One important thing to know is that the venues/artists often get a kickback of part of the Ticketmaster fees. In other words, the artists, venues, producers, and Ticketmaster are in cahoots to fleece fans for as much money as possible, and Ticketmaster is willing to play the 'bad guy' and take the blame for high prices, and they get to keep a bigger slice of the overall pie than they would in a highly competitive market for ticketing services because they provide that "service".
Take away this dynamic, and the face price of tickets is going to go up, and the total price is unlikely to change substantially.
Personally, I think this would still be a net plus for society. In order for market forces to work well, you need pricing transparency.
If I understand correctly Ticketmaster is still the one creating this problem, they demand exclusivity in their contracts which often means the venue has no choice if they want to participate in a large enough market to continue operating. Similarly artists have trouble securing large venues if not participating in their scheme.
This is the problem with most 'monopolies', they reach a certain critical mass where they can no longer be dealt with on even footing. You are at their mercy as a vendor and as a customer. You can often argue that 'choice' exists, but what choice is it really? Taylor Swift isn't going to come play at our local music house/bar.
> It’s easy to believe the worst about Live Nation, they have a bad reputation. But the reason I buy this particular story is because it is consistent with the behavior of many dominant middlemen firms in our economy, from pharmacy benefit managers to Amazon to big banks securitizing mortgages in the financial crisis. As monopoly scholar Kate Judge noted, such dominant middlemen use fees and kickbacks, hidden via a complex maze of subsidiaries and overlapping lines of business, to extract in ways that are hard to see. In Live Nation’s case, it’s clear they are generating a great deal of revenue, but somehow show low margins for many of their products. Hiding the price hikes is important, because monopolization is harder to prove that way.
An artist might want to opt out of this, though. They might think, and reasonably so, that the optics of having affordable tickets - even if they make less overall - is better for their brand identity and long—term benefit.
That LiveNation has created a de facto system where they cannot opt out of their price setting is at the heart of the entire matter.
>In other words, the artists, venues, producers, and Ticketmaster are in cahoots to fleece fans for as much money as possible
yes, but they are in cahoots with the fans to fleece the fans. Fans are willing to pay big money to see these shows, that's who pays the high prices. If fans didn't pay the high prices, the prices would drop.
Your comment (the word fleece) suggests you are at least somewhat judgmental about "greed": this type of judgment is why bands try to pretend that they sell the tickets for a "fair" price, and that's what creates the 2ndary market, and that's what creates the kickbacks and the need for a scapegoat.
you expect to pay a high price for a Picasso at auction. You should expect also to pay a high price for sellout, SRO, line around the block shows too. Who should collect that money? fans who got in first? fake fans who pretended to be fans to get in first? People who are attracted by the arbitrage price differential? Or, I dunno, how about Picasso? The band.
The biggest fans in football, season ticket holders who slog through all the bad seasons, frequently sell their superbowl tickets when the price gets high enough. They'd rather have the money, that's the nature of money, and people.
Yes, but also, many of those venues ARE Ticketmaster. From the Ascend Ampitheatre in Nashville to the Gorge in Washington, Live Nation owns like 150 major and minor concert venues. They're often kicking back to themselves.
"Ticketing. Our Ticketing segment is primarily an agency business that sells tickets for events on behalf of our clients and retains a fee, or “service charge”, for these services. We sell tickets for our events and also for third-party clients across multiple live event categories, providing ticketing services for leading arenas, stadiums, amphitheaters, music clubs, concert promoters, professional sports franchises and leagues, college sports teams, performing arts venues, museums and theaters. We sell tickets through websites, mobile apps, ticket outlets and telephone call centers. During the year ended December 31, 2015, we sold 69%, 21%, 7% and 3% of primary tickets through these channels, respectively. Our Ticketing segment also manages our online activities including enhancements to our websites and bundled product offerings. During 2015, our Ticketing business generated approximately $1.6 billion, or 22.6%, of our total revenue, which excludes the face value of tickets sold. Through all of our ticketing services, we sold 160 million tickets in 2015 on which we were paid fees for our services. In addition, approximately 297 million tickets in total were sold using our Ticketmaster systems, through season seat packages and our venue clients’ box offices, for which we do not receive a fee. Our ticketing sales are impacted by fluctuations in the availability of events for sale to the public, which may vary depending upon event scheduling by our clients. As ticket sales increase, related ticketing operating income generally increases as well."
$1.6b of revenue selling 297m tickets. $5.79 per ticket. So you are paying $20 fees on a ticket, who do you think gets that money if it isn't Ticketmaster?
>Take away this dynamic, and the face price of tickets is going to go up, and the total price is unlikely to change substantially.
>Personally, I think this would still be a net plus for society. In order for market forces to work well, you need pricing transparency.
I agree: fair pricing is better than bullshit pricing with hidden fees and surcharges. It's the same with tipping at restaurants: it's better to just have the actual price printed clearly and advertised, and that's the price you pay, instead of advertising a lower price and then having to do mental math to figure out the real price at the register.
They aren’t just fleecing fans they’re also ripping off other participants in the market especially competitors. Matt Stoller has written a lot of detail about this.
It might have changed in the last 10 years, and it might be different in the USA, but in 2010 when I put on a large theatre production and had to use Ticketmaster, there was no way a ‘kickback’ was part of the equation.
Exactly the opposite, in fact. Did you know that Ticketmaster has two fees? One is the ‘outside’ fee that you, the punter, sees. So you think I’m getting $100 and you’re giving Ticketmaster another $10.
In fact there’s also an ‘inside’ fee that Ticketmaster charges me. So of that $100, they also take $10 from me.
Of course for this you get all sorts of services, right? Tools to manage seating, allocations, reservations, price varieties, and so on? Nope. Not a goddamned thing.
Concerts aren't a necessity. As much as Ticketmaster/LiveNation "fleece" fans, secondhand sellers a/k/a scalpers do it even more. The demand is there, if the prices were too high the tickets would not sell.
If you don't like what a concert ticket price costs, don't go.
Oh yeah. I remember Trent Reznor writing an angry social media post about this probably ten years ago, more or less explaining it all. Ticketmaster only sells a small portion of a show's tickets through their official website. Most go straight to "aftermarket" outlets that Ticketmaster indirectly controls, and artists know about this and take their share of the markup.
When this merger was first announced over a decade ago, it became like mandatory teaching in Competition Law classes for Law students in the UK.
Much of the legal community at the time was convinced there was no way in hell the original merger would be approved. Even at that time LiveNation controlled an astonishing percentage of the live music venue market - which when paired with ticket master's near total dominance of live music ticket sales... this was one of the seemingly simplest competition law cases in years. Then the deal was approved, of course.
