AusLeisure

Google is to no longer accept advertisements from secondary ticketing operators that do not make clear they are resellers under sweeping changes imposed by the search engine giant.

Google has revealed it is tightening its standards and will require all resale sites to be certified and “radically increase their transparency.”

The Google move, which enforces changes first indicated last November, aims to give users more clarity on the vendor reselling the tickets, as well as providing them with the total cost of those tickets, including any associated fees.

Explaining the change, Google spokesperson Elijah Lawal advised this week “we constantly review our policies to ensure we are providing good experiences for consumers. When people use our platform to purchase tickets, we need to make sure that they have an experience they can trust.

“We think that event ticket resellers that agree to these new transparency requirements will provide a better and safer user experience on our platform.”

To be certified by Google, an event ticket reseller must:

• Not imply that they are a primary marketplace
• Prominently disclose themselves as a ticket reseller / secondary marketplace
• Prominently disclose that prices may be above face value
• Provide the total and breakup of the price across fees and taxes before requiring payment information
• Prominently provide the face value of the tickets being sold in the same currency (this will be required starting in March 2018)

In Google’s information about ticket reseller certification, it states under the subheading, “be honest about your business,” that “you can’t imply in your ads that you’re the primary provider of the tickets, with words like “Official” or by including the artist or venue name in the website’s URL.”

Controversial resale site Viagogo came under fire last year for exactly this. It has been presenting itself on Google as an official site, despite its secondary reseller status. The site justifies the term by stating that the link goes through to the ’official’ Viagogo website.

Viagogo was also found to be prominently placing artists’ names in its URLs, as well as the appearance of bogus price comparison websites that frequently defaulted to Viagogo.

Viagogo’s ticket sale pages are now headed by information that outlines that they are a secondary ticket site and that tickets “may be below or above face value”.

Welcoming the move, Charlotte St. Martin, President of The Broadway League, the national trade association for New York’s theatre sector, commented “Google’s dramatic step in consumer protection is of major significance to The League’s membership.

“We strongly support requiring brokers who advertise Broadway tickets on its platform to disclose when they are unaffiliated with an official box-office and itemise costs before collecting payment.” 

23rd November 2017 - GOOGLE UPDATES ADWORDS POLICY TO RESTRICT ONLINE TICKET SCALPERS 

17th November 2017 - AUSTRALIAN GOVERNMENT BEGINS TICKET SCALPING CONSULTATION 

16th November 2017 - VICTORIA GOVERNMENT TO CRACKDOWN ON TICKET SCALPING

19th October 2017 - NSW PARLIAMENT APPROVES LEGISLATION FOR 10% CAP ON TICKET RESALES

5th October 2017 - CHOICE NAMES VIAGOGO AMONG AUSTRALIA’S SHONKIEST PRODUCTS OF 2017 

1st September 2017 - GOOGLE URGED TO BLOCK ONLINE RESELLERS WHO DUPE TICKET BUYERS

28th August 2017 - ACCC COMMENCES LEGAL ACTION AGAINST TICKET RESELLER VIAGOGO 

Support our industry news service
We hope that you value the news that we publish so while you're here can we ask for your support?

As an independent publisher, we need reader support for our industry news gathering so ask that - if you don't already do so - you back us by subscribing to the printed Australasian Leisure Management magazine and/or our online news.