore scaled up to a 2-day music festival featuring 3 main stages for the first time and chose viagogo as the official ticketing partner to attract a global base of festival goers.

Media partnerships

In 2012 viagogo extended its European ticketing agreement with multiplatform sports media company, ESPN, allowing sports fans to access tickets across a range of sports events throughout Europe.

Consumer protection in secondary ticketing

According to a BBC report, based on the UK Police 'Action Fraud,' the number of online ticket sales fraud has risen dramatically in the past few years, counting several thousands of customers who had bought tickets from unsecure websites having either never received tickets they had paid for, having received false tickets, or having paid in excess of five times the face value of a ticket with no transparency on the price differential.

Research commissioned by viagogo revealed that Britons lost £50 million to ticket fraud over a 12-month period and 500,000 Australians have been the victims of ticket fraud, with 85% cases resulting from transactions on eBay and Gumtree.

In early 2011, viagogo sold personalized tickets for the band Take That's 2011 tour to German customers. A number of people were not able to enter the concerts in Hamburg and Munich. A German court banned viagogo from claiming that the validity of the Take That tickets is “100 % guaranteed”.

In 2011, a legal battle began between the Rugby Football Union (RFU) and viagogo over tickets for which the RFU had explicitly forbidden resale for profit. viagogo lost the initial trial and an appeal in the lower courts in December 2011, resulting in the issuing of a Norwich Pharmacal Order. viagogo appealed to the Supreme Court to prevent the release confidential customer information. The appeal was dismissed by the Supreme Court in November 2012.

In November 2012, fake tickets to the Mumford & Sons concert in Portsmouth with a face value of £23.50 were sold for up to £200 on viagogo's secure marketplace. viagogo responded in an interview with the BBC to say that this was a rare occurrence and all buyers had been fully refunded and given additional compensation.

Legislation

In the UK, Labour MP Sharon Hodgson's proposal that legislation be introduced to cap resell prices at face value +10% was rejected by the Department of Culture, Media and Sport.