An investigation by the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) has found Ticketmaster’s claims regarding Platinum tickets to be misleading.
Three complainants challenged the Live Nation-owned ticketing giant’s claims that the tickets - introduced by the company to enable market-based pricing, adjusted according to supply and demand - offered “the best available tickets”.
Ticketmaster said customers were likely to interpret the claim “best available tickets” to mean the best available at the time they were making their booking. However, the ASA has upheld complaints that consumers were likely to interpret it to mean that those tickets were better than any other available tickets for the event generally - not that they were the best available at the time of purchase.
“Whilst the Platinum tickets were among some of the best seats at the venue, they did not offer a tangible benefit compared to some of the general seating tickets and the experience offered by the Platinum tickets was no better than the experience offered by some of the general tickets,” concluded the ASA.
“We also considered that in the case of some Platinum tickets, the experience offered, when viewed objectively, was worse than the experience offered by some of the general tickets, because they were further from the stage or did not offer as good a view of the stage. Because of that, we concluded that the claim that the Platinum tickets were ‘the best available tickets’ had not been substantiated and was misleading.”
The ASA has welcomed Ticketmaster’s subsequent changes to its advertising.
A Ticketmaster spokesperson said: “We thank the ASA for their time and attention to this matter and the opportunity to explain our Platinum product. Platinum is one of the solutions Ticketmaster developed for artists and event organisers to get tickets, which are priced dynamically in some of the most in-demand areas, directly into the hands of fans. We constantly strive to be transparent and clear with the consumer. The wording in question on our website was changed over a year ago.”