I am not surprised in the least it's finally getting anti-trust attention.
Finally. Between the market dominance via Live Nation and Ticketmaster merge. The venue exclusivity contracts they insist upon. They are a grotesque monopoly.
I'm glad to see this. I run jumpcomedy.com which provides ticketing/event management services for comedy shows (or pretty much anything but focused on comedy) and this industry is dominated by a few big players that charge exorbitant service fees which customers have no choice to pay because these are exclusive deals.
I've gotten smaller clubs and comics to hop over, and got one big tour to join, but when it comes to the well-known artists, they are contractually bound to go with the big companies. I'm very happy someone is taking action.
What’s interesting here: 14 years ago, the US Justice Department green lit the merger under the assumption live nation and Ticketmaster would place nice
> On January 25, 2010, the U.S. Justice Department approved the merger pending certain conditions.
That's an interesting distinction. You shouldn't be able to call it a "fee" if the cost that it purports to cover does not increase with the cost of a ticket.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: kill the secondary market. Live nation should be broken up but a big driver of cost is the scalpers/hedgers who buy out everything and put it on StubHub.
Just make all sales final. Check IDs at the door, or use technology to speed up identity verification (mail out rfids, etc). Sucks if you get sick or whatever, just like many things in life where you cancel last minute. It’ll substantially decrease cost due to these bottom feeders.
> a big driver of cost is the scalpers/hedgers who buy out everything and put it on StubHub
Not true.
About "10% of [performing arts] tickets sold in the primary market are later re-sold by ticket scalpers," increasing to "20-30% of top-tiered seats" [1]. Banning scalping increases attendance but results in "fewer distinct productions...shown in metropolitan areas or states that require ticket resellers to be licensed or that prohibit resale above face value."
Empirically, markets with scalpers have lower ticket prices [2], though this has been studied more in sports than the performing arts. Which makes sense. Scalpers de facto underwrite the seller's risk.
When was the last time the Justice Department actually broke up a monopoly?
Don't these suits usually result in a fine and an agreement to stop doing XYZ while both parties wink and nod, then the government lawyers go work in lucrative private practice a few years later?
Yes this is basically correct. The lawsuits can also drag out for years. They can be avoided by late changes - for example Microsoft just removed Teams from Office bundles, and will get away with having caused damage to users and competitors for years. Congress has avoided the responsibility of passing new harsher antitrust legislation that simply skips the lawsuits and goes straight to fines.
My horror story of Ticketmaster; I recently bought standing-room-only tickets on short notice (<1wk) for an event near me, declining the additional fee to be able to refund my tickets. After more discussion with the others I was going with, I bought seated tickets instead through SeatGeek. Understanding I declined the ability to refund, I attempted to sell my tickets, but their system kept encountering an internal error preventing me from selling the tickets.
I reached out to support for assistance, and after several days of wasted time and run-around, they finally sent my issue to their engineering team saying they'd get back to me in 5 business days. Keep in mind I said I bought these tickets a week before the event, and they'd already wasted a few days giving me the run-around, functionally meaning I wouldn't be able to sell my tickets.
I attempted to charge back the purchase since they did not provide what I paid for (tickets I could sell), and they fought me and won somehow.
So thanks Ticketmaster, for sucking me out of hundreds of dollars for nothing more than bytes in your database that I couldn't do anything with. I hope they go bankrupt.
For anyone who is in my shoes and hasn't used Ticketmaster yet and might be tempted to give them a chance thinking all of these horror stories are just unlucky people- don't. I was naive to think that all of those companies with bad reputations are just the loud minority but Ticketmaster is the only one I've had the misfortune of finding out is seriously awful. Use SeatGeek or countless other platforms instead. Gun to my head to use Ticketmaster again I'd probably take the lead instead.
> I attempted to charge back the purchase since they did not provide what I paid for (tickets I could sell), and they fought me and won somehow.
This has happened to me twice now (though not with TicketMaster) and I was 100% in the right, and I lost. When I mentioned it on HN I was met with a lot of doubters. I think something has really changed regarding chargebacks.
So you didn’t purchase ticket insurance, you got the tickets you paid for (which they can allow you to sell, at their discretion) and you filed a chargeback… why is that Ticketmaster’s problem? Like it sucks, to be sure, and Ticketmaster is awful, but I’m not sure why that chargeback would be considered legit.
I'm as glad as anyone else to see an abusive company get some scrutiny, B U T . . .
Everyone is complaining about Ticketmaster but they're still giving them their money, so how are they supposed to respond? They are not being financially incentivized to change their ways. This feels a lot like the video gamer who hates Video Game Company XYZ with the passion of a thousand suns, yet like clockwork buys their video games again and again.
Show tickets aren't even a necessity. They're not like food and water--nobody has to buy them. Each and every dollar Ticketmaster collects is from a fan making a voluntary purchase of a luxury. Purchasing from a company that abuses them.
Apologizing on behalf of exploitation is unbelievably weak.
What do you like to do?
Bike? What if one company controlled all bike sales and bike lanes, bikes costed $20,000 and you needed to pay every time you go on a ride?
Programming? What if one company controlled all computer sales and internet access, they costed $50/hour to use and each program is another $10/hour and it costed another $200/month to host anything publicly?
There are people in the comments here giving you a hard time.
I agree with you. People are talking about Oreos and biking and shit. You know, Oreos have calories, bikes move you around the world. Just don't buy the fucking tickets anymore. It's that simple.
There are a million ways to monetize. If you stop going to live shows music won't die. Maybe huge pop acts will.
totally agree. I think one other angle to potentially consider is that, like many other things in the industry, this has an outsized impact on smaller artists. singers make most of their money through touring so fans might be more inclined to wade through live nation's scheming in order to support artists with a smaller base.
> Everyone is complaining about Ticketmaster but they're still giving them their money, so how are they supposed to respond? They are not being financially incentivized to change their ways.
That's a monopoly. The actual product being a luxury item has no bearing on whether a business practice is damaging to consumers. If I have no other choice but to buy tickets for a show through TM, I can't easily avoid them to choose a better service.
Frankly breaking up Ticket Master is something that should have been looked into decades ago.
I don't buy tickets from them. I'd like to go to shows, and I do go to some smaller shows where I can buy tickets directly from the venue. But I don't support Ticketmaster. So I go to less shows than I like.
...does that make me more morally qualified to complain than other people? Why?
There is no reason to behave like we exist in a low trust economy for any non-essential service when these 'non-essential' services are a massive portion of our total GDP.
Really, to follow your over libertarian line of thought it would be ok to say "Oreo's don't need to follow food safety laws because Oreo's aren't a necessity, you can buy bread and water". Instead we apply food safety laws to all food products so you don't play cancer russian roulette.
