Who: The Committee of Advertising Practice (CAP)
Where: United Kingdom
When: 14 August 2025
Law stated as at: 22 September 2025
What happened:
CAP has published a guidance note for marketers selling tickets for events. The note aims to clarify the key issues that can arise when marketing ticket sales, including issues around pricing transparency and ticket resales, and guidance focused on associated promotional marketing and misleading marketing practices.
CAP has reminded marketers that:
- Fixed booking fees that apply to everyone must be included in the upfront price of the ticket. This is in line with the consumer protection prohibition on “drip pricing” under the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024 (DMCCA), requiring marketers to include all mandatory fees in the total price of a product upfront. Consumers must be informed of the fees that are charged on a “per transaction” basis or that vary depending on circumstances immediately and prominently from the outset of the consumer journey. See more about “drip pricing” from a consumer protection law perspective in our Insight on the Competition and Markets Authority’s (CMA) draft guidance on price transparency under the DMCCA.
- If an ad is not aimed exclusively at audiences who do not pay, or who can recover, VAT, then the price must include VAT. For mixed audiences, marketers can display both the VAT inclusive and VAT-exclusive price but the VAT inclusive price must have equal or greater prominence.
- Marketers should not promote resold tickets for an event if such tickets are invalid, for example where ticket reselling is prohibited by a venue or event.
- If tickets are offered as part of a competition, prize or promotion, additional rules apply. For example, prizes should not come at a cost to consumers, key conditions must be clear and accessible in advance, and competitions and prizes should be administered fairly with independent supervision of any computer-generated results.
- Advertising must not mislead consumers. “From £…” and “up to…” pricing claims require a genuinely significant proportion of tickets to be available at that price. Advertisers must not suggest that consumers have successfully purchased tickets if further steps in the booking path remain.
Why this matters:
This note demonstrates CAP’s continued focus on marketing in the context of ticket sales and follows the CMA’s recent consumer protection investigation into Ticketmaster over the sale of Oasis tickets, which led to Ticketmaster signing various undertakings last month. Ticketmaster has agreed, among other things, to inform consumers 24 hours before the release of tickets for sale whether a fixed tiered pricing system will be used, provide more transparency about ticket prices while consumers are in online queues, and make sure that ticket labels are clear and not misleading.
Marketers and advertisers should continue to use clear and transparent pricing and promotional practices, with all information given to consumers upfront to enable them to make informed decisions.
