Italy’s Competition authority (AGCM) fined a ticketing company and six tour operators nearly €20m for buying up tickets to Rome’s Colosseum on Tuesday.
The AGCM said CoopCulture, which ran the official ticketing of the Colosseum from 1997 until 2024, was fined €7m for failing to prevent automatic ticket buying and reserving a large proportion of tickets for its own tour packages.
The authority said such actions led to a “significant and prolonged unavailability” of standard-priced tickets to Italy’s most popular historic attraction, forcing tourists to buy higher-priced tickets in packages with additional services.
Six tour operators – Tiqets International BV, GetYourGuide Deutschland GmbH, Walks LLC, Italy With Family S.r.l., City Wonders Limited and Musement S.p.A. – were also fined for using special bots to buy tickets in bulk, which contributed to their rapid disappearance from the CoopCulture website.
The operators then resold tickets bundled with services such as tours or priority access, often at significantly higher prices, the regulator said.
The investigation began in July 2023 after numerous complaints that it was almost impossible for consumers to buy tickets to the Colosseum at official prices online.
Italy’s state museums saw a record number of almost 58 million people visit in 2023. Such figures were not even seen before the coronavirus pandemic.