And the same should go for service transactions. I shouldn't have to find out that the one company that seems to own all venues is a monopolistic bastard that will fuck you over. Instead I should elect a representative government that punishes the living fuck out of companies that try to behave like that so the general consumer saves massive amounts of time and money thereby benefiting society.
Japan has fantastic ticketing system that has reasonable ticket price that is fixed, and no scalpers can buy all the tickets because it is a lottery system.
So rationing? I wouldn't call that fantastic. Why should someone who's barely interested but willing to go for $10 more deserving of a seat than a super fan willing to save up to shell out $150 for a seat?
The merger was completed in 2010, so the Obama administration. However, the country was coming out of the great recession and the last thing the administration needed was bad PR for "stopping a merger that would prevent people from losing their jobs".
Really wish they'd bring back hard tickets. Over the past 20 years I've simply shown up at a concert or sporting event day-of dozens of times and managed to score good-to-great seats, often for very fair prices, with a success rate that I would estimate around 75-80%.
In the past year, I've tried this a few times and there is simply nobody selling tickets near the venues at all.
Throw away account or i'll probably get sued. I have worked for both Ticketmaster and Viagogo (on the record, fuck Eric Baker!). I lasted 2 days at Ticketmaster and a whole morning at Viagogo and decided I'd be better off being unemployed. Both companies in the early days were out there to scam people and make as much money as possible by strategically ignoring claims and driving costs down. One is less visibly scammy than the other now and that's the one you're all complaining about. They know what they will get away with.
The whole ticketing space is run by narcissistic assholes who should be in jail.
While I 100% support this action, I feel like people are going to be disappointed to find that if/when the dust settles and Live Nation is reined in (big if), tickets for the Taylor Swift concert or the NBA finals aren't suddenly coming down to $50. With a growing population, people with more disposable income and more interest in such events in general the fundamental economy of live events is very different than what it was 30 years ago. The sticker price is usually very close to the market value of the ticket, and often a lot less (hence all the scalping).
I think we'd still be happy enough if the ticket prices were disclosed up front, and if they weren't being inflated by everyone (artists, venues (Live Nation), and Ticketmaster) all working together to raise prices. If this gross company were smacked down hard enough, there would be meaningful competition possible. With TM owning most venues or having exclusive rights to them under contract, no serious competition is possible, so markets don't exist. Therefore no market pressures to correct excessively high prices.
Yep. I despise TM and think this needs to change, but the only thing it's going to fix (from the consumer's perspective, not the artists et al) is the abysmal and abusive customer service (that doesn't really exist), not the high prices. The prices are pretty much exactly what the market will bear, and that will be true no matter who the middleman is.
Concivably the number of shows/tickets might increase and the price decrease, since setting the price above the market rate is one of the inefficiencies that monopolies introduce.
For artists who are maxing out their # of shows and selling out you're right though.
Except there are only 3 venues in the metro area that can accommodate such a concert and all of them have exclusive contracts with Live Nation. So what are Taylor Swift and her fans supposed to do?
True in theory, but because of exclusivity deals with venues, they can't use "any venue". Basically at the level of Taylor Swift, she would have to create her own arenas for this to work. She could well do it one day though...
They may be a monopoly, but fans are willing to pay to see LiveNation concerts. Acts and venues go with it. I’ve found there so many other options out there for entertainment lately that I haven’t gone to a concert in 20 years! In a way I kind of like what Ticketmaster is doing, I wish I could get a cut.
(Seriously though, we have so many olig/monopolies I’ve lost count. Sad.)
this is all well and good but i know from personal experience that all the secondary marketplaces (stubhub, seatgeek) are pushing to do this (literally lobbying the government actively) because it helps them more easily do their secondary market selling. ticketmaster is a grotesque monopoly, but the secondary marketplaces are worried that ticketmaster will consolidate too much industry control through their vertical integration and make it harder for them to play a role in the industry as well.
the biggest problem in the industry is not necessarily ticketmaster; it's ticketmaster combined with the gigantic, largely-hidden world of ticket brokers who have an entire ecosystem of tools and tactics (as well as relationships with promoters) that allow them to buy tickets to high demand events with greater rates of success than real customers and then jack up the prices astronomically with literally no oversight. breaking up ticketmaster will do little to stop the insanity of the ever-increasing prices of tickets, nor will it make it any easier to get tickets to an event you want to go to. it will just change the balance of who is likely to screw you.
all the secondary marketplaces basically sell the same inventory and mask that fact by pretending they don't. tons of the inventory that exists on them is just arbitrage (or zone) inventory designed to trap you into paying way more than face value for a seat you can't even choose. there's an entire cottage industry (enabled by a little-known player called ticketnetwork) of websites that walk a fine line of pretending to be the official box offices for venues trying to confuse and trap consumers into paying over face value for tickets. the pricing models on the secondary markets (and this includes ticketmaster) are basically designed to obfuscate the fact that they're all selling the same inventory and either boost the upfront cost and reduce fees or show you a cut-rate price for the ticket and then make it up with fees.
i totally agree that it is a Net Good that ticketmaster does not control the venue, the promoter, and the primary sale of the ticket. making it easier for venues to shop around for ticket providers is a Good Thing. but without broader market regulation, the fundamental problem won't get any better.
edit: just to explain this a little further, the fact that the secondary marketplaces aren't the sellers is really the thing that makes everything so complex. the people who control the prices of the tickets on the secondary marketplace aren't the big players (stubhub, seatgeek, etc.) but the brokers who then broadcast their inventory at prices _they_ set to all the marketplaces simultaneously. there's not really an opportunity for competition in this space - brokers actively collude (there's a big paid forum called shows on sale where they all talk about upcoming ticket onsales and trade presale codes and intel for getting tickets.) because of this, "enabling more competition" won't change prices past the time that the primaries sell through their inventory, and the brokers will always have an edge when it comes to gobbling that up.
This needs to be seen more widely and is entirely true. I had friends who worked in ticket brokering and the depth and collusion of that market is a fascinating rabbit hole. In fact a lot of what happens is probably illegal.
just in time for an election year
I'm sure its just my imagination, but seems like the moment tickets go on sale most of the good seats are being resold through an official reseller. Its almost like live nation might be scalping their own tickets.
So, a little context as to how the live events industry works, because it is not how most would assume.
First, you have the venue. The venue has an owner. This may be the owner of the sports team who plays there, a company that's entirely unrelated to the venue, a city or other government entity, or whoever else. *
Then you have the show you are buying a ticket for. This show may be a sports team, or it may be a concert or other live act. If a sports team it's probably got the same owner as the venue, but if a concert or other live act you have...
