‘Viagogo a scam site,’ sells invalid monster jam tickets at inflated prices

This weekend’s Monster Jam show at FNB Stadium promises to leave audiences riveted. The show’s Cape Town instalment last week en-thralled a 42 000-strong crowd.

But several families never got to experience the massive event. They bought their tickets via online ticketing service Viagogo instead of Ticket Master, the legitimate channel. Viagogo tickets will not be accepted as valid entry for Monster Jam and nor have they been for several other events, and neither will they be in South Africa.

Show promoters say that it’s a scam, and reams of complaints on sites like Hello Peter and other consumer sites, the world over, are testament to that. The site promotes itself as a ticketing reseller or scalping platform.

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Viagogo fined in several countries

According to Big Concerts, Viagogo have been fined in several countries, including Australia, Italy and New Zealand for their harmful practices.

The company alleged that over 90% of tickets sold by Viagogo were made available by ticket scalpers and only 10% of ordinary customers listing their tickets for legitimate reasons.

Justin van Wyk of Big Concerts noted that concertgoers who Google the name of an upcoming show may land on the Viagogo first.

“This often makes it attractive for fans in a hurry and within a few clicks, they’ve been had. In addition, as a concert tour is announced, Viagogo immediately establishes an event page for the shows that are not yet on sale to the public and this allows Viagogo to list their fake wares.”

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An insider at another of SA’s larger show promoters said that Viagogo has previously resold the
same set of four tickets to a Disney on Ice performance, 10 times. Big Concerts slammed the ticketing vendor. The company said that Viagogo misleads consumers with a raft of Google advertisements that create a false impression that it holds tickets for shows.

The company said: ‘This is an extremely deceptive practice in which unauthorised sellers fool good-faith buyers into thinking they can purchase tickets legitimately. In most cases, these tickets are sold at vastly inflated pric-es and these tickets are not valid for entry into venues.”

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Viagogo appeal on the rise in SA

Digital analyst Michelle Venter of Bold Online said that there has been a steady increase of South Africans lured to Viagogo’s site, thanks to its massive online advertising presence.

“This year, activity increased significantly, but if you look at the massive amounts of money they must be spending on advertising, it’s only fair to assume that a growing number of people are being duped, too.” Venter added that she failed to understand why the search giant has not acted against Viagogo.

It reports on billions of advertisements in its ads safety report that violate its policies. Last year, Google blocked or removed over 5.2 billion advertisements for violating its policies and restricted an additional 4.3 billion advertisements and suspended 6.7 mil-lion advertiser accounts.

Sources said this was triple the number suspended in 2020. Tony Feldman of Showtime Entertainment said that despite warnings, South Africans are still buying tickets from the outlet.

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He said: “Make sure that you check where you buy your tickets where official communication from show promoters direct you to.” He said that there was nothing organisers could do to accommodate people holding illegal tickets.

He added: ‘We try to help people who arrive with Viagogo tickets, but it’s not always possible.”

Previously Viagogo refuted claims it is operating unethically and claimed that its service was legitimate.

Yet, as consumers learnt at last week’s Monster Jam event, the company’s legitimacy remains questionable.

It is illegal to scalp concert tickets, said Justin van Wyk of Big Concerts. ‘It is unlawful to resell tickets for commercial purposes in SA and you could be fined or go to prison for 10 years if convicted. We’re calling out ticket scalpers and Viagogo who facilitates this unlawful practice.”

A Google representative said: “We have strict policies in place that govern the ads we allow to run on our platforms. We enforce these policies vigorously and if we find ads running that are in violation, we take the appropriate action. We are constantly evaluating and updating our policies to ensure we are identifying and ad-dressing abuse effectively.”