Despite ticketing platform Viagogo recently removing £1m of fake tickets from its website, fraudulent ticketing sales remain rife, reports Adam Webb.
Last month, so-called “secondary ticketing” platform viagogo removed an estimated £1m+ of fake and fraudulent tickets from its UK website — mostly for large outdoor festivals such as Reading, Parklife, TRNSMT and Wireless, but also for upcoming shows from Billie Eilish, The Weeknd, Nothing But Thieves, Tom Jones, Fatboy Slim, Lorde, The Kooks, The Charlatans and many, many others.
Remarkably, it’s the second time this year viagogo’s operators have been shamed into stripping great swathes of touted inventory from their UK site.
Back in March 2021, on the back of research collated by FanFair Alliance, The Guardian’s Rob Davies reported how viagogo was participating in the listing of tens of thousands of tickets for shows at small-scale grassroots events across the UK and Europe.
Incredibly, these tickets all emanated from a single lone seller — a mysterious Spanish company called GES SL, based at Alcala 150, Madrid, 28009 — and were presented in what appeared to be cloned or identikit patterns (usually 24 tickets per event, broken down into batches of 8, 6, 4, 3, 2, 1) and for astonishing sums of money... Keep reading on Medium.
Last month, so-called “secondary ticketing” platform viagogo removed an estimated £1m+ of fake and fraudulent tickets from its UK website — mostly for large outdoor festivals such as Reading, Parklife, TRNSMT and Wireless, but also for upcoming shows from Billie Eilish, The Weeknd, Nothing But Thieves, Tom Jones, Fatboy Slim, Lorde, The Kooks, The Charlatans and many, many others.
Remarkably, it’s the second time this year viagogo’s operators have been shamed into stripping great swathes of touted inventory from their UK site.
Back in March 2021, on the back of research collated by FanFair Alliance, The Guardian’s Rob Davies reported how viagogo was participating in the listing of tens of thousands of tickets for shows at small-scale grassroots events across the UK and Europe.
Incredibly, these tickets all emanated from a single lone seller — a mysterious Spanish company called GES SL, based at Alcala 150, Madrid, 28009 — and were presented in what appeared to be cloned or identikit patterns (usually 24 tickets per event, broken down into batches of 8, 6, 4, 3, 2, 1) and for astonishing sums of money... Keep reading on Medium.