Promoters. Promoters rent the venue, pay for the show (i.e. they pay the band their fee to come play), sell the tickets, staff all the parts the venue doesn't, and pocket the difference. The promoter takes a risk, in that if they pay Major Act $1m and spend $500k on marketing/the venue/staffing and nobody shows up, they lose $1.5m. The band and venue still get paid.
The ticket platform. This platform sells the tickets for the event and adds their service fee. That service fee is generally used in part to pay the venue for the exclusive rights to sell tickets at the venue to the venue owner. That is both obviously valuable (fans can either pay your fee whatever it is or not go) and an obvious monopoly (if there were two ticket platforms selling for the same event the same seat would likely get sold twice sometimes).
Where this gets dicey: Live Nation (which owns Ticket Master) is both the biggest promoter and a ticket selling platform. Both by far. In fact they pay for exclusive rights to more than 80% of large venues. Most states only have a few venues that can do major acts (20,000+ seats), and a major act has essentially no alternative but to either play Live Nation venues, or play smaller evenues where independent promoters will pay them smaller fees.
Artists hate this system because it gouges their fans and arguably reduces their rates (there isn't a thriving market of promotors because most of them can't even use most big venues) but since Pearl Jam lost trying to break it up 30 years ago (when they were separate entities and TicketMaster had just as big a monopoly as now) they've not bothered to sue. Fans hate this system because they get gouged coming and going. It works well for Live Nation and the venues, obviously, though the venues still would be fine as they have very little competition. In my area there are two viable venues in the summer for a 25,000 person concert and one in the winter, and we're bigger than most.
Live Nation can use the vertical integration (they get both the promoter's share of the ticket revenue and the ticketing fee) to buy up most venues. And by buy up I mean either pay for exclusive contracts too, or just purchase outright.
It's been pretty clearly in violation of anti-trust laws for decades. TicketMaster before the merger and the combined entity now. I don't know how they've gotten away with it for so long, and they should undo the merger they never should have allowed to begin with.
*Unrelated but interesting: the venue also sells the rights to services inside the venue, like merchandise and, most lucratively, food and beverage. Third parties buy the rights to sell all of the food and drinks for very large sums. So a venue owner is responsible for relatively little of the work that goes on inside the venue. Someone else sets up the shows, pays for everything, sells the tickets, sells the food and drinks, etc.
Can you expand on this? It seems to me that a major difference between flight tickets and concert tickets is that when an airline overbooks they can switch you to a later flight. However, most concerts only perform once in a given city.
So in my opinion, the fans suing ticketmaster should sue Taylor Swift for using ticket master. Then she can sue her music company for doing business with ticket master. its not like selling tickets is not a solved problem, so why are we even bothering with this BS and just not using another service? O the music labels like them because they get sweet deals? Well again, sue Taylor Swift and the label, not the shitty ticket sales company.
I think it would be easier to get some Taylor Swift fans to chew their own arms off than it would to get them to sue her for anything. I've never known a group of people that better fit the word "fanatic" :-)
If the DOJ breaks up live nation the only group who gets screwed is the consumer. The sort of artist who is big enough to use live nation also wants a pay day for going on tour. They want the door, they want to sell their merch, they want a cut of the 20$ beer you buy. There might be 1 or 2 artist left who dont want to see you gouged on the ticket but that might not even be true any more.
Liven nation goes away. The venues are going to remain as a single company, the concessions are going to cost just as much. Ticketing might be phone/app only.
Every concert will turn into an auction. Want to get in front of the line. Pay 100 bucks to join a fan club. Want to cut that line, pay a 1000' bucks for a meet and greet and decent seats. Other wise wait, and bid. And that bidding is going to be ugly...
Fans are an interesting group of people. They tend to think with their heart and not with their head.... Dont believe me, we were selling hats and shirts at concerts long before video games. If you're willing to pay 5 bucks for a virtual good then 50 for a tshrit doesn't seem bad.
This exists today... you can buy several tiers of tickets on Ticketmaster and the ability to even access those tickets depends on other status.
Today we see Ticketmaster adding numerous fees and using anti-competitive venue and artist lock-in to avoid the industry having competition.
I have been to over 100 concerts in the last 2 years and I can't say I have noticed any additional value or ease by using my tickets through Ticketmaster (I actually use DICE a lot which at least has a simple resale process for FV and shows full cost)
> "The sort of artist who is big enough to use live nation also wants a pay day for going on tour. They want the door, they want to sell their merch, they want a cut of the 20$ beer you buy."
This is true, of course, but the rest of your claims are pretty speculative. Big bands were touring long before the TicketMaster monopoly became a thing.
A competitive marketplace benefits both suppliers (ie: the bands) as well as consumers. Why wouldn't a band want to play several ticketing companies off against each other to see who can offer them the best deal? It's also not in a band's best interest to rip off their own fans: they want to keep tickets cheap enough to make sure that the stadiums get filled.
In Europe there is a much more competitive market in the ticketing/events space, where LiveNation/Ticketmaster competes against multiple big players like Eventim, AXS, See Tickets, as well as innumerable secondary and resale-market ticketing companies like Viagogo/Stubhub, DICE, Ticketswap, etc. And there's certainly no shortage of big bands on tour.
It wouldn't be hard to use some combination of auctions and lotteries to give everyone a legitimate chance at getting a ticket at a reasonable price, and extract maximum money from the people that have money to burn.
I just stopped going to big shows. I’ll see a crappy cover band for a fraction of the price and have about as much fun. I think I’ve seen everyone still alive that I care to see!
Even if I take at face value everything you put in your comment, what is the problem? You seem to be arguing "Popular artists will want to be paid what the market is willing to bear!!" And??? I'd rather the artists get paid than Ticketmaster.
Besides, in my experience, I've seen that artists generally don't actually want this (at least solely), because they want their concerts to be populated by passionate fans as opposed to just rich fucks that tend to be more boring as audience members. Don't a bunch of artists have deals where longtime active members in their fan clubs get first access to tickets so that they don't have to pay more on scalper sites?
Even if they don't break them up, there needs to be some limits and regulations as this scene is getting obscene:
1. I thought scalping was illegal? Maybe that has changed, or maybe there's a big loophole, but most of the big ticketing apps have essentially legalized scalping and they even have conventions for their "partners" (scalpers) where they entertain them and teach them how to buy and sell more tickets. Since the ticketing apps take massive fees on each ticket, more secondary sales benefits the ticketing company even more.
