StubHub UK’s hidden fees have now cost the ticket reseller close to £900,000 in fines and more than £590,000 in consumer refunds, after the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) ordered the firm to reimburse more than 50,000 customers, with each expected to receive around £10 per affected transaction.
The combined bill of nearly £1.5m follows a CMA investigation finding that between 6 April and 7 December last year, StubHub UK required buyers of concert and sports tickets to pay mandatory delivery and service fees that were only disclosed at the final checkout stage, in breach of consumer protection law. The regulator said StubHub UK admitted breaking the law and received a 40% reduction to its financial penalty as a result.
‘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.
StubHub UK hidden fees: a separate entity from the US platform
One detail worth keeping clear: StubHub UK is operated by Ticketbis S.L. and carries no corporate affiliation with the US-listed StubHub Holdings Inc. The separation was a condition imposed when Viagogo acquired StubHub from eBay in 2020, and it matters because the CMA’s action falls entirely on the UK entity.
That distinction is relevant context given that Washington D.C.’s Attorney General separately sued the US StubHub entity for deceptive pricing, alleging in a complaint published by the DC Office of the Attorney General that the company deliberately adopted a drip pricing model after its own data showed consumers are more likely to buy tickets, and at higher prices, when fees are concealed until checkout. Two jurisdictions, two regulators, and two legally distinct companies: but the same playbook.
The CMA’s new enforcement teeth are being used
The StubHub UK action sits inside a broader enforcement campaign. The CMA’s direct enforcement powers under the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act (DMCCA) took effect on 6 April 2025, and the regulator announced its first eight consumer protection investigations under that framework on 18 November 2025. Under those powers, the CMA can determine whether consumer laws have been broken without going to court, order companies to compensate customers directly, and impose fines of up to 10% of global turnover.
As part of its online pricing review, the CMA sent advisory letters to 100 businesses and identified potential compliance concerns across 14 sectors, according to a statement reported by Wired-Gov. The practices under scrutiny include drip pricing, pressure selling, and misleading countdown clocks.
The StubHub UK case is not the first financial penalty under the new regime. That distinction belongs to the AA and BSM driving schools case, where the CMA ordered Automobile Association Developments Limited to pay a £4.2 million fine and provide approximately £760,000 in consumer refunds, bringing the total cost to nearly £5 million, as analysed by Norton Rose Fulbright. The offending conduct there centred on a £3 booking fee that was unavoidable and should, under the rules, have been included in the headline price from the outset, according to Jones Day’s analysis of the case.
In both instances the commercial logic of hidden fees is straightforward: show a lower price, attract a click, add the unavoidable charges at the point where abandoning a purchase feels costly. The CMA is now making that calculus expensive.
The regulator said StubHub UK would contact affected fans directly about their refunds. Its investigation into Viagogo, whose presentation of fees remains under scrutiny, is ongoing, with an update expected later this summer. The eight firms currently under investigation, which include Wayfair, Appliances Direct, and Marks Electrical as well as Viagogo, suggest the CMA is not done.
‘Our message to businesses is simple: be transparent on costs or risk CMA action,’ said Cochrane. Given the scale of the AA penalty relative to StubHub UK’s, companies still operating drip pricing models should treat that as a floor, not a ceiling.
