Today, the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA), has announced that they are referring viagogo AG to National Trading Standards for failure to make changes to misleading pricing information on their website.
See here for full detail.
Alongside this referral, the ASA’s Compliance team will also implement concurrent sanctions – including working with Google on non-compliant viagogo pay-per-click advertising, and issuing their own pay-per-click advertising to highlight viagogo’s non-compliance.
Commenting on today’s developments, Adam Webb, Campaign Manager for FanFair Alliance, said:
“This is yet another step towards forcing the biggest ticket resale sites to follow UK consumer law and stop their misleading marketing practices. We’ll need some time to assess the full impact of today’s ASA announcement – but perhaps the most positive result for fans would be if Google and other search engines exhibited corporate responsibility and stopped taking Viagogo’s advertising spend. Cutting them off from search would dramatically transform this market, and help audiences locate face value tickets from authorised sellers.”