Swiss Promoters Blacklist Touts

Backdrop to this statement is a 2015 recommendation by the federal assembly not to permit the prosecution of people reselling tickets above face value, thinking it would tamper with the principles of open competition, economic freedom and property rights.

This recommendation currently sits with the national assembly. According to the SMPA, having a legal basis for prohibiting overpriced resale would help, as would the licensing of ticket vendors according to the French model. “Above all, we bank on informing our clients,” said Stefan Breitenmoser, the association’s CEO. “As long as tickets are bought from dubious touts they’ll unfortunately continue to be successful.”

The SMPA does not believe in personalized tickets, as it causes too much effort for all participants, especially when only a few top events result in the kind of ridiculously overpriced tickets that cause the most concern.

The overhead of personalizing tickets had to be passed on to the end prices, and it was a complicated matter for consumers too. Instead, the association recommends limiting the number of tickets a person can buy, and providing proprietary sales platforms or ticket swap sites like Paléo festival or OpenAir St.Gallen.

The SMPA also handed out advice for consumers, which included avoiding buying tickets via search engines but rather visiting the promoter’s website. It listed secondary ticketing websites that consumers should avoid, including Alltickets, Viagogo, Onlineticketsshop, Worldticketshop, Vienna Ticketoffice, Ticketbande, eBay and Ricardo.