The Stage

Really Useful Group signs ticketing deal with Viagogo

Published Friday 7 November 2008 at 11:10 by Michael Quinn

Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Really Useful Group has signed a landmark ticketing deal with Viagogo, Europe’s leading secondary ticketing company.

The exclusive arrangement will see Viagogo selling “premium tickets” directly from the venues for RUG productions, including The Sound of Music at the London Palladium.

Established in 2006, Viagogo already has similar arrangements with high-profile brands Madonna and Manchester United, which founder and chief executive Eric H Baker describes as “win-win” deals.

A co-founder of the US-based secondary ticketing agency, StubHub.com, which was acquired by eBay last year for £196 million, Baker told The Stage that the deal, which will see Viagogo adding a 10% charge to a ticket’s face value, “will, without question, lower the ultimate cost for tickets for consumers” by providing “a seamless solution to a safe and secure alternative for the industry and fans to distributing tickets directly”.

Baker is hopeful that just as the Madonna and Manchester United deals “opened up a lot of music and sport”, the relationship with Lloyd Webber “will allow us to grow the footprint of theatre sales considerably - it’s a vibrant and meaningful market”.