Stuart Galbraith, CEO of Kilimanjaro Live, talks us through the labour-intensive task of ensuring fans pay face value, why the end is nigh for Viagogo and discusses the vital work of the FanFair Alliance

21 July 2017 - Editorial

Following the news that 10,000 Ed Sheeran tickets have be voided this week after being found on the secondary market, Stuart Galbraith, CEO of Kilimanjaro Live, talks us through the labour-intensive task of ensuring fans pay face value, why the end is nigh for Viagogo and discusses the vital work of the FanFair Alliance

Secondary ticketing is often discussed but I think this is one of the few times we’ve heard of such definitive action - why was now and this tour the right time to put this place?

First of all, from my personal point of view and also a Kilimanjaro point of view, we’ve always been vehemently against secondary ticketing. I don’t think it’s healthy for the industry and I don’t think it’s fair on fans. Dating all the way back to 2006, I personally have been involved in conversations with Government, trying to get legislation put in place which would stop tickets being resold at above face value. That’s been brought very firmly into focus in the last two years thanks to the recent amendments to the Consumer Rights Act and the Digital Economy Bill. In the case of Ed, we saw a huge number of tickets appear on the secondary market when we put his arena tour on sale earlier in the year. There was some particularly odious activity around Ed’s Teenage Cancer Trust show at the Albert Hall and it was that activity that prompted him and his manager Stuart Camp to become involved in FanFair Alliance. That resulted in Stuart flying back from the European arena tour for two days and sitting alongside myself at the Parliamentary Select Committee, giving evidence against companies such as Viagogo.

 

Can you talk us through the measures you put in place to protect fans from profiteering secondary market companies?

In conjunction with Jon Ollier (CAA), Stuart Camp (manager) and the responsible promoters in Steve Tilley at Kilimanjaro and Dan Ealam at DHP we put together a plan to try and avoid what we had seen happen on the arena tour, and more specifically Ed’s Teenage Cancer Trust gig. That included making people aware that they are not allowed to resell tickets and that we don’t want Ed’s customers, and Ed doesn’t want his customers, to be paying more than the face value. It was a very conscious effort to put that out right from the start of the tour, that those tickets that were sold for end profit we would cancel wherever we could find them and to make sure the customers that bought tickets at face-value were the ones attending the shows. We’ve specified that they need to bring the tickets, booking confirmation, form of ID and the credit card used to make the transaction, that way we are trying to ensure the people who bought the tickets originally are the ones in attendance. In addition to that we have spent the last 10 days manually going through every single sales ledger that we’ve achieved for the tour, which is over a million tickets, and manually identifying known ticket touts and known touting companies. Those are the tickets that we are cancelling this week because they are breaching our terms and conditions. Buyers had to read and accept the T&Cs in order to purchase, they stated that we are only selling to consumers and that if you are buying tickets for commercial gain, you are prohibited from buying them.

 

With the best part of a year still to go until the shows, will this be ongoing?

Yes. Anything we see appearing in the secondary market that we can trace we will cancel. The artist is adamant about that and we’re happy to implement it on his behalf.

 

Ed seems very hands on in this, do you need the artist involved to make a plan like this work?

I think you need input from all sides. There have been a group of promoters, managers and agents who have been involved in trying to get the government to bring in legislation for many years now but I think the real turning point has been the formation of the FanFair Alliance. There you have direct support from artists and it’s the artists that are putting their name to the profile of trying to get customers to realise the difference between buying in the primary and secondary market, where they’re exposing themselves to risk and where they’re safe. It’s of enormous credit to bands like Mumford & Sons, Iron Maiden, Arctic Monkeys, Radiohead, Adele and now Ed Sheeran who are prepared to say “you should be aware. This is what you need to do, please avoid these people who are doing nothing but stealing your money”.

 

Viagogo is the company listed to have ignored warnings, does that mean other platforms have listened?