2. If scalping is still illegal, there needs to be a limit on the price hike for secondary sales. Clearly, someone who bought 50 tickets to a concert was not planning to use them all. This is a scalper. Since they could create many different accounts, it's hard to determine who is a scalper and who isn't. Either way, if you can't go to the concert and you want to resell them, then a max increase for your time to relist the tickets is fair for everyone.
3. There needs to be a limit on service fees. There's no reason why the service fee for selling an online ticket should be $50 PER TICKET. Sure, it's not always that high, but that's how high I've seen it in the past couple years. I can ship a cell phone across the country in 5 days for $5 and it is profitable for the service provider. There's no reason the efforts to furnish a digital ticket should cost more than that. It's clearly a hidden fee that is there as an additional profit center.
4. Not only do the ticket primary ticketing companies own the primary sales, they also own the secondary sales. So, for example, they can take a $30 fee PER TICKET on the primary sales and then they also get that $50 PER TICKET fee on the secondary sale of each same ticket. Then if that ticket gets sold again, they can get another $50 PER TICKET. It's absolutely insane.
5. Most major venues have exclusive deals with the major ticketing companies. So, if a large band/artist wants to play at a large venue and they don't want to charge their fans huge fees or allow scalping, they have no choice -- that venue has signed a deal and the artist has to use the venue's ticketing partner.
6. Some tickets aren't sent until just days before the event. If I bought tickets today, and they're charging me a $50 digital ticket fee, those tickets should be available to me immediately. Again, I can ship a cell phone across the country in 5 days for $5, there's no reason digital tickets should be withheld for months when a $50 fee was paid.
7. There's no transparency. Since it's so obscene, it's time for transparency. At a minimum, I should be able to see how many tickets for each event the person I'm buying the tickets from has sold in the past year.
I know there are more issues, these are just the ones off the top of my head.
Some comments were deferred for faster rendering.
eadler|1 year ago
andjd|1 year ago
Take away this dynamic, and the face price of tickets is going to go up, and the total price is unlikely to change substantially.
Personally, I think this would still be a net plus for society. In order for market forces to work well, you need pricing transparency.
voidwtf|1 year ago
This is the problem with most 'monopolies', they reach a certain critical mass where they can no longer be dealt with on even footing. You are at their mercy as a vendor and as a customer. You can often argue that 'choice' exists, but what choice is it really? Taylor Swift isn't going to come play at our local music house/bar.
crabmusket|1 year ago
> It’s easy to believe the worst about Live Nation, they have a bad reputation. But the reason I buy this particular story is because it is consistent with the behavior of many dominant middlemen firms in our economy, from pharmacy benefit managers to Amazon to big banks securitizing mortgages in the financial crisis. As monopoly scholar Kate Judge noted, such dominant middlemen use fees and kickbacks, hidden via a complex maze of subsidiaries and overlapping lines of business, to extract in ways that are hard to see. In Live Nation’s case, it’s clear they are generating a great deal of revenue, but somehow show low margins for many of their products. Hiding the price hikes is important, because monopolization is harder to prove that way.
btown|1 year ago
That LiveNation has created a de facto system where they cannot opt out of their price setting is at the heart of the entire matter.
flightster|1 year ago
It’s like a cartel but it’s lead by one “extractor” (front of house, Ticketmaster in this case).
fsckboy|1 year ago
yes, but they are in cahoots with the fans to fleece the fans. Fans are willing to pay big money to see these shows, that's who pays the high prices. If fans didn't pay the high prices, the prices would drop.
Your comment (the word fleece) suggests you are at least somewhat judgmental about "greed": this type of judgment is why bands try to pretend that they sell the tickets for a "fair" price, and that's what creates the 2ndary market, and that's what creates the kickbacks and the need for a scapegoat.
you expect to pay a high price for a Picasso at auction. You should expect also to pay a high price for sellout, SRO, line around the block shows too. Who should collect that money? fans who got in first? fake fans who pretended to be fans to get in first? People who are attracted by the arbitrage price differential? Or, I dunno, how about Picasso? The band.
The biggest fans in football, season ticket holders who slog through all the bad seasons, frequently sell their superbowl tickets when the price gets high enough. They'd rather have the money, that's the nature of money, and people.
CobrastanJorji|1 year ago
boringg|1 year ago
nrmitchi|1 year ago
Ya, sure, but you also have to remember that Live Nation often owns the venues, and manages the artists.
So what you're kind of saying is "venues(Live Nation)/artists(also Live Nation) get a kickback of part of the Ticketmaster (also Live Nation) fees".
bjclark|1 year ago
https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1335258/000133525816...
"Ticketing. Our Ticketing segment is primarily an agency business that sells tickets for events on behalf of our clients and retains a fee, or “service charge”, for these services. We sell tickets for our events and also for third-party clients across multiple live event categories, providing ticketing services for leading arenas, stadiums, amphitheaters, music clubs, concert promoters, professional sports franchises and leagues, college sports teams, performing arts venues, museums and theaters. We sell tickets through websites, mobile apps, ticket outlets and telephone call centers. During the year ended December 31, 2015, we sold 69%, 21%, 7% and 3% of primary tickets through these channels, respectively. Our Ticketing segment also manages our online activities including enhancements to our websites and bundled product offerings. During 2015, our Ticketing business generated approximately $1.6 billion, or 22.6%, of our total revenue, which excludes the face value of tickets sold. Through all of our ticketing services, we sold 160 million tickets in 2015 on which we were paid fees for our services. In addition, approximately 297 million tickets in total were sold using our Ticketmaster systems, through season seat packages and our venue clients’ box offices, for which we do not receive a fee. Our ticketing sales are impacted by fluctuations in the availability of events for sale to the public, which may vary depending upon event scheduling by our clients. As ticket sales increase, related ticketing operating income generally increases as well."
$1.6b of revenue selling 297m tickets. $5.79 per ticket. So you are paying $20 fees on a ticket, who do you think gets that money if it isn't Ticketmaster?
shiroiushi|1 year ago
>Personally, I think this would still be a net plus for society. In order for market forces to work well, you need pricing transparency.
I agree: fair pricing is better than bullshit pricing with hidden fees and surcharges. It's the same with tipping at restaurants: it's better to just have the actual price printed clearly and advertised, and that's the price you pay, instead of advertising a lower price and then having to do mental math to figure out the real price at the register.
CPLX|1 year ago
lokar|1 year ago
jen729w|1 year ago
Exactly the opposite, in fact. Did you know that Ticketmaster has two fees? One is the ‘outside’ fee that you, the punter, sees. So you think I’m getting $100 and you’re giving Ticketmaster another $10.
In fact there’s also an ‘inside’ fee that Ticketmaster charges me. So of that $100, they also take $10 from me.
