Cris Miller, doesn’t give many interviews but the online secondary ticket market he helped pioneer, and the company he’s global MD for, Viagogo, have been taking a reputational battering. Over the last twenty years, he’s faced a range of crises from an initially sceptical market, to a major rival announcing a competitive service… to a global pandemic shutting down the world.

In this interview we talk about:

Why his first employer, StubHub, was set up because its founder couldn’t get tickets for a date
How the company saw the opportunity in a fragmented, untrustworthy secondary ticket market
Why it’s the buyer that sets the market value of a ticket, not the seller
The “constant hustle” to find and secure partners to help get the start-up off the ground
Why the company wasn’t “really ready” for government scrutiny
The £300 million hit they took during the covid pandemic, and how they survived
Advice on when the best time to buy a ticket on the secondary market might be

For more news, interviews and analysis, read the Evening Standard newspaper or go to standard.co.uk/business.

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