Secretly recorded call shows how Live Nation places tickets on resale market

billboard.com

18 points·ericzawo··4 comments

The airline industry prevents resale by demanding a name when booking tickets, and then checking the name matches when you board.

I think that practice is anti-competitive, but the public seems fine with the idea. Why doesn't the music industry do the same?

The answer is right there in the first paragraph of the article - the bands themselves are making money by reselling the tickets above face value.

To use non transferable tickets, the price would need to be increased to the actual price people are willing to pay. This would cause bad PR and outrage.

The price would also have to adjust in a live fashion, so you wouldn't pay the same as the person you're next to. This gives people a bad feeling that they're willing to put up with for something important and not fun like flying, but would decrease their enjoyment of a music event.

They also claim its for security purposes, which I think is almost a complete lie.

In the 1990s we thought Pearl Jam was being silly for trying to bring up an anti-trust lawsuit against Ticketmaster, and the nation had lost it's will after Microsoft's joke of a settlement. In retrospect, that was a real loss. Ticketmaster and Livenation abuse their monopolies to the harm of consumers globally.

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