Osborne and Balls have knuckles rapped for "misleading" podcast ad

One was chancellor of the exchequer and the other really wanted to be, so one might have thought George Osborne and Ed Balls might have some basic understanding of maths.

But it appears not – as the pair have had their knuckles rapped by the advertising regulator for a “misleading” ad on their podcast for a ticket reselling firm.

The pair – who put past enmities behind them in 2023 to launch Political Currency – have been hawking the ticket resale website Viagogo, with Balls telling listeners that “over half the events listed on Viagogo had tickets selling below face value” and Osborne musing in a rather unlikely fashion that “It sounds like Viagogo might be the solution next time I need cheaper tickets to the hottest shows in town.”

That might seem surprising – sites such as Viagogo and rivals such as StubHub made their reputation allowing professional ticket “traders” to make huge profits by hoovering up seats at gigs by acts such as Oasis and selling them on for massive mark-ups, rather than “selling below face value”.

And so it is – with the Advertising Standards Authority (AS) today ruling that Viagogo had misled the public with its claim about the amount of events for which tickets were available below face value, saying the ad breached the advertising code and banning it from appearing again.

Viagogo’s claim was based on the rather creative mathematics that 53% of concert listings on the site include at least one ticket listed at below face value, with the ASA not unreasonably countering that the average podcast listener might take Balls’s claim to mean more than one lower-priced ticket was available.

It said: “One ticket per event was not a significant proportion of tickets and, as such, did not represent a reasonable chance for consumers to purchase tickets below face value… we considered that the claim, as it would be understood by consumers, had not been substantiated and was therefore misleading.”

Perhaps Osborne and Balls should have stuck to politics. And if Osborne needs a new solution next time he needs cheaper tickets to the hottest shows in town, perhaps he should emulate his current successor and call them in for free!