Further action set for the CMA’s secondary ticketing and Viagogo case?
First published by Author on April 10, 2019 in the following categories: Investigations Latest and tagged with advertising | cma | competition law | investigations
There’s more news in the Competition and Market Authority’s (CMA) secondary ticketing and Viagogo case. And it could be huge.
You may recall that we’ve been tracking this case for a while now. At the start of 2019, a Viagogo, StubHub and Ticketmaster were all required to undertake serious changes to their business behaviour. This came in to effect as of midnight on 17th January 2019.
However, the CMA conducted some simple checks on 24th January 2019. They say that they found that Viagogo had failed to comply with the court order against them. Now, Viagogo is potentially facing further legal action for contempt of court.
Further legal action in the CMA’s secondary ticketing and Viagogo case
We’re set to potentially see further legal action taken by the CMA as part of their secondary ticketing and Viagogo case. At the end of January, the CMA say that Viagogo had failed to comply with important aspects of the court order against them. These concerns were reportedly raised with Viagogo, and you would expect that they would make the changes the ought to have done.
Apparently, that’s not the case…
The CMA has confirmed that some aspects of the court order has been adhered to, but they have also warned that Viagogo has still failed to comply with the order in its entirety. The CMA has specifically referenced the requirement for better information to be provided when tickets are being resold. This was announced at the end of March 2019.
Proceedings for contempt of court against Viagogo
The next step for the CMA in their secondary ticketing and Viagogo case is to take further legal action that could see a contempt of court ruling made against the ticketing website.
This is incredibly serious. The CMA’s announcement there are still ongoing compliance issues is astounding. Viagogo is still reportedly failing to comply with a court order.
We would expect that Viagogo will be taking urgent steps to rectify the reported failure to comply with the court order. But given the history of matters so far, we wouldn’t be sure that they’re going to take the action they ought to.
They’ve had warnings. The issues and concerns have been raised with them. Why are they still reportedly failing comply with a court order? Failure to comply with a court order is incredibly serious. The consequences Viagogo now face is set to be huge, and we’ll continue to keep a very close eye on this one!