Ticketmaster changes policy, no longer offering refunds on postponed shows | Hacker News Reader

Ticketmaster changes policy, no longer offering refunds on postponed shows

metalinjection.net

173 pointsfortran77116 comments

This policy is against California law:

California BPC 22507: "The ticket price of any event which is canceled, postponed, or rescheduled shall be fully refunded to the purchaser by the ticket seller upon request. Any local jurisdiction may require a ticket seller to provide a bond of not more than fifty thousand dollars ($50,000) to provide for any refunds that may be required by this section." (Added by Stats. 1986, Ch. 378, Sec. 1.)

Ticketmaster is based in California. IANAL and don't know how this law might apply to events that are held elsewhere.

Same for Australia. You need your government to protect you from this kind of terrible behaviour.

That isn't clear-cut, at least not in NSW. The department of Fair Trading set up a series of pages which can be summarised by the quote "if the event is cancelled due to government restrictions, this impacts your rights under the consumer guarantees", followed by a plea to businesses to be nice (ha).

https://www.fairtrading.nsw.gov.au/resource-library/publicat...

Just as Uber doesn't provide transport, Ticketmaster doesn't sell tickets. They characterize themselves a broker, someone facilitating sales between "Event Providers" and customers. They will pass the responsibility to concert organizers.

A lawyer would describe most "Event Providers" as judgment proof, ie too poor to be worth a lawsuit. These aren't the rockstars nor their touring companies. The event provider is the local organization who rents the venue and manages the individual concert. They are all currently shut down, employees laid off, and are likely talking to bankruptcy experts.

For example: Vancouver just cancelled its jazz festival. That festival's "event organizer" is the "Coastal Jazz & Blues Society" ... a listed non-profit. There is no blood in that stone.

Yes, I just shared this tidbit as I thought it might be helpful.

For most people, chargebacks are probably the best recourse. I've already initiated one for a festival I was supposed to attend later this spring which was cancelled outright with no refunds offered.

This is true is some circumstances but isn't universally true. Ticketmaster is part of Live Nation which both owns venues and runs tours including those in California.

So is this an attempt to isolate the responsible parties across hundreds of smaller legal entities?

Try suing Live Nation. Each tour will be spun up as a separate production, a standalone legal entity, specifically to limit such liability. Same goes with the artists, who don't work for Live Nation but rather provide their services via their own personal services companies.

Also IANAL, but its my understanding (at least under common law here in Canada) that the doctrine of privity of contract should apply here. Since the ticket purchaser only has a contract with Ticketmaster/Live Nation they should not be able to sue the 3rd party event provider, and rather are only left with the option to sue Live Nation.

They are on top of that. The purchaser does agree a contract with Ticketmaster as outlined in the "Terms of Use". It even has a Who You are Buying From section. So there are at least two contracts. One with the broker to provide the tickets, and another between the organizer and the customers as embodied in the "admit one" physical/electronic ticket. A Canadian court isn't going to destroy one agreed contract and ball it up under another.

https://help.ticketmaster.com/s/article/Purchase-Policy

"Who You Are Buying From: Ticketmaster acts as the agent to those who provide events, such as venues, teams, artist representatives and fan clubs, promoters and leagues ("Event Providers"). We generally sell tickets on behalf of our clients including artists, teams, venues, and promoters, though in some rare instances we may own a small number of tickets as part of our services contract with the individual client."

They won't be "too poor to be worth a lawsuit" if they have all the proceeds of the ticket sales, and haven't had to pay the artists.

My guess is Ticketmaster simply doesn't care. It's a cost of doing business for them.

Six years from now, 400,000 people will get postcards in the mail telling them that they're part of a class action settlement over this.

The class action lawyers will get second houses with third boats.

The lawyers on Ticketmaster's side will get nice bonuses for saving the company money.

The 50,000 people who actually responded to the postcard will get 53¢ each.

Ha! They'll be lucky if they get a postcard!

For years I've been getting emails, unsolicited, that have links ("Click here") that point at the likes of "www.The-XYZ-Company-class-action-settlement-for-real.com".

Are these legitimate? I have no way of knowing, since I'm not dumb enough to click them, and wouldn't trust what randos in forums say about those links. And the $4.44 settlement promises [0] do nothing to mitigate the possible ramifications of clicking through a possible phishing attempt.

[0] These settlements are always so worthless.

