How Eventim Picket Insurance presses on a ticket insurance

Actually, you just want to buy a festival ticket. In principle, very simple, but in the middle of the process, after clicking on “Continue to the cash register” it gets complicated: in a small window, ticket insurance is recommended for the second time. Actually, a button with the inscription “Next” or “Buy Tickets” should be found somewhere. But none of it.

Instead, on a striking button at the bottom right, “insure for only € 6.99”. And on the only other button it says “I wear the full risk”.

And indeed: if you just want to book the ticket at Eventim, you have to click this button. “I wear the full risk”. Still. The Federal Association of Consumer Centers (VZBV) had sued this type of manipulative user management and received right on the crucial point before the Bamberg Higher Regional Court.

The court objected to the combination of multiple inquiries and the misleading text on the button as a “inadmissible influence” of the customer. “With the wording ‘the full risk’, the average consumer connects the idea”, “that without the end of the insurance company he has to accept the loss of the purchase price if a visit to the concert fails for what reason.” But if a concert is canceled, for example, the organizer must of course stand up for the loss.

One can assume that the company knows what it is doing. Because such click routes are optimized on all larger shopping websites down to the smallest detail, towards the exact choice of words, on colors, font sizes and amount of information per intermediate step. And CTS Eventim, as the company is called with a full name, is not a small shop, but a listed group with a turnover of 2.8 billion euros.

Eventim lives from its own concert events such as “Rock am Ring” or the “Hurricane” festival (through subsidiaries). From event locations, such as the Berlin Waldbühne. And from ticket sales. A total of 147 million cards made Eventim to fans alone last year. It makes a difference if you can still sell insurance.

How many customers take out ticket insurance and how often the insurer ergo replacements, Eventim wants that star Apparently not revealing: Despite repeated inquiries, there was no answer. And although the Bamberg Higher Regional Court announced the judgment in early February and explicitly excluded a revision, Eventim did not adapt its website until the time of going to press. (The screenshot above is from May 6th.)

Instead, the company made a non -admission complaint with the BGH. A legal remedy that has little prospect of success. But there is still some time in which you can continue to push customers into ticket insurance.

It is often common to offer customers insurance to the purchased product. Amazon or MediaMarkt, for example, do this with many devices that you sell – albeit much more subtle. And more polite. Apart from that, consumer advocates believe little of this type of insurance. Most of the time, the price-performance ratio simply is wrong. And concert tickets are usually easy to resell when the fan interpens something.

Eventim’s misleading approach may be brazen, they are not standing alone. “Many companies shape their websites in such a manipulative manipulative that consumers are urged to make decisions that they would otherwise not make,” says Jana Brockfeld, legal officer of the VZBV. “Such design tricks, also known as Dark Patterns, are prohibited in the EU by the digital service act, but still a constant annoyance on the Internet.”