Of course for this you get all sorts of services, right? Tools to manage seating, allocations, reservations, price varieties, and so on? Nope. Not a goddamned thing.
I despised having to work with them.
SoftTalker|1 year ago
If you don't like what a concert ticket price costs, don't go.
tuututu|1 year ago
mattmaroon|1 year ago
Venue owners have a choice of ticket sellers, artists do not.
giobox|1 year ago
Much of the legal community at the time was convinced there was no way in hell the original merger would be approved. Even at that time LiveNation controlled an astonishing percentage of the live music venue market - which when paired with ticket master's near total dominance of live music ticket sales... this was one of the seemingly simplest competition law cases in years. Then the deal was approved, of course.
I am not surprised in the least it's finally getting anti-trust attention.
bsimpson|1 year ago
seatac76|1 year ago
busterarm|1 year ago
They crushed all of the meaningful competition that long ago. Even breaking the company up into parts wouldn't suddenly fix the industry.
boringg|1 year ago
sirsinsalot|1 year ago
recroad|1 year ago
I've gotten smaller clubs and comics to hop over, and got one big tour to join, but when it comes to the well-known artists, they are contractually bound to go with the big companies. I'm very happy someone is taking action.
xyst|1 year ago
> On January 25, 2010, the U.S. Justice Department approved the merger pending certain conditions.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Live_Nation_Entertainment
EasyMark|1 year ago
toomuchtodo|1 year ago
sirsinsalot|1 year ago
It's just using their vertical integration and monopoly to move as much money onto their books and increase ticket prices and margins.
Shady.
to11mtm|1 year ago
crabmusket|1 year ago
rahimnathwani|1 year ago
[deleted]
teeray|1 year ago
lesuorac|1 year ago
Fee or Commission works fine here. The line item for sellers/buyers agent isn't "tax" when you buy/sell a house despite it being a percentage.
ryandvm|1 year ago
ponector|1 year ago
Fee is a fee, no matter it is fixed sum of percentage. Same with taxes - they are not always a percentage.
azinman2|1 year ago
Just make all sales final. Check IDs at the door, or use technology to speed up identity verification (mail out rfids, etc). Sucks if you get sick or whatever, just like many things in life where you cancel last minute. It’ll substantially decrease cost due to these bottom feeders.
crabmusket|1 year ago
Couldn't you mandate tickets must be sold back to the original seller if you e.g. can't make it to the event? Rather than to a third party?
JumpCrisscross|1 year ago
Not true.
About "10% of [performing arts] tickets sold in the primary market are later re-sold by ticket scalpers," increasing to "20-30% of top-tiered seats" [1]. Banning scalping increases attendance but results in "fewer distinct productions...shown in metropolitan areas or states that require ticket resellers to be licensed or that prohibit resale above face value."
Empirically, markets with scalpers have lower ticket prices [2], though this has been studied more in sports than the performing arts. Which makes sense. Scalpers de facto underwrite the seller's risk.
[1] https://www.oxy.edu/sites/default/files/assets/Economics/Chi...
[2] https://www.jstor.org/stable/27698042
mixmastamyk|1 year ago
We don't need any more surveillance, data-mining and sales, thank you. Your stated cure is worse than the disease.
resolutebat|1 year ago
https://www.dnalounge.com/backstage/log/2018/01/31.html (HN referers banned, so cut & paste into a fresh tab)
mattmaroon|1 year ago
kevmo|1 year ago
Don't these suits usually result in a fine and an agreement to stop doing XYZ while both parties wink and nod, then the government lawyers go work in lucrative private practice a few years later?
blackeyeblitzar|1 year ago
beart|1 year ago
https://www.cnn.com/2024/02/26/investing/kroger-albertsons-m...
leereeves|1 year ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breakup_of_the_Bell_System
treflop|1 year ago
riffic|1 year ago
methodical|1 year ago
I reached out to support for assistance, and after several days of wasted time and run-around, they finally sent my issue to their engineering team saying they'd get back to me in 5 business days. Keep in mind I said I bought these tickets a week before the event, and they'd already wasted a few days giving me the run-around, functionally meaning I wouldn't be able to sell my tickets.
I attempted to charge back the purchase since they did not provide what I paid for (tickets I could sell), and they fought me and won somehow.
So thanks Ticketmaster, for sucking me out of hundreds of dollars for nothing more than bytes in your database that I couldn't do anything with. I hope they go bankrupt.
For anyone who is in my shoes and hasn't used Ticketmaster yet and might be tempted to give them a chance thinking all of these horror stories are just unlucky people- don't. I was naive to think that all of those companies with bad reputations are just the loud minority but Ticketmaster is the only one I've had the misfortune of finding out is seriously awful. Use SeatGeek or countless other platforms instead. Gun to my head to use Ticketmaster again I'd probably take the lead instead.
freedomben|1 year ago
This has happened to me twice now (though not with TicketMaster) and I was 100% in the right, and I lost. When I mentioned it on HN I was met with a lot of doubters. I think something has really changed regarding chargebacks.
throwaway5959|1 year ago
nugget|1 year ago
exclusiv|1 year ago
ryandrake|1 year ago
Everyone is complaining about Ticketmaster but they're still giving them their money, so how are they supposed to respond? They are not being financially incentivized to change their ways. This feels a lot like the video gamer who hates Video Game Company XYZ with the passion of a thousand suns, yet like clockwork buys their video games again and again.
Show tickets aren't even a necessity. They're not like food and water--nobody has to buy them. Each and every dollar Ticketmaster collects is from a fan making a voluntary purchase of a luxury. Purchasing from a company that abuses them.
JumpCrisscross|1 year ago
This is why monopoly is a market failure. There isn't a market mechanism that can correct this.
qwertygnu|1 year ago
What do you like to do?
Bike? What if one company controlled all bike sales and bike lanes, bikes costed $20,000 and you needed to pay every time you go on a ride?
Programming? What if one company controlled all computer sales and internet access, they costed $50/hour to use and each program is another $10/hour and it costed another $200/month to host anything publicly?
Clent|1 year ago
Live events have been the norm throughout history.
The fact that it can now be classified as a luxury speaks to the need for drastic change.
doctorpangloss|1 year ago
I agree with you. People are talking about Oreos and biking and shit. You know, Oreos have calories, bikes move you around the world. Just don't buy the fucking tickets anymore. It's that simple.
There are a million ways to monetize. If you stop going to live shows music won't die. Maybe huge pop acts will.
nektro|1 year ago
crabmusket|1 year ago
kxrm|1 year ago
That's a monopoly. The actual product being a luxury item has no bearing on whether a business practice is damaging to consumers. If I have no other choice but to buy tickets for a show through TM, I can't easily avoid them to choose a better service.
