Pan-European consumer rights group Euroconsumers has filed a complaint against ticket resale platform Viagogo under the European Union’s Digital Services Act. It claims Viagogo is flouting EU rules, in the way its website is designed and by failing to provide information about the resellers using its platform.
“For too long, Viagogo has profited from unfair practices and opaque strategies that hurt fans and distort the live events market”, says Euroconsumers’ Head Of Policy & Enforcement Els Bruggeman. The DSA, she adds, “was designed to stop precisely this kind of behaviour and today we’re putting it to the test”.
The formal complaint against Viagogo follows last week’s Annual General Meeting of the anti-ticket-touting group FEAT, which revealed that concert promoters in the group have now reported 275 illegal ticket listings on resale sites in Europe. Under the DSA, the sites should respond to those complaints “in a timely manner”, but so far no responses at all have been received.
As a result, the FEAT members committed to continue lobbying the EU and call for better enforcement of the DSA in the context of secondary ticketing.
Euroconsumers has filed its complaint with the Digital Services Coordinator in Ireland, while national organisations within the group’s membership have concurrently filed complaints with the relevant national regulators in Italy, Belgium, Spain and Portugal.
A spokesperson for Viagogo says they are yet to be notified by the Irish regulator, but insists that the company “takes its responsibilities under the DSA seriously and has implemented all necessary measures to ensure full compliance since the legislation came into effect”. As a result, they state, “Viagogo is compliant in all markets in which it operates”.
The Euroconsumers complaint claims that Viagogo breaches various rules contained in the DSA, the EU’s regulations that put platform responsibility obligations onto online services that operate in Europe. That includes rules relating to ‘trader traceability’ and the ‘know your business customer’ obligations of online platforms.
In its complaint, Euroconsumers explains that the DSA requires online platforms to gather and verify the name, trading name, contact information, proof of ID and company registration information for each trader, as well as getting traders to self-certify compliance with EU law. Much of that information should then be made available to buyers in a “clear and accessible” way.
So, in the case of Viagogo, that means gathering, verifying and providing information about all the professional ticket touts selling tickets on the platform.
According to Euroconsumers, Viagogo “systematically” fails to provide buyers on its platform with the necessary information about its sellers. When monitoring sellers on the resale site, it says, it found that in some cases only the tout’s company name is available, and “in many cases, no information regarding the seller’s identity or legal status is provided at all”.
The fact a lot of the required information is not made publicly available provides, according to Euroconsumers, “strong evidential grounds” to conclude that the platform has failed to fulfil its prerequisite “know your business customer” obligations. Which is to say, Viagogo didn’t bother to collect or verify the necessary information from its sellers.
Elsewhere, Euroconsumers says Viagogo breaches the DSA in the way its website is designed, including with features that suggest false scarcity and urgency in a bid to pressure consumers into making speedy buying decisions. It also claims that there are design features that “deliberately steer consumers toward more expensive choices, contravening the principles of informed decision-making”.
