TickSights The Munich Viagogo Ruling: What It Actually Binds, and What It Doesn't
On 20 August the Bundesliga announced that it had won its long-running case against Viagogo AG. The judgment itself is older than the announcement: the 29th Civil Senate of the Oberlandesgericht München decided on 30 July 2026, dismissing Viagogo’s appeal and upholding the league’s claim in full.
The obvious reseller question is whether this is a platform story or a market story. The short answer is: the injunction is a platform story, and the reasoning behind it is a market story. Those are two different things, and the distinction is the whole point of reading the ruling rather than the headline.
What the court actually prohibited
Three practices, all classified as misleading and therefore as breaches of German competition law (UWG). Note what this is not — it is not a ruling about whether resale is legal.
1. No listings before the authorised sale has started. Viagogo may not offer tickets for a DFL or club event before authorised sources have offered them.
2. No advertising of ticket guarantees. Not the guarantee itself — the way it was advertised, without the buyer being able to see what it actually covers.
3. No simulated scarcity. The countdown-and-last-two-tickets furniture that pushes a buyer into a fast decision may not be used to suggest a supply position that isn’t real.
The senate’s standard, stated plainly, is that a buyer must be able to recognise clearly and unambiguously whether tickets are actually available yet, what a guarantee covers, and who is selling. Three questions about disclosure. None of them about price.
The case started with the 2019 DFL-Supercup, when tickets appeared on Viagogo while official sales had not yet opened and the league publicly warned fans against buying them. It took seven years and two instances to get here.
It is not final. Viagogo can file a Nichtzulassungsbeschwerde at the Bundesgerichtshof seeking leave to appeal on a point of law. That is a narrow door, but it is open.
The listing-before-onsale point is the speculative selling point
Point 1 is the one that matters commercially, and it is worth being precise about why.
The court did not rule on speculative selling as such. It ruled that presenting a ticket as available when it does not yet exist misleads the buyer about availability. But that is the same conduct, described from the buyer’s side rather than the seller’s — and a German court has already named it directly. On 26 July 2024, the Landgericht München I (Az. 37 O 2100/22) prohibited Viagogo GmbH from offering FC Bayern tickets that the club had not yet released, on the reasoning that a buyer believes they are buying a secured ticket when the sale actually rests on speculation.
Two courts, two routes, one conclusion. Selling German football tickets you do not hold is the practice with the most adverse German case law attached to it of anything in this business.
So does it only affect Viagogo?
For the injunction itself: yes. A German cease-and-desist judgment binds the parties to the proceedings. Viagogo AG is bound. Sellers listing on the platform are not parties and carry no obligation from this judgment. No reseller has to change anything because of it as a matter of law.
That is where the accurate answer stops and the useful one starts, because there are three ways in which “only Viagogo” understates it.
The platform complies by restricting sellers. An operator under an injunction does not absorb the risk itself when the cheaper option is to remove the input that creates it. The compliant implementation of “no listings before the authorised onsale” is a listing rule, applied to sellers, on German football. Whatever penalty attaches to breaching the injunction will be passed down as a listing restriction long before it is ever passed down as a fine.
The standard is general law, not a Viagogo rule. §§ 5, 5a UWG apply to every marketplace operating into Germany. A senate of a major appeal court has now written down what disclosure a ticket listing owes a German buyer. StubHub International, Gigsberg, Ticombo and everyone else did not lose this case, and they are all now on the wrong side of a published standard if they do the same three things. The next claimant does not have to litigate from scratch for seven years.
Removing the guarantee copy affects every listing, not only football. The guarantee was a trust prop underneath the entire German checkout. Its advertising being restricted changes buyer confidence on Viagogo’s German site across all categories, including concerts, which the ruling itself does not touch. That is a conversion effect on your listings caused by a case that has nothing to do with your events.
German football was already the hardest category
This ruling did not create the problem in German football. It is the fourth or fifth thing stacked on it.
| Decision | What it did |
|---|---|
| LG München I, 26 Jul 2024 — 37 O 2100/22 | Prohibited offering FC Bayern tickets not yet released by the club; upheld the club’s resale terms |
| LG Hamburg, 2 Jan 2026 — 415 HKO 73/24 | FC St. Pauli: Viagogo must state clearly that tickets bought there may be invalid at the turnstile under the club’s terms |
| LG Berlin — 1. FC Union Berlin | Parallel case on the same pattern |
| OLG München, 30 Jul 2026 | The DFL judgment above — availability, guarantees, scarcity |
| Consumer association claims, ongoing | LG Karlsruhe 13 O 78/24 KfH → OLG Karlsruhe 6 U 95/25; OLG Koblenz 2 UKI 5/24; LG Hamburg 312 O 274/25 |
Read the St. Pauli decision next to this one and the combined effect on a German football listing is clear enough. The buyer now sees a prominent warning that the ticket may not get them in, cannot see a guarantee promising otherwise, and no longer sees a scarcity cue telling them to hurry. Every element that made the listing convert has been removed by court order, while the underlying risk — personalisation, resale bans in the club terms, tickets blocked at the gate — is unchanged and was always the real reason to stay out.
The consumer association claims in the last row are worth watching for a different reason: they are about the platform’s own checkout, fees and contactability, which means they affect what happens to your payout and your buyer, in every category, and they are not football-specific.
What has not changed
- Private resale is still legal in Germany. Nothing here touches your right to pass on a ticket you hold.
- No price ceiling was created. This is disclosure law. The cap is a separate project — see Hubig’s bill and the “protected ticket”, which remains the larger structural risk to German inventory.
- Concerts, festivals and non-German events are untouched by the injunction’s scope.
- Nothing is enforceable against you personally out of this judgment.
- It is not final until the BGH route is exhausted.
What to do with it
Do not list German football you do not hold. This was already the position and now has a second court behind it. If your model depends on listing before an onsale, Germany is the wrong market for it — and the practice is in every regulatory proposal currently on the table in Europe. It is also on the standard list of beginner mistakes for a reason.
Reprice German football for the conversion you will actually get, or drop the category. A listing carrying a court-ordered invalidity warning does not sell at the same rate as one that doesn’t. If you hold Bundesliga inventory, assume slower sell-through and plan the exit earlier, not the markup higher.
Check whether the events you trade have transfer restrictions before you buy, not after. The clubs winning these cases are the ones whose terms the courts have upheld. Our guide to personalised tickets covers where that line currently sits.
Assume the standard travels. If a practice was named misleading here — hidden seller identity, unexplained guarantees, manufactured urgency — treat it as unsafe on any platform selling into Germany, whatever that platform is currently doing. The judgment is one operator’s problem today and everybody’s baseline tomorrow.
Watch the BGH step and the Hubig draft, not the press releases. A Nichtzulassungsbeschwerde is not an appeal and rarely succeeds, so plan as if this stands. The bill is the one that decides whether Germany stays a market. For the wider picture, see what the UK, EU and Germany are planning.
General information, not legal advice, and a snapshot as of August 2026. The judgment is not yet final. Verify the current status before making decisions that depend on it.