Fasig-Tipton pledges to offer online bidding at all future live auctions

Fasig-Tipton will offer online bidding at all its future live auctions, the company has announced.

The platform will be available for Fasig-Tipton's next scheduled auction, the Midlantic Two-Year-Olds in Training Sale, to be held June 29-30 in Maryland.

"The addition of online bidding to our live auctions is a service we are pleased to offer," said Fasig-Tipton president Boyd Browning jnr.

"At no other time has this service been more crucial or needed. As we all work to conduct business in the current Covid-19 environment of adjusted social norms, online bidding ensures the best possible marketplace for our buyers and sellers in 2020.

"Looking beyond 2020, we envisage this service being an integral component of all future auctions."

As an additional service to buyers, the company will also further expand its long-established phone bidding programme for the remainder of 2020. The service allows prospective buyers – who are not on site at an auction – to bid on horses through a member of Fasig-Tipton's staff.

Fasig-Tipton will also launch a timed, online only auction platform at a future date, when appropriate, the company said in a release.

The platform will complement the company's live auction line-up, offering buyers and sellers additional transaction opportunities that fall outside of the traditional live auction calendar.

"In the world that we live in, companies need to be flexible and willing to adapt," continued Browning. "Fasig-Tipton will always seek to be innovative and ready to adjust our sales models to best serve the marketplace."

Sales companies in Europe have also been grappling with how to stage sales during government-imposed lockdowns to slow the spread of coronavirus, with uncertainty over whether auctions can be postponed long enough to be held in their traditional format or if digital measures will have to be introduced.

German auction house BBAG confirmed yesterday that its Spring Breeze-Up Sale scheduled for May 22 will not take place as planned and will instead be postponed to an unspecified date.

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