Frankly breaking up Ticket Master is something that should have been looked into decades ago.
newsclues|1 year ago
blahedo|1 year ago
...does that make me more morally qualified to complain than other people? Why?
pixl97|1 year ago
There is no reason to behave like we exist in a low trust economy for any non-essential service when these 'non-essential' services are a massive portion of our total GDP.
Really, to follow your over libertarian line of thought it would be ok to say "Oreo's don't need to follow food safety laws because Oreo's aren't a necessity, you can buy bread and water". Instead we apply food safety laws to all food products so you don't play cancer russian roulette.
And the same should go for service transactions. I shouldn't have to find out that the one company that seems to own all venues is a monopolistic bastard that will fuck you over. Instead I should elect a representative government that punishes the living fuck out of companies that try to behave like that so the general consumer saves massive amounts of time and money thereby benefiting society.
throw87468592|1 year ago
[deleted]
ayakang31415|1 year ago
ZoomerCretin|1 year ago
enahs-sf|1 year ago
calciphus|1 year ago
39896880|1 year ago
makestuff|1 year ago
listenallyall|1 year ago
In the past year, I've tried this a few times and there is simply nobody selling tickets near the venues at all.
dmitrygr|1 year ago
mtillman|1 year ago
hn8305823|1 year ago
IE/Netscape bad or this apparently.
HDThoreaun|1 year ago
rahimnathwani|1 year ago
throwmeaway67|1 year ago
The whole ticketing space is run by narcissistic assholes who should be in jail.
paxys|1 year ago
xp84|1 year ago
freedomben|1 year ago
xnx|1 year ago
waveBidder|1 year ago
For artists who are maxing out their # of shows and selling out you're right though.
treflop|1 year ago
What would be nice would be having independent venues that aren't all selling the same canned water and ticket prices showing the fees.
asciimov|1 year ago
amadeuspagel|1 year ago
paxys|1 year ago
viraptor|1 year ago
Animats|1 year ago
thesagan|1 year ago
(Seriously though, we have so many olig/monopolies I’ve lost count. Sad.)
nojvek|1 year ago
tzumby|1 year ago
willsmith72|1 year ago
one of my favourite songs
https://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/clydelawrence/falsealarms.ht...
unknown|1 year ago
[deleted]
unknown|1 year ago
[deleted]
sirsinsalot|1 year ago
- ticket sale - ticket secondary markets - they own most of the venues - they run the security (showsec) - they run the tour buses and logistics
And so on. So when they raise ticket prices and claim costs are going up, it is their own costs.
They're criminals. No more. No less.
sexy_seedbox|1 year ago
bangaroo|1 year ago
the biggest problem in the industry is not necessarily ticketmaster; it's ticketmaster combined with the gigantic, largely-hidden world of ticket brokers who have an entire ecosystem of tools and tactics (as well as relationships with promoters) that allow them to buy tickets to high demand events with greater rates of success than real customers and then jack up the prices astronomically with literally no oversight. breaking up ticketmaster will do little to stop the insanity of the ever-increasing prices of tickets, nor will it make it any easier to get tickets to an event you want to go to. it will just change the balance of who is likely to screw you.
all the secondary marketplaces basically sell the same inventory and mask that fact by pretending they don't. tons of the inventory that exists on them is just arbitrage (or zone) inventory designed to trap you into paying way more than face value for a seat you can't even choose. there's an entire cottage industry (enabled by a little-known player called ticketnetwork) of websites that walk a fine line of pretending to be the official box offices for venues trying to confuse and trap consumers into paying over face value for tickets. the pricing models on the secondary markets (and this includes ticketmaster) are basically designed to obfuscate the fact that they're all selling the same inventory and either boost the upfront cost and reduce fees or show you a cut-rate price for the ticket and then make it up with fees.
i totally agree that it is a Net Good that ticketmaster does not control the venue, the promoter, and the primary sale of the ticket. making it easier for venues to shop around for ticket providers is a Good Thing. but without broader market regulation, the fundamental problem won't get any better.
edit: just to explain this a little further, the fact that the secondary marketplaces aren't the sellers is really the thing that makes everything so complex. the people who control the prices of the tickets on the secondary marketplace aren't the big players (stubhub, seatgeek, etc.) but the brokers who then broadcast their inventory at prices _they_ set to all the marketplaces simultaneously. there's not really an opportunity for competition in this space - brokers actively collude (there's a big paid forum called shows on sale where they all talk about upcoming ticket onsales and trade presale codes and intel for getting tickets.) because of this, "enabling more competition" won't change prices past the time that the primaries sell through their inventory, and the brokers will always have an edge when it comes to gobbling that up.
busterarm|1 year ago
Bloating|1 year ago
unknown|1 year ago
[deleted]
pianoben|1 year ago
SSLy|1 year ago
trellos|1 year ago
mattmaroon|1 year ago
First, you have the venue. The venue has an owner. This may be the owner of the sports team who plays there, a company that's entirely unrelated to the venue, a city or other government entity, or whoever else. *
Then you have the show you are buying a ticket for. This show may be a sports team, or it may be a concert or other live act. If a sports team it's probably got the same owner as the venue, but if a concert or other live act you have...
Promoters. Promoters rent the venue, pay for the show (i.e. they pay the band their fee to come play), sell the tickets, staff all the parts the venue doesn't, and pocket the difference. The promoter takes a risk, in that if they pay Major Act $1m and spend $500k on marketing/the venue/staffing and nobody shows up, they lose $1.5m. The band and venue still get paid.
The ticket platform. This platform sells the tickets for the event and adds their service fee. That service fee is generally used in part to pay the venue for the exclusive rights to sell tickets at the venue to the venue owner. That is both obviously valuable (fans can either pay your fee whatever it is or not go) and an obvious monopoly (if there were two ticket platforms selling for the same event the same seat would likely get sold twice sometimes).
Where this gets dicey: Live Nation (which owns Ticket Master) is both the biggest promoter and a ticket selling platform. Both by far. In fact they pay for exclusive rights to more than 80% of large venues. Most states only have a few venues that can do major acts (20,000+ seats), and a major act has essentially no alternative but to either play Live Nation venues, or play smaller evenues where independent promoters will pay them smaller fees.
Artists hate this system because it gouges their fans and arguably reduces their rates (there isn't a thriving market of promotors because most of them can't even use most big venues) but since Pearl Jam lost trying to break it up 30 years ago (when they were separate entities and TicketMaster had just as big a monopoly as now) they've not bothered to sue. Fans hate this system because they get gouged coming and going. It works well for Live Nation and the venues, obviously, though the venues still would be fine as they have very little competition. In my area there are two viable venues in the summer for a 25,000 person concert and one in the winter, and we're bigger than most.