I have never gotten one of those that was spam. One of the ones I got was the apple google Facebook etc. wage suppression settlement. Got like 20k from that one. Dunno what would have happened if I had ignored it but it could hardly have been better than what did happen. I recommend checking those links out to see if they are legit. Just my 2c tho.

If you've never gotten a big payout from a class action it may simply reflect that you have not been in a class that was seriously injured by a wealthy company. Which isn't that surprising in a way. Companies do generally try to avoid injuring people severely, because if they don't they'll quickly be sued out of business.

> The class action lawyers will get second houses with third boats.

With money from TicketMaster. People scoff at the size of class action payouts to individuals, but if you're looking to deter bad behavior, the total money extracted is what matters.

The problem is incentives. For example, maybe TicketMaster screwed the public out of $50 million, but the lawyers are willing to settle for $10 million, of which they take home $3 million and the public distributes the rest. It's not necessarily fair and the public doesn't necessarily have an alignment of interest with the lawyers.

Ok but you are just making up fake numbers

I was the class representative for a class action suit against Sharp. When the lawyers agreed to a settlement I had the option to turn it down, but they warned me that they didn’t think they could get anything else out of them and that we’d probably lose at trial. I’m not sure what would have happened if I said no, but I heeded their advice.

The lawyers got a lot, I got a little, and everyone else got even less. From what I remember the judge presiding over the case decides how the money is split. It did end up costing Sharp a fair amount though, so that’s nice.

There are 2 other options: 1. Small claims court 2. Filing complain with California Department of Consumer Affairs

Or just do a credit card chargeback.

Small claims court is useful. They either have to pay up or show up in court, to start with. Paying up is usually cheaper. Not showing up means instant judgement for the party that shows up.

Ya but I wouldn't be surprised if the Ticketmaster TOS that you sign (click) makes you give up your suing rights in favor of arbitration or worse.

Actually I hope they do, because an arbitration DDOS will cause them much more pain than a case action.

Then everyone affected should file for an arbitration.

>The 50,000 people who actually responded to the postcard will get 53¢ each.

Based off of past TicketMaster lawsuits, they'll probably just get ticketmaster coupons.

Better than 10% off Zappos.

Less so - you can actually use the 10% coupon on Zappos. I had a huge number of credits for free concerts after the last big Ticketmaster settlment and I never once found an actual event that I could use the credit for, despite looking unceasingly. The whole thing is a joke.

I would love to see the rate of redemption on those credits. I don’t know a single person who managed to use their “free tickets”.

I'm sure Ticketmaster knows this is illegal. They probably weighed their options and saw:

1) refund every ticket as required and run out of money immediately

2) do whatever they can to have some operating capital, and maybe continue existing until summer 2021-ish when live music is once again legal, then deal with a lawsuit in a time when courts are once again operating

I loathe Ticketmaster, so #1 seems fine to me, but I get their decision as a business. Honestly even #2 seems like a hail mary.

It's not legal for Ticketmaster to retroactively change their policy on old bookings. Unfortunately many other entities are misbehaving in a similar manner. (For example way.com is performing similar shenanigans by changing their policy on March 25th and then claiming that their new policy applies to all reservations after February 25th.)

Make sure to keep your rights in mind when companies misbehave:

1. You can submit a negative review online

2. You can file a credit card chargeback

3. You can submit a complaint to your attorney general

4. You can sue them in small claims court

Other key note: Do not accept gift cards or credit for future bookings. A refund by definition is cash and that credit will be worthless when those companies declare bankruptcy shortly.

*3. a) You can submit a complaint to your attorney general. b) You can submit a complaint to the attorney general of __________, the State that Ticketmaster is incorporated in (I'm unable to find which State this is at the moment, anyone?). and c). You can submit a complaint to the attorney general of the State that the venue is in.

SEC filings? Looks like Delaware based on the 10-K.

b) Delaware. You're looking for Live Nation Entertainment, Inc. File Number: 4009151

Good luck with the chargeback. I tried to open one with Amex online and it was insta-denied with a note to the effect that I needed to work it out with Ticketmaster myself. I'm hoping Amex phone support is willing to work with me, whenever I make it through.

Ticketmaster's phone support tells you to open a live chat, then hangs up on you. When you open a live chat you get a canned response that the show is postponed and to go away until it's either canceled or rescheduled... then auto ends chat.

If nothing else, I can at least enjoy the minor irony that is getting fucked by the machine over a few Rage Against the Machine tickets.