We had extensive conversations with the other three main secondary ticketing platforms, StubHub, GetMeIn and SeatWave, as we attempted to with Viagogo. We explained the conditions of the ticket sales and asked them not to trade them on their platforms because they would be trading something which would jeopardise the buyers’ entry to the show. I’m glad to say three out of four of those companies heeded those requests and have not listed tickets at all, which is fantastic. We shouldn’t be naïve about this, all four of them are under investigation from the Competition and Markets Authority so I’m sure that they had an eye on that as well…

Viagogo don’t give a flying…whatever… and the fact is that every single ticket that is for sale on Viagogo is breaching the Consumer Rights Act and breaching it on two levels: 1. They are not displaying the fact that there are terms and conditions attached to the ticket which means if you resell it you will not gain entry and 2. They are not listing seat numbers which is now a requirement by law

Every single sale that we’ve seen happen on Viagogo we have reported to the Competition and Markets Authority which then goes into their ongoing investigation of the company. We’ve also reported every sale that we’ve seen to the National Trading Standards eCrime Team because the way they go about selling to customers is abhorrent. It’s the horror stories that we see coming out of that website that drive us on every day.

 

Do you have an open channel of communication with Viagogo?

No, they ignore our emails and claim to be based in Switzerland. They say they don’t have a London office, we now know that to be a lie and they are based at No.71 Fenchurch Street. They also have an address in Soho where they send people to pick up tickets from mailbox collection shop, which is shonky to say the least. They do have a London office, they have staff in London, they claim to be based offshore and they think being based offshore means they’re protected from any regulations and that’s not the case. Sooner or later they will be prosecuted and they will be closed down.

 

Google plays a big part in this too, what relationship do you have?

Ahead of the on-sale for Ed Sheeran we had extensive conversations with Google and their lawyers, pleading with them not to take advertising from secondary sites. As I said, three of the major resellers didn’t list the tickets and so didn’t take advertising. The fact that Viagogo advertise themselves as a ‘Viagogo official site’ is just obviously trying to give the impression that they’re authorised sellers. Google’s lawyers tell us that it is the ‘official side of Viagogo’, which is just playing into their hands. It’s patently their intention to make it appear that it is an Ed Sheeran official site. Google are now saying that until the guidance notes are brought out on the implementation of the Consumer Rights Act they’re not prepared to take those adverts down.

We’re happy to be exerting pressure both by the press and by regulatory bodies, the Parliamentary Select Committee has written to them, I know there are numerous MPs and National Trading Standards discussing it with them because the fact is all they’re doing is facilitating this company, or companies like Viagogo, to attract customers into thinking they’re buying official tickets and then ripping them off. As soon as Google accepts that this is the case then I think the consumer will have a friend, rather than what I think is an enemy, in a consumer trying to buy tickets.

 

Can you see Kilimanjaro implementing this system for other tours in future?

It’s incredibly labour intensive and we have three additional members of staff working to implement this policy. That’s fine if you have an artist that is driven in a way that Ed and Stuart are to make this happen. If you bring it down to arena, theatre or club level it’s just not practical to implement this system. This is exactly why we need that guidance on the implementation of the Consumer Rights Act and the Digital Economy Act implemented as soon as possible. We are pushing DCMS via FanFair Alliance to get this done because when we actually have the ability to prosecute people rather than the threat of doing so then I believe they will start to stop.

 

Do you have any advice or a message for other promoters about taking the right steps forward against secondary ticketing?

I think there are still a lot of areas we want to progress forward on, we want to stop Google taking advertising from unauthorised ticket outlets. Google have very successfully implemented two bans on genres of advertising in the last year or so, one was that they stopped taking immoral ads from payday loan companies and the other was in conjunction with discussions with MPs that they agreed not to take advertising from companies that were selling pirate videos or streaming. They worked closely with the film industry to make sure those would stop and we want the same co-operation with them. We want them to stop our customers, and every other artists’ customers, being ripped off when they google “tickets for X event” and the first thing they see is somebody who is selling tickets above face value. 

At every opportunity, everyone should be supporting FanFair Alliance and everyone should be directing customers to FanFair Alliance too. There are two really important documents on there, one is a guide for buying tickets and the second is a document created in conjunction with Claire Turnham, who set up the Victims of Viagogo group on Facebook, and provides a guide explaining how to go about getting your refund from Viagogo.

Right now, the advice I’d give to consumers is don’t use search engines to find your tickets, go to the venue website or the artist website directly.

Record of the Day approached Viagogo for a comment but they failed to reply.