Ticket office
A ticket office (also known as a ticket agency ) is a service company that procures tickets for a specific, usually sold out event on behalf of the end user .
With a market share of 90–95% in Austria, ticket sales are made by service providers (distributors) who resell the tickets commercially, paying the organizer. The distributors receive between 10% and 15% commission from the organizer and add a “ticket office fee” of up to 3 euros to the end user. The only two major distributors in Austria are oeticket.com and wien-ticket.at.
A ticket office is a service provider who - on behalf and with payment of the end user - organizes tickets, i. d. Usually only when it is sold out in the sales department. For this, customers pay the actual card office surcharge, which is usually between 20 and 30%. This surcharge is therefore higher than the commission that the organizers pay to the distributors, because distributors sell up to 9 million tickets annually and earn 10% to 15% of them and ticket offices with only a few hundred or thousand tickets per year have to make do with them.
Furthermore, ticket offices bear 100% of the risk of the tickets you have purchased and have no right of cancellation for tickets you have purchased, while distributors bear absolutely no risk in this regard. It is also problematic that distributors i. d. Usually try to prevent the actual ticket offices from accessing the market by not providing the ticket offices with connections, blocking specific contingents and forbidding them by contract, e.g. B. to advertise on the Internet. If a ticket office does not adhere to the sales guidelines, the connection is blocked and the ticket office's livelihood is withdrawn.
On the other hand, in Austria and Germany, organizers are forced to enter into exclusive contracts due to the market power of the distributors, provided that the sales department simply buys the distribution rights through the high income - or, as is the case with most major tour operators in D / A / CH, already company shares at the event agency itself.
In Austria, advance sales are subject to Austrian trade law. The ticket office business in Austria is an independent business that is administered by the Tourism Section through the Austrian Chamber of Commerce .
One speaks of a ticket office business when a person or a company organizes tickets regularly and for profit on behalf of its customers.
tasks
The economic task of a ticket office from an internal perspective consists in the profit-oriented provision or procurement of entrance tickets , concert and theater tickets for end users.
Often these are events that are sold out for hall operators and sales (primary market). A ticket office specializes in keeping tickets for such events sold out in the primary market available to its customers until the day of the event, which is why in the case of ticket offices one speaks of "secondary market providers" who sell their tickets partly in traditional offices, partly in business premises or also only offer for sale through web shops.
The socio-economic task of the ticket office business is to counter the black market, i.e. the illegal, untaxed, private trade in concert tickets, some of which are very popular, and to be able to present the end consumer with a legal, verified, reputable and cost-efficient offer by the day of the event.
The price development corresponds to the price development rules of a free market on which the price formation automatically develops a stable level due to the diversity of the offer. On the other hand, ticket offices try to be able to offer tickets up to the day of the event through their pricing and also set themselves apart from the market through a higher sales price.
For this reason, one speaks of price stability in an established market and of the fact that a socially and economically correct price can only be achieved through the diversity of the market participants.
Tax liability
In contrast to private sellers of concert tickets, ticket offices are subject to sales tax law, whereby the sales tax rate of the ticket office sales price generally corresponds to the sales tax rate of the box office price. Ticket offices pay social security contributions from their profits and income and are committed to clear price labeling, which differs from the event organiser's box office price primarily through the ticket office surcharges (service fee, service charge).
In contrast to the primary market (organizer), ticket offices usually offer concert or theater tickets above the box office price of the organizer due to the ticket office surcharge.
Only in exceptional cases does it happen that tickets at ticket offices are cheaper than at the box office, for example to encourage the attendance of less popular events.
Ticket office surcharges
The ticket office charges a surcharge for its services, i.e. the procurement, holding and delivery of tickets, as well as for its commercial risk, which is used to cover operating costs such as rent, telephone, electricity, salaries and social security contributions.
For the designation of the ticket office surcharge, different terms such as ticket office surcharge, service charge, service charge are used at ticket offices that receive no commissions and no advertising subsidies from the organizers, but from distributors (provided they have a sales connection) between 0 and 3% commission.
It should be noted that the main ones, namely the leading ticket offices from the distributors, the 100% German Eventim AG (Ö-Ticket) and the Austrian Wien-Ticket, have expressly not received any sales contracts or only very limited quotas for over 20 years, which is due to the very Unequal conditions in the market can be seen as an abuse of a dominant position by the distributors, as several reports from the past few years have shown.
Exclusively for those distributors who, despite the fact that they receive up to 20% of the ticket price as sales commission from the organizers, additionally charge a fee to the end user, the externally shown ticket office surcharge is then called the advance booking fee .
The fact that z. For example, the German CTS-Eventim AG (Ö-Ticket) receives up to 20% commission from the organizer without any risk, ultimately adds the advance booking fee to the consumer and excludes competition through exclusive contracts, or denied market access to well-known competitors According to media reports, companies have made a profit of up to 1 billion euros in recent years.
The card office surcharges in Austria have been unlimited since 2009. This means that ticket offices can charge any price for the tickets on offer. As a rule, the prices for the surcharges are between 10% and 25%. In individual cases the prices can be up to 500% above the actual box office price.
An example: Tickets for the New Year's Concert of the Vienna Philharmonic cost 250 euros, for example, according to the card. In ticket offices, however, due to the high demand and low supply, up to 5000 euros are charged for these tickets.
Consumer rights
If a ticket office does not sell its tickets in an office to be visited by the customer, but only by post or via the Internet, it is a distance selling contract ( Section 312c BGB).
The European Consumer Rights Directive is intended to harmonize the information obligations towards consumers in distance selling law. In Germany, the implementation took place in the Distance Selling Act , in Austria, however, the directive has led to the amendment of the Consumer Protection Act (KSchG), which also includes contracts for distance selling .
However, there is expressly no right of revocation or withdrawal in advance ticket sales ( Section 312g (2) No. 9 BGB).
However, the private resale of a ticket purchased in the ticket office is permitted, for example in the event of illness or other hindrance on the day of the event.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Lower Austrian Chamber of Commerce: Info sheet for the ticket office ( page no longer available , search in web archives ) Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. As of June 6, 2013
- ^ Association for Consumer Information : Online Ticket Offices - Rebooking rejected May 24, 2012
- ↑ BGH, ruling v. September 11, 2008 - I ZR 74/06
