We have been enjoying the ability to buy tickets to attend massive events such as concerts or football matches for just over a decade. Can you imagine not only being able to buy official tickets for this type of event but also being able to sell them online to the highest bidder? That’s what Viagogo does.
The evolution of buying and selling tickets online
In the outbreak of eCommerce and web 2.0, the portals of the big ticket brands implemented the necessary technology – little by little – to satisfy the consumption needs of their users. We went from being able to see mere information and contact telephone numbers to finding purchase buttons to get tickets to big events. Over time, specialization and evolution towards the “3.0 era”, the portals for ticket sales evolved (notable cases would be those of or ).
The value of Viagogo
Even if it was not possible to think that this area of eCommerce could evolve, Viagogo boasts of doing it in a fresh and innovative way. Until now, the behavior around the entrances of the great events was that of purchase, while the sale from user to user was relegated to the second-hand purchase and sale portals.
Viagogo breaks with that practice and allows users not only to find tickets for high caliber events, but to sell them to the users of the same community, with the confidence that they are official tickets that are being acquired. At least, that’s what it claims.
How does Viagogo work?
, Viagogo clearly presents you with a series of options. The first box on the page offers you a search engine to find tickets for different types of events: concerts, plays, festivals and sporting events. On the other hand, it is worth mentioning that Viagogo highlights those “popular” or most renowned events on its home page, even generating a segmented list of event recommendations based on your location. However, going over the most remarkable thing that is the faculty of online sales, access to ‘sell tickets‘ is what makes Viagogo unique. Through this option, as a user you have the power to sell your tickets to other users of the platform.
Once a user agrees to buy your tickets, the Viagogo team collects them (unless they are electronic, then they are uploaded to the server) and sends them to the buyer. In this way, the reliability of the buying and selling process is supported (in theory) between the buyer and the seller, distributing the posthumous dividends to the latter (of course, not without first subtracting some transaction commissions from the amount). Finally, it is important to note that Viagogo has two mobile applications; is available in and .
Is Viagogo reliable?
Unfortunately, buying tickets on Viagogo doesn’t leave everyone satisfied. As you can see in this chain of tweets, the problems with the tickets for a concert of Alejandro Sanz made the opinions about Viagogo have touched the limits of what is acceptable for the reputation of a brand like this. Something that can put back the purchase of tickets for more than one client.
I put 4 tickets for sale at and they sell 6 and they penalize me for not having them. Unbelievable, they don’t want to fix it
– Victor Salgado (@victorssalgado)
Many kisses you send us on instagram xro file with your promoter a complaint for resale: viagogo, ticketmaster
— AnaBB (@KissAS_hanna)
The hustle and bustle of y’s tickets is worthy of study…
– Rafa Valle (@elnota__)
Outrageous that they have so many tickets for the concert and some for more than 1700 euros…
– Carmen F. Etreros (@CarmenFEtreros)
We want a second concert with nominative tickets, I hope you go bankrupt!
– Sandra Jiménez Muñoz (@SandraJimenezMu)
Research Viagogo
The Investigation Team at La Sexta TV dedicated a program about alleged scams in ticket sales by companies and especially Viagogo. The following points have come to our attention:
- According to the program, they are being investigated by the government of the and in fact, as you can see in the program, they were called to testify in Parliament.
- Have their headquartered in london as a lawyer from this investigation tells us, but his tax address is in Switzerland so we can understand that they are taxed very low.
- The program also explains that base their legislation on a tax shelter in Delaware (USA)thus being able to skip the Spanish consumer protection law of 2007.
- They are advertised as official ticket sales pagewhen according to Gloria Serra’s program, they would not be authorized to advertise in this way as they are not official sellers.
- Concert promoters have revealed to La Sexta that Viagogo would have allegedly sold tickets that did not existThey weren’t even issued! Tito Ramoneda, promoter of the Joaquín Sabina concerts among other artists, explained that in one of the Sabina concerts that he promoted, Viagogo put tickets on sale before the official official tickets went on sale. As he explained, he would have paid €119.36 when the original ticket price was €39.58!
This same fact, of the abusive price of tickets by resale companies, was commented on in the Congress of Deputies. As could be seen in the program, a deputy explained by means of an example, the considerable increase in price suffered by tickets on resale pages and the same Minister of Culture, Mendez de Vigoindicated that he had a friend who had paid an excessive price for a concert ticket and that the government was looking at how to solve this issue (what they did not indicate is how).
- The investigation team of the Sixth was unable to contact someone responsible for Viagogo. The investigation team attempted to contact other ticket resale companies but were unable to reach them. Are they hiding something?
We leave you the one of this investigation so that you can draw your own conclusions.
What do you say? We invite you to try Viagogo and give us your feedback.
Stay informed of the most relevant news on our news channel
Facebook Comments
Disqus