Last year the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) ruled against four theatre ticket providers for quoting misleading ticket prices on their websites.

The rulings made clear that advertised prices for theatre tickets must include all compulsory fees either within or alongside quoted ticket prices.

Since September 2013 the ASA has been conducting comprehensive enforcement work to make sure that ticket sellers are up front about compulsory admin fees so consumers aren’t misled.

Following our discussions with The Society of Ticket Agents and Retailers (STAR), The Society of London Theatre (SOLT) and The Theatrical Management Association (TMA) we started a monitoring project to establish whether advertisers were sticking to the rules.

We’ve undertaken a comprehensive sweep of the sector including assessing 130 websites, including major ticket agents and London theatre websites, and have worked directly with 55 businesses to correct the pricing on their sites but there is still work to be done. We’re now conducting the same exercise with regional theatre websites where around 50% of 650 sites are being contacted to bring them into line.


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