'It's Fucking Terrible': Michael Chugg Slams Viagogo After Elton John Ticket Debacle
"People are getting caught up in this shit."
The ticket scalping debate has reached new heights this week, with controversial resale website Viagogo reappearing at the top of Google just days before hundreds of people were turned away from Elton John’s Adelaide show.
Around 200 people were turned away from last night’s event due to fraudulent tickets sold via the resale platform, with head of Chugg Entertainment, the company currently promoting John's tour, Michael Chugg slamming Viagogo and joining the fight to have their ads removed from Google once again.
“We’ve just got to keep fighting,” Chugg told The Music.
“It’s fucking terrible and people are getting caught up in this shit.
“Google needs to realise they’re doing the wrong thing.”
Although Viagogo ads have recently re-appeared back on Google, Chugg noted that Elton John tickets have been on sale for a year, meaning a lot of the tickets were likely sold via the platform before the search engine instated the ban in July.
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“One of the biggest problems on tours as big as Elton is, there’s a lot of people who have probably been to three shows in their lives and they just don’t know the procedure,” he said.
“People who are not regular concertgoers, they just get caught, unfortunately, and so we are not going to stop and hopefully we can get [Viagogo] off [Google] again.”
Those who do get caught out and aren’t able to get into the venue are able to get a letter from the box office saying as such, which will help in obtaining a refund from websites like Viagogo.
“Somebody said this morning, ‘If there’s only a hundred of them, can’t you let them in?’ Once we do that, it’s going to be all over socials and it validates Viagogo to say, ‘You’ll get it in, don’t worry.’ We just can’t do it and it’s not fair to the people who have paid for real tickets.”
A lot of punters will panic when a show sells out and might purchase tickets through Viagogo as a last resort, but Chugg said you will usually be able to buy tickets on the day at the box office.
“With any big tour like this, there are tickets being added for every show in Australia, even though 99% of them are sold out, because all of sudden we’ve found that those three rows there were held because of sightlines are now beautiful seats and there are holds for artists going back on sale and things like that.
“If you turn up at the show, there’s 99.9% chance you’ll get a ticket on the day," Chugg ventured.
John's tour continues in Adelaide tonight. He kicked off his final Australian tour in Perth this past weekend and called out venue security for allegedly assaulting an audience member.
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