Concert promoters warn music fans to steer clear of ticket ‘marketplace’ Viagogo

Music industry heavyweights have warned South Australian fans to steer clear of online ticket reseller Viagogo, with one prominent rock promoter labelling the company “outrageously out of control”.

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Music industry heavyweights have warned South Australian fans to steer clear of online ticket reseller Viagogo, with one prominent rock promoter labelling the company “outrageously out of control”.

But the Switzerland-based entity has hit back at the criticisms, telling the Sunday Mail that promoters around the world are acting illegally in not honouring Viagogo tickets.

Viagogo claims to be nothing more than a marketplace where people can sell unwanted tickets to music and sporting events, but according to its critics it’s little more than electronic scalping. The tickets are often sold at highly inflated prices – with big administration fees tacked on – and there have been numerous cases where sellers have offloaded the tickets on other sites, leaving purchasers with little more than an expensive piece of paper that doesn’t get them into the show.

Just this week in Adelaide several fans were refused entry to a concert by former Supertramp frontman Roger Hodgson after purchasing invalid tickets through Viagogo.

“They’re outrageously out of control – they’re f***ing thieves, basically,” said long-time Australian rock promoter Michael Chugg, who’s currently organising Elton John’s Australian leg of his farewell tour.

Elton John is touring Australia in 2019. Picture: Ben Gibson

“Last week when we announced Elton John they put a poster on Facebook, illegally using the Elton John artwork, advertising tickets as though they were the official ticket agent.”

Mr Chugg said governments around the world had tried to prevent Viagogo from operating in their countries, with varying degrees of success.

“When you are touring a monstrously popular act you’re going to pick up a percentage of people who probably haven’t been to show in 10 or 20 years,” he said.

“They’re not aware of how they should book their tickets, so they go on to the search engine and the first thing that comes up is Viagogo and they blindly go on there and buy tickets without reading the fine print. Then they find out that they’re not going to get their tickets until five days before the show and half the time they’re in somebody else’s name, and they get to the venue and they can’t get in. As promoters, we get very upset.”

Mr Chugg said the most heartbreaking situation he’d witnessed connected to Viagogo involved eight people hiring a mini-van to drive from the western New South Wales town of Bourke to Sydney to see a concert.

“It was pissing with rain and they’re they are, standing at the window of the ICC box office, soaking wet, realising they’d driven all that way and spent all that money and they can’t get in.”

Concert promoter Michael Chugg.

Mr Chugg said that people should always go through official ticket sellers such as Ticketek or Ticketmaster and avoid Viagogo at all costs, an assertion backed by the new head of the Adelaide Entertainment Centre Phil King.

“Viagogo spends a lot of money from a search engine perspective to ensure they’re the top of search results,” Mr King said. “They’re very devious, and use words like ‘official’ to make people think they’re in the right place. They also claim that there aren’t many tickets left to create a sense of urgency.”

Mr King said the AEC and other venues had done a good job educating fans to not deal with the company, but that there were always those who missed the message.

“It’s basically modern-day scalping, shifted to a 21st century mode,” he said.

“I have a real dislike for them.”

It’s a dislike shared by Adelaide music fan John, who asked us not to use his real name as he’s currently in the process of trying to recover money he spent on Viagogo.

John used the site to purchase tickets to last week’s Keith Urban show in Melbourne, but quickly got cold feet after reading reviews of the business online.

“It was right at the top of the Google search,” John said.

“I clicked on it, and it felt like there was a real urgency to make the transaction happen. Anyway, I clicked on four tickets and there was a $186 admin fee. The four tickets that came through said they were worth $71.95 each, but I paid $850 for four. I thought, ‘hang on a minute, I don’t want these tickets anymore’, but you can’t ring and speak to anybody.”

Worried that he’d take his family all the way to Melbourne only to be left standing at the door, John bought four more tickets through official channels.

In a statement to the Sunday Mail, Viagogo said: “Event organisers sometimes make claims that they will deny entry to people who have purchased resold tickets. These types of entry restrictions are highly unfair and in our view, unenforceable and illegal. Therefore, as with all tickets on our platform, Viagogo customers should feel confident that they will gain entry to the event, and that is why we back every ticket with the Viagogo guarantee.

“If a customer has any problems with their tickets, we urge them to contact us immediately on our event day hotline. We are often able to find replacement tickets right away, and in the rare instances we are not able to, customers receive a full refund.”