They also don't let you just print the ticket. I had to pay extra to have a physical ticket snail mailed to me.
Paying 60% of the cost of the product just to help the company continue to justify their existence is freaking ridiculous.
If you look at the fees, often there's a "venue fee" and other ones. They are different per event, but often are similar per tour and per venue... which means it's being set by artists, promoters and venues. It's trivial to show all-in pricing (some events have it turned on, so it's what you actually see on the main page). They don't do so on purpose.
The last couple weeks Paul McCartney went on sale in a few places. At PNC Arena[1], the the prices for standard tickets were as follows[2]:
25.50 + 15.59 = 41.09 (+61%)
65.50 + 18.54 = 84.04 (+28%)
95.50 + 20.41 = 115.91 (+21%)
165.50 + 27.92 = 193.42 (+17%)
250.00 + 39.24 = 289.24 (+16%)
Less than 1,000 tickets of the $65.50 price level were released (and you had to pay $84 to get them). Less than 3,000 of the $95 price level (almost $116 for those) were released.
Now, I'm not sure exactly how you interpret that, but I suspect I know why they put put in a very low price level but didn't stock it with much inventory, and it wasn't to make sure deserving fans got a chance. It does conveniently allow them to to say that brokers grabbed all the cheap inventory in the beginning though...
That's not to say every artist does this. Some provide quite a large amount of low priced tickets, but the trend on that is down, not up, from what I've seen.
1: https://www1.ticketmaster.com/event/2D00551BBC524826
2: Feel free to check for yourself. Use this JS snippet in a developer console from the event page:
_storeUtils.eventJSONData.tickets.filter(offer=>offer.description.match(/Standard Admission/))[0]
.prices.sort((a,b)=>a.amount>b.amount).forEach(pl =>
console.log(`${pl.combinedFees} + ${pl.combinedFees} = ${pl.displayAmountWithFeesTaxes} (+${Math.round((pl.combinedFees/pl.amount)*100)}%)`)
)https://help.ticketmaster.com/s/article/What-kinds-of-fees-c...
In addition to the bumped cost of the ticket, there was a AU$50 - FIFTY FKN DOLLAR - Ticketmaster fee! They’ve sold it, and now to help a scalper sell it again “officially” they’re putting a $50 fee on!
There’s no way I’m giving those dirty thieves that money. I didn’t, and I wrote to my MP to say that something should be done. It’s a fucking disgrace.