Viagogo’s Cris Miller on why people pay so much for events like Wimbledon: How to be a CEO podcast
A ticket’s value is “what someone’s willing to pay”
Viagogo
David Marsland|Rachelle Abbott
3 July 2023
Cris Miller, doesn’t give many interviews but the online secondary ticket market he helped pioneer, and the company he’s global MD for, Viagogo, have been taking a reputational battering. Over the last twenty years, he’s faced a range of crises from an initially sceptical market, to a major rival announcing a competitive service… to a global pandemic shutting down the world.
In this interview we talk about:
- Why his first employer, StubHub, was set up because its founder couldn’t get tickets for a date
- How the company saw the opportunity in a fragmented, untrustworthy secondary ticket market
- Why it’s the buyer that sets the market value of a ticket, not the seller
- The “constant hustle” to find and secure partners to help get the start-up off the ground
- Why the company wasn’t “really ready” for government scrutiny
- The £300 million hit they took during the covid pandemic, and how they survived
- Advice on when the best time to buy a ticket on the secondary market might be
Listen above, or wherever you stream your podcasts.
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