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Internet search engines have been criticised for helping to facilitate unauthorised ticket resales by Sam Shemtob, director of the Face-value European Alliance for Ticketing (FEAT).<\/p>\n
Speaking at the Primavera Pro music conference in Barcelona, Shemtob slammed search engines for hosting advertisements from unauthorised resellers.<\/p>\n
\u201cAcross Europe, countries including Belgium, France, Ireland and others have outlawed unauthorised ticket resale,\u201d Shemtob said. \u201cThe European Court of Justice meanwhile has ruled that event tickets are a contract for services, subject to terms and conditions of the event promoter; and the incoming Digital Services Act promises to tighten consumer protections in e-commerce further.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn this environment of strengthening legislation, search engines ought to start asking what kind of companies they are.<\/p>\n
\u201cDo they want to enable the activities of ticket scalpers, and support the anti-consumer and anti-artist practices of unauthorised resale platforms? Or do they want to stand up for their users and guide them toward legitimate tickets for the events they want to attend? We hope companies like Google will choose the latter option.\u201d<\/p>\n
It was pointed out during Shemtob\u2019s session alongside other live music industry experts that Google\u2019s brief ban on advertising from Viagogo in 2019, global traffic to the website fell by two-thirds.<\/p>\n