I am not a lawyer, but I believe you can sue Amex in small claims court as well for not doing due diligence on a chargeback request.

You can sue almost anybody anywhere for anything. Whether you'll prevail on your claims is another question. What makes you think that such a lawsuit would prevail? E.g. have you read amex's terms and did they agree there to arbitrate disputes unconditionally? Or is there a law you're aware of that requires them to?

Unless you happen to be in the state of their HQ, Amex could have any such suit removed to federal court (in which there is no small claims) under diversity jursdiction, which would suddenly make it painfully expensive (compared to small claims) to pursue even if it had merit.

Thanks for the heads up. I'll be avoiding Amex from now on.

Stories like this almost certainly exist for Visa and Mastercard too. The set of credit card companies that have no instances of an event like that is null. So if you want to avoid any credit card company where someone has had a bad chargeback experience, you're just not going to be able to use credit cards.

To note, Amex is both a payment processor and a card issuer - Visa/MC aren't card issuers, so chargebacks aren't decided by them, they're decided by the issuing bank.

Amex has by far the best record for customers wrt chargebacks. Most companies I start do not even accept Amex for this reason. I had contracts with them in the past where we were not even allowed to fight chargebacks in the first year of the account.

Amex? I thought the only benefit for using them is that they were always siding with the customer.

When you open a chargeback case with Amex there’s a question specifically along the lines of “have you attempted to resolve this with the merchant?” They won’t start a case without it. After you affirm that you have attempted resolution with the merchant they ask for a summary. That’s where you’d list the times and substance of your (attempted) contact with the merchant. Neither condition is onerous or impractical. Did you do both of those things?

After the due diligence I’ve never heard of a case where Amex didn’t side with the consumer.

Yes, the described interaction with TM went down prior to contacting Amex, and was relayed to Amex. The form originally submitted for the online dispute detailed that, but the dispute was still instantly denied.

There is very clearly a relationship between Amex and TM where TM is receiving preferential treatment, as TM transactions no longer even show a dispute option online.

Fair enough. That is noteworthy than. Id only disputed a few travel related charges myself and had the stereotypical positive experience.

This is completely unsurprising. Ticketmaster's entire business model seems to be monopolizing ticket sales and then gouging the consumer, so one last stick in the eye from them seems in character.

Ticketmaster going under would be a good thing for users.

I would say it would be a great thing. It’s insane that monopolies like Ticketmaster have been allowed to control entire markets and charge whatever they want and do whatever they want because consumers have no alternative.

You could not go to concerts. That is the alternative.

Yea, and if you didn't like Standard Oil, you could just not own a car (or factory).

That's not the same. The price to get into, for example, a Drake concert is determined not by Drake, but by how much people are willing to pay to see Drake.

If the total cost, including all fees and taxes, is more then you want to pay, then don't buy tickets.

Don't blame Ticketmaster for the high price to see Drake in concert, blame Drake fans!

But if the Drake concert is cancelled, or re-scheduled, then do a chargeback.

You won't have an alternative with whatever replaces Ticketmaster because they don't have a monopoly on anything. Any venue putting on a show has no particular reason to use TM outside it providing value to them. There's no lock-in. Hell, there's anti-lock-in. If a venue bucks the trend and doesn't use TM customers will cheer.

Well they'll cheer until they realize why everyone chooses TM. Their competition isn't any cheaper and has an even worse customer service. Seriously, I got tickets to a Luke Bryan concert and had to use some no-name ticket service and their "customer service" was a phone number with a full voicemail and was only open Tues-Thurs 8-4 PM. I just checked again and they have since switched to TM.

Honestly just call the box-office. It's rare for TM to have an exclusivity contract and most places will just charge you the sticker price and mail/will-call the tickets since it's all the same to them.

>There's no lock-in. Hell, there's anti-lock-in. If a venue bucks the trend and doesn't use TM customers will cheer.

That's not true. Live Nation runs many big name tours and will (allegedly) avoid venues that don't use Ticketmaster.

If you as a venue use something other than TM, you can lose future TM run shows if there are comparable venues in your area.

They are a mafia monopoly in the most classical sense.

For starters answer the question 'why everyone uses Ticketmaster'?

What's the value again?

Because there is no obvious value-creating reason.

Live Nation owns 200 venues, and 300 major artists. With enough control over the value chain, you have to pay their tax, or go out of business as the artists they control - or other artists they can bully - avoid your venues entirely.

