Chris Miller has been heavily criticized for refusing to appear before MPs for a parliamentary committee investigation. Photo: Jeff Pugh. for tickets to music and sports events, it's an «outdated» concept that will eventually be replaced by airline-style price hikes, according to the head of controversial secondary ticketing site Viagogo.
Chris Miller, who made headlines after refusing to appear before MPs for a parliamentary committee investigation, said Viagogo «didn't create a resale market» despite criticism for selling tickets at outrageously high prices.
Viagogo's managing director said : “If you look at the UK, before we launched the service, the situation was disastrous. I mean, there were scammers everywhere and there are scammers who take advantage of people.
“And inevitably you will have an established market.” He said that Viagogo's goal was to «ultimately ensure that if a fan really wants to access the resale market» that there is a «good alternative» to shopping at potentially risky websites.
Viagogo is used comparatively later a few years after being embroiled in a series of scandals in the 2010s.
These include French police who ransacked the hotel in 2016 to harass Viagogo employees handing out tickets for the European Summer Football Championship. Later that year, he faced legal action from the England and Wales Cricket Board for advertising tickets that were not on sale. He also faced backlash for overselling tickets to performances by comedian Peter Kay, who put on a show in support of Cancer Research UK.
Controversy is not something leaders shied away from, even if it meant closer attention from officials. Miller's decision to snub MPs in March 2017, an almost unprecedented move, sparked outrage in Westminster, as did threats from company guards to arrest MPs who visited Viagogo's London office in July of that year.
In 2018, the Office of Competition and Markets (CMA) has threatened its own legal action to prevent Viagogo from violating consumer protection laws. Viagogo was later accused of being «one of the worst businesses in the UK».
The famous tickets were sold at incredibly high prices on Viagogo: £140 tickets for Harry Potter and the Cursed Child in 2016 cost £8,327. Photo: Manuel Harlan. walks away from the question. “We place a strong emphasis on service and all we can do is deliver on our promise and the guarantee we have,” he says.
«Our service is only as good as the fans who use it, the sellers who use it, and there is trust, so if it doesn't work, we're in trouble.
«[It's] a very emotional product, to go to a sporting event that you really want to go to, like the Ashes or a big concert, whatever it is. And so it all comes down to getting people involved in these events.”
However, Miller appears to regret some of the hardline tactics the company adopted in the years leading up to the pandemic, not least the refusal to appear before the Department of Culture, Media and Sports committee.
“We made a mistake. When you look back, you realize that we were quite naive. [We] didn't really understand it,» he says.
«[We were] Americans who came and started a business and didn't appreciate the opportunity, which was to have an opportunity to explain how the service worked and answer questions.
“Looking back, we realized that we made a mistake and we apologize for this.”
It's a thought that suggests that Viagogo has come a long way in recent years. However, the company itself remains firm in its original concept.
The origin of Viagogo is a story that may have been embellished over the years. But the essence of it, Miller explains, can be traced back to company founder Eric Baker and his attempt to impress a girl.
Desperate to get two tickets to The Lion King while studying for an MBA at Stanford, Baker was forced to pay a fortune to a reseller. Together with co-founder Jeff Flur, the two students created StubHub, a website that connects buyers and sellers.
After a row between two men, StubHub was sold to eBay in 2007 for £225 million.
< img src="/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/e3a44c1049311b552a0e1375eed6c7de.jpg" />Viagogo founder Eric Baker (center) went into ticket sales after overpaying for tickets to The Lion King. Image Credit & Copyright: John D. McHugh/PA
Baker launched Viagogo as a European competitor to StubHub and bought out his original business in 2021 for £2.9bn. The takeover was named «The Worst Deal in History» by Forbes as it happened during the pandemic, when many live events were cancelled.
Yet, throughout this, Viagogo's mission remained the same. , says Miller, «To make the world's catalog of live entertainment available to anyone, anywhere.»
This is something critics might disagree with. Some of the markups on his website were staggering. In 2016, tickets for the £140 West End hit Harry Potter and the Cursed Child were on sale on Viagogo for £8,327. Even this week, tickets for the £60 face value Ashes at Lord's cricket test were selling for over £340 per ticket.
Miller states that «there is value in the website». “Much more value than I think people can appreciate. This 1% of events attracts the most attention. These are extremely high-demand events [where] there is initially very limited supply, just considering the number of people who end up wanting to go. That's where the most attention is.»
He says it's not surprising that there are more applicants for the Champions League final than there are seats available.
However, about half of the tickets available on Viagogo are sold below their face value. , says Miller. He argues that the face value of a ticket is an “obsolete” concept that is largely irrelevant nowadays.
“People are attached to it. But if you start looking at what we've done as a business, it's always going to be a dynamic price industry and always a dive into a dynamic price market. This happened independently of our website.
“Markets have been around forever. And the most important thing to understand about services is that we didn't create the resale market, we didn't invent it.»
“Our goal was to clean it up. And our goal was to be more secure and transparent because now you can view listings, you can see sellers competing with each other, you can filter an order and watch the market evolve at that moment.”
Not everyone will agree. Miller and Viagogue embrace a type of unvarnished capitalism that even Conservative ministers have condemned.
In 2018, Margo James, then digital minister, told BBC Radio 5 Live that if fans have to use an additional site to buy tickets, «don't choose Viagogo — they're the worst». The comments came amid criticism that the company was violating advertising guidelines by not listing additional fees.
Miller says the company has since corrected its actions. For example, he says that «all prices» are now advertised with no hidden fees.
«This is a very different, more mature business,» he adds. «For the CMA, we've been working with them for the past five years.»
It seems unlikely that Miller will convince all of Viagogo's critics. Unlike the airline industry, which has made dynamic pricing an advantage, there is something in the secondary ticketing market that still worries many Britons.
Viagogo may have evolved and matured over the years. . But the fundamental concept of the business is unlikely to change.
“At this point you have an interested buyer and an interested seller. And here is the transaction. Most importantly, the transaction is secure, and there are remedies if it doesn’t happen,” says Miller.
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