Italy Announces Million Euro Fine for Viagogo; Spain Investigating

Viagogo, secondary online ticket marketplace, has been fined one million Euros by the Italian antitrust agency, AGCM, for not complying with demands made by the agency last year.

According to Pollstar, AGCM found that Viagogo was misleading customers by not making original ticket prices and their seats easily known. AGCM told Viagogo to fix the discrepancy, and the resale site agreed to indicate the face value price and seat number. However, a year later, the agency received numerous complaints by both consumers and consumer associates about the site’s failure to rectify this situation. Therefore, AGCM imposed a fine of one million Euros on the company. It is unclear at this time whether or not Viagogo will appeal the decision, which would then leave the decision up to the Lazio Regional Administrative Court in Rome.

Simultaneously, prosecutors from Valencia, Spain have launched an investigation involving Viagogo’s business practices. Pollstar reports that the prosecutors suspect “possible abusive behavior against consumers.” One oft-cited example was complaints against the ticketing site for high markups at rock band U2’s concert in Madrid this September.

“The Prosecutor’s Office of Valencia has received several complaints made by ticket buyers last January, after the tickets were sold out in a few minutes and the only possibility of accessing one ticket was paying resale prices ranging from €285 to €1,500,” 20 Minutos reported.

News has not been favorable for the Switzerland-based resale giant of late, as New Zealand, the U.K., and Australia all have ongoing investigations of the company’s operations. New Zealand has made public more than 200 complaints about upcoming concert events, and an Australian lawyer is pressing cases on behalf of two comedians who are suing the site for selling overpriced tickets to their shows.

In England, the company faced specific sanctions barring it from using terminology that implied it was an “official” seller of tickets to events as part of a series of new regulations regarding resale in the UK.

Finally, FIFA obtained a preliminary injuction against the site offering speculative ticket listings for the upcoming World Cup in Russia.