Live Nation can use the vertical integration (they get both the promoter's share of the ticket revenue and the ticketing fee) to buy up most venues. And by buy up I mean either pay for exclusive contracts too, or just purchase outright.
It's been pretty clearly in violation of anti-trust laws for decades. TicketMaster before the merger and the combined entity now. I don't know how they've gotten away with it for so long, and they should undo the merger they never should have allowed to begin with.
*Unrelated but interesting: the venue also sells the rights to services inside the venue, like merchandise and, most lucratively, food and beverage. Third parties buy the rights to sell all of the food and drinks for very large sums. So a venue owner is responsible for relatively little of the work that goes on inside the venue. Someone else sets up the shows, pays for everything, sells the tickets, sells the food and drinks, etc.
sleepybrett|1 year ago
thrownaway561|1 year ago
Kwinnoble10|1 year ago
[deleted]
maxclark|1 year ago
ofslidingfeet|1 year ago
2OEH8eoCRo0|1 year ago
fsckboy|1 year ago
you want to solve the problem of airline tickets, let people resell their tickets to other travellers.
harimau777|1 year ago
triceratops|1 year ago
paxys|1 year ago
calgoo|1 year ago
realce|1 year ago
Considering it's an antitrust suit, the answer should be self-evident.
wvenable|1 year ago
Because the venues are locked into exclusive contracts with Ticketmaster. This is why them being a monopoly is bad.
Many bands in the 90s attempted to work around the system and they all ultimately failed.
freedomben|1 year ago
wly_cdgr|1 year ago
edit: it's a joke y'all, obviously they got great tickets with those family and Ivy League connections
zer00eyz|1 year ago
If the DOJ breaks up live nation the only group who gets screwed is the consumer. The sort of artist who is big enough to use live nation also wants a pay day for going on tour. They want the door, they want to sell their merch, they want a cut of the 20$ beer you buy. There might be 1 or 2 artist left who dont want to see you gouged on the ticket but that might not even be true any more.
Liven nation goes away. The venues are going to remain as a single company, the concessions are going to cost just as much. Ticketing might be phone/app only.
Every concert will turn into an auction. Want to get in front of the line. Pay 100 bucks to join a fan club. Want to cut that line, pay a 1000' bucks for a meet and greet and decent seats. Other wise wait, and bid. And that bidding is going to be ugly...
Fans are an interesting group of people. They tend to think with their heart and not with their head.... Dont believe me, we were selling hats and shirts at concerts long before video games. If you're willing to pay 5 bucks for a virtual good then 50 for a tshrit doesn't seem bad.
darkwizard42|1 year ago
Today we see Ticketmaster adding numerous fees and using anti-competitive venue and artist lock-in to avoid the industry having competition.
I have been to over 100 concerts in the last 2 years and I can't say I have noticed any additional value or ease by using my tickets through Ticketmaster (I actually use DICE a lot which at least has a simple resale process for FV and shows full cost)
Reason077|1 year ago
This is true, of course, but the rest of your claims are pretty speculative. Big bands were touring long before the TicketMaster monopoly became a thing.
A competitive marketplace benefits both suppliers (ie: the bands) as well as consumers. Why wouldn't a band want to play several ticketing companies off against each other to see who can offer them the best deal? It's also not in a band's best interest to rip off their own fans: they want to keep tickets cheap enough to make sure that the stadiums get filled.
In Europe there is a much more competitive market in the ticketing/events space, where LiveNation/Ticketmaster competes against multiple big players like Eventim, AXS, See Tickets, as well as innumerable secondary and resale-market ticketing companies like Viagogo/Stubhub, DICE, Ticketswap, etc. And there's certainly no shortage of big bands on tour.
shae|1 year ago
rrrrrrrrrrrryan|1 year ago
bombcar|1 year ago
Actually allowing auctions for tickets might make it so they can make money directly and not bother ... .ahahaha I can't even write it.
volleygman180|1 year ago
In that case, that is a better future for consumers, because right now, Platinum Pricing is where we really get screwed.
op00to|1 year ago
hn_throwaway_99|1 year ago
Besides, in my experience, I've seen that artists generally don't actually want this (at least solely), because they want their concerts to be populated by passionate fans as opposed to just rich fucks that tend to be more boring as audience members. Don't a bunch of artists have deals where longtime active members in their fan clubs get first access to tickets so that they don't have to pay more on scalper sites?
bonestamp2|1 year ago
1. I thought scalping was illegal? Maybe that has changed, or maybe there's a big loophole, but most of the big ticketing apps have essentially legalized scalping and they even have conventions for their "partners" (scalpers) where they entertain them and teach them how to buy and sell more tickets. Since the ticketing apps take massive fees on each ticket, more secondary sales benefits the ticketing company even more.
2. If scalping is still illegal, there needs to be a limit on the price hike for secondary sales. Clearly, someone who bought 50 tickets to a concert was not planning to use them all. This is a scalper. Since they could create many different accounts, it's hard to determine who is a scalper and who isn't. Either way, if you can't go to the concert and you want to resell them, then a max increase for your time to relist the tickets is fair for everyone.
3. There needs to be a limit on service fees. There's no reason why the service fee for selling an online ticket should be $50 PER TICKET. Sure, it's not always that high, but that's how high I've seen it in the past couple years. I can ship a cell phone across the country in 5 days for $5 and it is profitable for the service provider. There's no reason the efforts to furnish a digital ticket should cost more than that. It's clearly a hidden fee that is there as an additional profit center.
4. Not only do the ticket primary ticketing companies own the primary sales, they also own the secondary sales. So, for example, they can take a $30 fee PER TICKET on the primary sales and then they also get that $50 PER TICKET fee on the secondary sale of each same ticket. Then if that ticket gets sold again, they can get another $50 PER TICKET. It's absolutely insane.
5. Most major venues have exclusive deals with the major ticketing companies. So, if a large band/artist wants to play at a large venue and they don't want to charge their fans huge fees or allow scalping, they have no choice -- that venue has signed a deal and the artist has to use the venue's ticketing partner.
6. Some tickets aren't sent until just days before the event. If I bought tickets today, and they're charging me a $50 digital ticket fee, those tickets should be available to me immediately. Again, I can ship a cell phone across the country in 5 days for $5, there's no reason digital tickets should be withheld for months when a $50 fee was paid.
7. There's no transparency. Since it's so obscene, it's time for transparency. At a minimum, I should be able to see how many tickets for each event the person I'm buying the tickets from has sold in the past year.
I know there are more issues, these are just the ones off the top of my head.