The 2012 London Olympics and Paralympics are nearly here. Hopefully you were lucky enough to obtain tickets to what promises to be a spectacular event. Or you might be more concerned about how much longer your journey into London will take while the games are on?

Whether you’re looking forward to the Games or not there is a strong chance you could be asked to run an ad for someone selling tickets to them. If and when that happens we’d advise taking a closer look. There are only a limited number of licensed ticket sellers and unauthorised sale is an offence under S.31 of the London Olympic & Paralympic Act 2006. On top of that you could be assisting with a fraud.

What does this have to do with CAP? Well, obviously, the primary function of the CAP Code is to ensure ads are ‘legal, decent, honest and truthful’; any unauthorised sale or resale is likely to be illegal, as well as dishonest. Although we can’t give you legal advice, if you are in any doubt about the legality of Olympic ticket ads, the Metropolitan Police tell us you can check an advertiser’s credentials against a list of authorised sellers. You can find the searchable list here and the webpage also includes a list of known unauthorised websites.

If you come across any unauthorised sellers we would advise contacting the Economic & Specialist Crime Directorate at [email protected].

Of course, the vast majority of ads are likely to have been placed legally, by authorised sellers, but they should still be advertised in accordance with the Codes. The important points to note are:

• Advertisers may state the face-value of tickets without qualification only if no mandatory extra charges apply, otherwise inclusive prices should be charged.
• If mandatory charges are variable, advertisers must state a ‘from’ price of the minimum inclusive price.
• If the face-value price varies, ads should state the range or a ‘from’ price.
• The statement of extra charges should be no less prominent than the price.

Further advice about ticket pricing can be found in the Advice Online Database and in the CAP Help Note on Ticket Pricing.

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