Viagogo in early race for 2028 Olympics ticket reselling spot

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Viagogo is pushing the organisers of the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics for a role as an official ticket reseller even before the Paris Games has finished.

Its potential participation in the world’s largest sporting event comes after the Paris Olympics initially faced concerns that there would be empty seats due to a jump in tickets available for resale ahead of the competition, which holds its closing ceremony today.

LA-based ticketing company AXS and German peer Eventim announced in February that they had been appointed the official ticketing service provider for LA28, making their existing online platforms available for the global distribution of Games tickets. The tickets will also be sold through LA28’s own website.

While the companies will be responsible for initial ticket sales, global managing director of Viagogo Cris Miller said the organisers are “talking to us and other secondary marketplaces to help them with resale”.

He believes the LA28 Olympic & Paralympic Games will be “a lot different” from Paris, as the US is “much more commercially motivated”.

“We’re actually in active conversations with [the LA Olympics committee] about providing our service, along with other ticketing companies, to try to participate and help,” Miller told the Financial Times. “The last thing that LA wants is empty seats.”

He added that the organisers of the Games “know that there is going to be a very important resale market for the Olympics”.

The LA 2028 Olympics Committee declined to comment. “We have not released details on our secondary ticketing approach or potential partners,” it said.

The FT reported days before the Paris opening ceremony that the number of unwanted tickets available for resale had risen to more than 270,000, up from about 180,000 a month earlier.

Not only were fans obliged to buy blocks of tickets for three separate events during the first wave of sales, they were only permitted to resell tickets at face value, even for games with low demand, plus additional fees.

Miller criticised the French Olympic Committee and the International Olympic Committee for putting “enormous control over the ticketing system”, with restrictions that “disincentivise people to buy tickets”.

The IOC, which declined to comment on “a third-party ticket reseller’s remarks to the FT”, said it had been “a record Olympic Games in terms of ticket sales”.

Paris organisers said ticket sales had gone “extremely well” with 9.4mn Olympic Games tickets sold in the primary ticket sales, which it said had “surpassed the previous sales record”.

Paris 2024 had managed to “unify the management of all ticketing” and “provide access to Olympic Games tickets for as many people as possible,” while its official resale platform has “also made it possible to limit illegal resale and speculation on tickets”, they added.

The organisers did not disclose how many tickets were sold in total through resales but said 40,000 tickets were sold on its resale platform on a single day. During the Games, in what could be Andy Murray’s last professional match, some fans showed their anger on X with photos of empty seats for the doubles contest.

Miller’s remarks come as Geneva-based Viagogo, the world’s largest ticket resale marketplace for live events, comes under greater international scrutiny, along with other secondary ticketing sites.

In the UK earlier this year, two people in Norfolk were found guilty of fraudulent trading of tickets worth more than £6.5mn overall on sites including Viagogo.

In May, the New Zealand High Court ordered Viagogo to correct misleading information on its website following reports from consumers who spent money on buying tickets that they had been turned away at events after their tickets were deemed invalid. Viagogo is appealing against the ruling.

The company in May also agreed with the European Commission to “better inform” consumers of the conditions under which tickets are being resold.

Prior to being elected into government in July, the UK Labour party pledged to crack down on ticket touts by capping resale prices. The party has yet to set out its plans to do this.