Watchdogs on the scent
MANUAL SHOWS SITES ‘ARE COMPLICIT’
STUBHUB, the world’s largest ticket resale website, operate in 47 different countries. They run a parallel, password-protected website for “top sellers”. The firm give mass scalpers special software to upload and manage huge inventories of tickets. Their “Top Seller Handbook” StubHub, left, features incentives – reducing StubHub’s 10 per cent cut on each ticket sold – with special rates for sellers who move massive quantities. FanFair Alliance spokesman Adam Webb said: COMPETITION watchdogs have raided the offices of tout sales platforms as part of a crackdown. The Competition and Markets Authority swooped on the London offices of StubHub and Viagogo in August after they refused to hand over key documents amid Parliament’s investigation into ticket abuse. Investigators at National Trading Standards are carrying out a parallel probe into power-sellers like Julien Lavallee and Andrew Newman. HMRC have also been examining sales patterns. A spokesman for StubHub said: “StubHub hold all sellers to a very high standard and require they follow all relevant laws.” “What’s happening here is not fan to fan activity, it’s tout to fan activity.
“All of the platforms operate on that basis, that you can quite clearly see in the case of StubHub. They are active and complicit in this process.”
The manner in which StubHub accommodate the big touts makes a mockery of the firm’s claims that they exist as a fan-to-fan sales platform.
The big tout sites say they were set up to give fans the chance to buy and sell tickets between themselves. But the notion that they protect fans from touts now seems absurd.
The Paradise Papers include documentation that reveals the intentions of firms who set up an Isle of Man tax address.
One document reads: “Expansion projects – enter the United Kingdom secondary market with a partnership with StubHub for the secondary resale of tickets.”
Investigator Reg Walker said: “I think if that statement is true, that puts a whole different dimension on StubHub’s business model. If that statement’s true, that’s absolutely disgraceful.”
MARK McGIVERN