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Sotheby’s Christmas Retreat

A bold new fee structure was meant to transform the auction business—lower buyers fees to spur business and end the brutal price war between the auction houses. But after Sotheby’s struggled to land property in all of its main sales centers, it quietly reversed course in the final days of the year… effectively burying the news.

Charles Stewart
Stewart deflected blame for the failed experiment onto others, complaining that “the market doubled down on the status quo” and pointing a finger at “people used to consigning with us and those with art advisors.” Photo: Christopher Goodney/Bloomberg/Getty Images
Marion Maneker
December 23, 2024

To hear Sotheby’s tell it, the change in its fee structure earlier this year was a bold and heroic effort to fix the auction business. And so there was no shortage of defensiveness, last week, when the auction house announced it was walking back those changes, raising the most broadly applicable buyer’s premium from 20 to 27 percent. In an interview with The Art Newspaper, C.E.O. Charles Stewart noted defiantly, “We are totally unafraid to try things that challenge conventions in ways that benefit the market and expand access to growing audiences.”