Viagogo boss defends Taylor Swift and Beyoncé ticket scalping

Taylor Swift and Beyoncé sent their fans into a frenzy this summer.

With their tours quickly selling out, fans went to great lengths to catch the stars on stage for the first time since 2018. Some snuck onto Swift’s Eras Tour, taking concert security with them, while others flew across the globe from Dallas to Stockholm to land. spot on Beyoncé’s Renaissance World Tour.

That’s why, for those lucky few who managed to get tickets the old-fashioned way, the two stunning spectacles offered more than just an opportunity for entertainment – for many, it meant business.

Ticket resellers were able to make hundreds – even thousands – through sites like StubHub and Viagogo, where Swifties could purchase a seat on The Eras Tour for more than $35,000.

The ticket scalping has sparked fury from fans, new tax laws and interest from the US Senate, but Chris Miller, global managing director of Viagogo, told the publication Fortunes.

“Buyers make their own decisions,” he says. “If they see a ticket there that’s out of their price range or comfort zone, don’t buy it.”

It doesn’t offer a harsh reality check to those coveting tickets they can’t afford. Instead, he argues, the value of tickets offered for resale depends on how much consumers are willing to spend and has nothing to do with the platform itself.

“We don’t put any cap or floor on it—so the price can go as low as $1 or as high as what people post,” Miller adds. “The reality is that demand is what drives it.”

Why Viagogo won’t cap ticket prices

The business of snapping up tickets and selling them for profit is not without controversy, and ticket scalpers have felt the wrath of a pack of angry Swifties on X, formerly known as Twitter.

“It makes me sick to see how many damn scalpers and scammers are selling tickets seconds after Taylor Swift Eras Tour Miami tickets go on sale, preventing fans from seeing Taylor.” one fan said as they joined in the growing complaints.

Some even directed their anger directly at Viagogo, with one fan asking how it was “even legal” that tickets were being sold for nearly 10 times their face value, even with limited viewing.

Even British politicians succumbed to the backlash.

“Why didn’t the government do more to protect our daughters from this robber merchant?” Lawmaker Kevin Brennan raised the issue with the UK House of Commons earlier this year.

But Miller’s argument is that even if Viagogo did introduce measures to limit the amount ticket resellers could charge, it would not eradicate ticket scalping.

“The secondary market has been around since live entertainment began. In the days of the gladiators, people probably sold tickets outside the stadium,” he says. “What I’m trying to say is we didn’t create any of this, we’re just trying to bring a little more order, safety and security around it.”

If people can’t resell on Viagogo—or if they have no incentive to do so because of price restrictions—Miller, an events industry veteran, is adamant that they will simply abandon such services in favor of the black market.

“When you see other marketplaces that are trying to impose restrictions, usually for the highest demand events, they don’t have any tickets at all,” he warns.

Pointing to football in the UK as an example, he adds: “The black market is huge and that’s because there are restrictions on resale among clubs.”

That’s why he sees sites like Viagogo as a force for good, saving young people from the dangers of buying tickets from strangers on the street or from some “ambiguous website.”

“We don’t think this is the best way for fans because they have no recourse if something goes wrong,” he adds.

Are fans to blame for “sensational prices”?

Just because someone points out that a ticket for Swift’s Eras Tour costs over $35,000 doesn’t mean the tickets actually cost that much.

“You see a lot of sensational prices, but they don’t sell because no one wants to pay them,” says Miller, adding that the average Eras Tour ticket sold on Viagogo was about $500 in the US and £100. ($122) in the UK, where demand was weaker.

However, even he was stunned by how much money people were willing to shell out to get closer to Taylor Swift in the flesh.

“We’ve seen thousands and thousands of dollars and pounds go for people in really good seats,” he says, noting that tickets for groups of six in particular have been a hot commodity.

“No disrespect to Beyoncé, but this is kind of in a different category,” he insists. “The prices are a reflection of the huge demand we’ve never seen before, and I’ve been doing this for 20 years.”

Ultimately, if you’re looking for someone to blame for sky-high ticket prices, it’s the fans who pay an arm and a leg to see their favorite artists. At least that’s what Miller suggests.

“Sellers set a price that they believe is the correct market price, and buyers ultimately dictate what that price is. This means that if they feel comfortable with this price and in this location, they will buy it,” he said. speaks. “But prices fall when buyers are not interested.”

Miller believes disappointed fans should consider not only not buying overpriced tickets and artificially inflating their prices, but also holding onto tickets.

Essentially, tickets are reserved by the general public for friends, family and those who work closely with the artist.

“There’s no limit to how much they can take,” he explains. “So for the average fan it’s unclear how many shows they’re going to do, you don’t know how many tickets there are in each price range.”

A study by the New York Attorney General’s Office found that more than 50% of tickets to top shows between 2012 and 2015 were not available to the general public.

“So a lot of times the odds are stacked against the average fan, and then what happens is when it goes on sale and it’s out of stock, there’s disappointment,” Miller says. Fortune. “Alternatives at this point are to source tickets from the resale market, which potentially tends to artificially raise prices since we don’t know how many tickets are actually on the market itself.”

Miller says he’s a proponent of more transparency in the primary market about what’s available.

“It’s important that we inform people as much as possible about what’s going on, and then hopefully the fans will demand more information up front,” he says.