StubHub UK has been fined close to GBP £900,000 (approx. USD $1.2 million at current exchange rates) by Britain’s competition regulator for failing to show customers the full price of tickets before checkout.
The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) has also ordered the secondary ticketing platform to refund more than 50,000 customers a combined total exceeding GBP £590,000 ($779,000).
The watchdog said StubHub UK broke consumer law by adding mandatory charges – such as delivery and service fees – only at the final stage of checkout, a practice known as drip pricing.
The penalty, announced on Tuesday (June 23), comes to GBP £889,200 ($1.2m), while the refunds will go to 51,350 customers at an average of around GBP £10 ($13) per transaction.
The company under investigation, TICKETBIS S.L., trades as StubHub UK via stubhub.co.uk.
When the CMA examined ticket purchases for gigs and sports events on the platform between April 6 and December 7, 2025, it found that some customers had to pay unavoidable fees that were not included in the headline price.
Affected customers do not need to take any action, the CMA said, as StubHub UK will automatically repay the money onto the card used to buy the tickets.
“Going to a live gig or sports game is an event many people save for – and our action today means thousands of fans will get back money taken unfairly through hidden fees.”
Emma Cochrane, UK’s Competition and Markets Authority
StubHub UK admitted breaking the law and agreed to settle the case early, earning it a 40% reduction in its financial penalty.
“Hitting customers with hidden fees is illegal. It’s not fair to draw people in with what looks like a good deal, only for them to find the real price is higher when they get to the checkout due to extra charges that can’t be avoided,” said Emma Cochrane, Executive Director of Consumer Protection at the CMA.
“Going to a live gig or sports game is an event many people save for – and our action today means thousands of fans will get back money taken unfairly through hidden fees. Our message to businesses is simple: be transparent on costs or risk CMA action.”
Drip pricing was banned in the UK under the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024, with the CMA‘s strengthened consumer enforcement powers taking effect in April 2025.
The DMCCA was not written for ticketing alone.
It applies across the economy, and government research cited by the CMA found that 46% of online businesses used hidden or dripped fees as of 2023, costing UK consumers up to GBP £3.5 billion ($4.35bn at the average exchange rate for 2023) a year.
The CMA has already used the same powers against businesses in other sectors.
In April 2026, the AA and BSM driving schools were fined GBP £4.2 million ($5.5m) and ordered to refund more than 80,000 learner drivers over a mandatory GBP £3 ($4) booking fee – the first financial penalty the CMA issued under the new regime.
Across its cases under the new powers, the CMA said it has secured more than GBP £1.95 million ($2.6m) in refunds and levied fines exceeding GBP £5.7 million ($7.5m).
StubHub UK is the first secondary ticketing platform to be fined under the regime.
A parallel investigation into rival platform viagogo, opened on the same day as the StubHub UK case in November 2025, remains open.
The CMA is examining viagogo over the same question of whether mandatory fees are shown in the total price at the start of a purchase.
The regulator has separately pursued Ticketmaster over its handling of the 2025 Oasis reunion sale, threatening legal action before securing commitments on clearer pricing in September 2025.
It is not the first time the StubHub brand has been penalized over fees.
In 2020, when StubHub was owned by eBay and being acquired by viagogo, Canada’s Competition Bureau fined StubHub CAD $1.3 million for advertising tickets at “unattainable prices.”
The CMA later forced viagogo to sell StubHub‘s business outside North America, and the UK operation now runs separately under TICKETBIS S.L.
Adam Webb, campaign manager at the FanFair Alliance, which has campaigned on the issue since 2016, said the fine was welcome but that “such illegal practices are only the tip of the iceberg.”
“Over recent years, FanFair Alliance has repeatedly reported far more serious offenses to the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA), where ticket touting websites including StubHub UK and viagogo have facilitated large-scale fraud and systematic breaches of consumer protection laws,” Webb was quoted by newswires including NME as saying.
“Today’s developments only highlight the urgent need for a root and branch investigation into the anti-consumer practices of offshore ticket resale websites, and for the UK Government to fast-track their long-promised ban on ticket touting.”
Adam Webb, FanFair Alliance (Via NME)
“Regulators should not turn a blind eye to these wider issues. Today’s developments only highlight the urgent need for a root and branch investigation into the anti-consumer practices of offshore ticket resale websites, and for the UK Government to fast-track their long-promised ban on ticket touting.”
StubHub UK‘s penalty also drew comment from elsewhere in the live industry.
Michael Geitzen, chief executive of creative agency Identity, said, as per City AM: “The CMA‘s action sends a warning to every ticketing platform: transparency isn’t optional. Fans have become conditioned to expect a higher price at checkout, and that’s a sign of a market that isn’t working properly.”
“The CMA‘s action sends a warning to every ticketing platform: transparency isn’t optional. Fans have become conditioned to expect a higher price at checkout, and that’s a sign of a market that isn’t working properly.”
Michael Geitzen, Identity (via City AM)
The fine arrives as the UK government moves to reshape the secondary ticketing market more broadly.
In November 2025, ministers announced plans to make it illegal to resell tickets for live events above their original cost, defined as face value plus unavoidable fees.
The plans would also cap resale platforms’ service fees, bar individuals from reselling more tickets than they bought, and could save fans around GBP £112 million ($148m) a year, the government estimated.
The reform was confirmed in the King’s Speech in May 2026, but only as a draft Ticket Tout Ban Bill subject to further consultation, with final legislation potentially years away.
Artists, managers and campaign groups including the Music Managers Forum and the Featured Artists Coalition have backed the plans, and Virgin Media O2 – which sells more than 1.7 million tickets a year – has urged the government to move quickly.
Competition analysts at the Progressive Policy Institute have warned that resale caps can hit the most competitive part of the market while leaving dominant primary sellers untouched.
The group’s Diana Moss argued such laws risk destabilizing the one segment where fans can still compare prices across platforms.
The government’s own consultation acknowledged a price cap could push sales “underground,” while the Home Office reported consumers lost more than GBP £1.6 million ($2m) to gig-ticket scams in 2024 – many of them via social media.
In a statement cited by the BBC, StubHub blamed the hidden fees on an “isolated platform error”
“Our UK platform is designed to display all fees upfront,” it added, and said that it had “identified and corrected the issue promptly, and all affected customers will receive an automatic refund”.Music Business Worldwide
