The Bundesliga club FC St. Pauli has filed a lawsuit against the ticket portal Viagogo. The accusation: Anyone who buys tickets for Bundesliga games there cannot recognize that the ticket they have purchased is invalid. Because the club prohibits the resale of tickets and blocks the tickets. The Hamburg Regional Court approved the association and obliged Viagogo to clearly point this out in the future.
Anyone who wants to attend a game in the Bundesliga knows the problem: tickets sell out quickly and the digital queue is often too long. Many fans come away empty-handed. If you still want to cheer on your team in the stadium, you have to resort to the secondary market. Many clubs and organizers offer their own platform for reselling tickets.
Unauthorized ticket trading as Business model
If you can’t find what you’re looking for there, you’ll quickly come across other ticket exchanges on the Internet, such as those run by the Swiss company Viagogo. However, the prices listed there are often highly inflated. The sellers often trade tickets commercially and remain anonymous. To buy tickets on a large scale, they sometimes use bots that grab the tickets while the fans are still in the digital queue.
To prevent something like this from happening, many clubs prohibit the commercial resale of purchased tickets in their general ticket terms and conditions. Only private distribution or sale at the purchase price is permitted. Tickets traded on unauthorized platforms such as Viagogo will be blocked by the club. Anyone who buys such a ticket does not have the right to enter the stadium on match day.
This is also how FC St. Pauli from Hamburg handles it, whose home games at Millerntor are regularly sold out.
The association criticizes the lack of transparency on Viagogo – and sues
The club criticizes Viagogo for its lack of transparency: fans cannot see that the tickets they bought on the platform do not allow entry into the stadium. Many people are not even aware of the risk of not being allowed into the stadium on match day.
That’s why the Bundesliga club sued Viagogo in the Hamburg regional court.
The regional court sees it the same way and obliges Viagogo to clearly point out when selling tickets for FC St. Pauli home games in the future that the ticket purchased on Viagogo is not valid. The reason given by the court is that consumers would otherwise be misled about the validity of the purchased ticket.
Club spokesman Patrick Gensing told the ARD legal editorial team: “FC St. Pauli is concerned with protecting fans from excessive prices, non-transparent offers and disappointments at the stadium. The decision is therefore an important step towards greater consumer protection and fairness. In general, admission prices for sports, entertainment and culture should be affordable for everyone.”
Fans don’t always get their money back
Despite the decision from Hamburg, fans who bought a ticket on Viagogo will not automatically get their money back. Anyone who buys a ticket with the belief that the card would be valid and then does not gain access to the stadium can request a refund of the purchase price paid. The seller must be held liable, but possibly also Viagogo itself.
Fans who are standing in front of the stadium with a blocked ticket should first contact the clearing points that are often set up by the clubs. The origin and validity of the ticket are checked there. If there are still remaining tickets for the game, you can often buy a new ticket – at the regular price. However, the clubs do not reimburse the excessive purchase price of the ticket exchange.
A judgment with a signal effect
The Hamburg ruling has not yet concluded the matter. Because the court only decided in the first instance. Viagogo can still appeal the ruling. In addition, the ruling only applies to the Viagogo platform and only to FC St. Pauli home games.
Nevertheless, a line is emerging as to how courts deal with ticket resale on Viagogo. Because Union Berlin also achieved a victory against Viagogo before the Berlin II Regional Court – which is not yet legally binding. The legislature also wants to take action in the future. The problem of secondary ticket sales at significantly inflated prices goes far beyond football. Visitors to major concerts and cultural events of all kinds can also buy their tickets on platforms like Viagogo and then have to be annoyed about blocked tickets. The coalition between the Union and the SPD would therefore like to regulate the secondary ticket market for cultural and sporting events more closely.