The UK’s Competition & Markets Authority has fined secondary ticketing platform StubHub nearly £900,000, and has ordered it to refund £590,000 to 50,000 ticket buyers, for breaching consumer rights law by employing drip pricing. That’s where mandatory booking fees are added at the end of a ticket buying process when they are meant to be declared upfront. 

Emma Cochrane, Executive Director Of Consumer Protection at the CMA, explains that “hitting customers with hidden fees is illegal” because “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”. 

The CMA’s action means StubHub will have to return the hidden fees it charged people buying touted tickets on its platform last year. “Going to a live gig or sports game is an event many people save for”, Cochran continues, “and our action today means thousands of fans will get back money taken unfairly through hidden fees”. 

For its part, StubHub insists that the drip pricing happened by mistake rather than design. A spokesperson for the company says, “our platform is designed to display all fees upfront”, but, “due to an isolated platform error, some minor fees appeared at checkout rather than earlier in the buying process”. 

The spokesperson is also keen to stress that StubHub “fully cooperated” with the CMA’s investigation and that “all affected customers will receive an automatic refund”. 

The use of drip pricing in ticketing – by both primary ticket sellers and resale platforms – has proven controversial over the years, and regulations have been introduced in various countries forcing ticket sellers to employ all-in pricing, where the total price including booking fees is declared upfront. 

In the UK, this has been common practice in the ticketing sector since the early 2010s because of guidelines enforced by the Advertising Standards Authority. However, drip pricing was banned outright in the Digital Markets, Competition And Consumers Act in 2024.

The CMA was charged with enforcing that ban and, it explains in a statement announcing the StubHub fine, last year it set out to tackle and stop “hidden fees as well as other unlawful online pricing practices to ensure shoppers were not left out of pocket”. As part of that work it “examined the experience of fans buying tickets for gigs and sports events on StubHub UK”. 

When it did so, it found that “between 6 Apr and 7 Dec 2025, some were required to pay mandatory costs such as delivery and service fees” and “these unavoidable fees were added at the final stage of the checkout process and not included in the total price from the start, which broke consumer law”.

Because StubHub “engaged constructively” with the CMA’s investigation and “immediately took steps” to end the illegal conduct, the company received “a 40% reduction to its financial penalty” as part of a settlement agreement with the regulator, meaning it will pay a fine of £889,200. When a company settles, the CMA goes on, “it agrees not to appeal or challenge the decision in court”. 

The StubHub platform in the UK is run by a company called StubHub International, which is separate to the US-based StubHub Inc, which runs StubHub in North America and also owns and operates the Viagogo ticket resale platform. A separate CMA investigation into Viagogo, and whether it is complying with new consumer rights rules, is ongoing. 

Of course, drip pricing is just one of the ways in which ticket touting – and the platforms that facilitate the touts, like StubHub and Viagogo – have proven controversial over the years. The UK government has also committed to ban for-profit resale entirely, though is taking a long time to make that ban law. 

Adam Webb from anti-touting campaign group FanFair has welcomed the CMA’s investigation into StubHub, but stresses that drip pricing is just one of many problems with the secondary ticketing market. 

He says, “these fines levied against StubHub UK for drip pricing should be welcomed. However, such illegal practices are only the tip of the iceberg. Over recent years, FanFair Alliance has repeatedly reported far more serious offences to the CMA, where ticket touting websites including StubHub UK and Viagogo have facilitated large-scale fraud and systematic breaches of consumer protection laws”.

“Regulators should not turn a blind eye to these wider issues”, he insists, before adding, “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”.

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