Their power is entirely based on anti-competitive practice - they don't actually do anything of real merit.

Plainly 'selling tickets' is not hard.

For every real person explaining this, there are two questionable posts like this: https://www.quora.com/How-is-Ticketmaster-allowed-to-have-a-...

Well, we (the people) are the ones who keep those thieves in business. They could as well be printing money. Once this covid19 blows over, we (the people) need to remember who was naughty and who was nice, and send the naughty to oblivion. Because if we forget Ticketmaster (what an asshole of a name) will go back to its routine, overcharging etc.

I have never purchased a ticket from them and never will. It is a matter of principle. If we all do the same they will either go bust (let's remember to treat similarly the Ticketmaster 2.0 that will spring up under a different name)(same tactics, different front cover).

Ticketmaster's business model is to take the reputation hit and allow venues and performers to increase fees. This specific move is probably driven by greedy venues. https://stubcrew.com/the-ugly-truth-about-ticketmaster-fees/ talks about it more.

EDIT: and the downvotes here is probably evidence that they succeeded

Agreed, they're one of several "lightning rod" organizations. They exist to deflect hate, while everyone profits. Same thing with academic textbooks. Book publishers are lightning rods, allowing collages/departments/professors to avoid the reputation hit.

If you want to know who is responsible for a bad thing just answer one question: Who has the power to fix it? For example performers/venues could use a non-ticketmaster intermediary, and college professors/schools could assign a non-$300 textbook, but neither do because they gain substantially from the arrangement (either financially or in terms of free labor in the textbook example).

So if you "hate" ticketmaster or textbook publishers, you're playing right into their game and the problem will never be fixed. You have to pressure actual decision makers, not lightning rods.

You can’t fix people, only incentives.

> For example performers/venues could use a non-ticketmaster intermediary,

It's not so easy. Doing so can lock them out of business with ticketmaster.

> If you want to know who is responsible for a bad thing just answer one question: Who has the power to fix it? For example performers/venues could use a non-ticketmaster intermediary

Is this actually true? I thought Pearl Jam(?) tried this many moons ago when Ticketmaster was far less powerful and eventually caved in because it was so stupidly difficult to coordinate all the idiots infesting the music event business.

Promoters have exclusive deals with ticketing agencies, and venues have exclusive deals with promoters.

Groups who choose to avoid them, like ZZ Top did for years, have limited venue options.

This comment is correct. Here's a Freakonomics Radio investigation into Ticketmaster: https://freakonomics.com/podcast/live-event-ticket-market-sc...

I think Ticketmaster owns a lot of the venues, and the ones they don't, probably have onerous contractual terms.

Not sure why you're getting downvoted (unfortunately people seem to use this as a proxy for "I disagree with you" or, worse, "you contradict my position"; here have an upvote) but you are 100% correct. All those fees Ticketmaster charges, the artist (and venue?) gets a cut off. Ticketmaster is the lightning rod here but everyone is complicit.

The fees aren't my issue with Ticketmaster. I'm well aware of the misdirection they provide.

My issue is with every aspect of actually using Ticketmaster. Most competitors have much nicer UX; Ticketmaster is a bunch of legacy cruft held together with duct tape and prayers.

It wasn't always this way. My college job in the early 90's was at a record store that had a Ticketmaster machine. This was a CRT terminal with custom impact (not dot-matrix!) ticket printer, talking to their central computer over a leased line. They paid for all of that with a $2.25 charge on each ticket sold. And somehow today, they're charging you even more to print the ticket yourself at home, on your equipment, on your internet connection, on your paper.

I've heard from some large event organizers that EventBrite is taking similar measures: delaying payouts to event organizers until the event has concluded. I heard from one organizer that they were told by EventBrite that they were not going to see a payout until 2021 for their Labor Day 2020 event.

If that's true, it could be an excuse to financialise the money. Let it earn 5% while you don't have to pay it out. Or worse, use it for opex in a big ole ponzi scheme style busines!

According to this, as 'primary', Ticketmaster typically holds the money until after the show which puts them in a better position than Stubhub...

"Here’s how the money works in concerts: ... Meanwhile, the “primary” ticketing companies associated with the venues the artist will play sell tickets over several days of presales (artist password, credit card, Facebook or Spotify password, venue or radio station password) during which, hopefully, many of the tickets are sold. Finally, the remaining tickets are released to the general public sale. With luck the show sold out. With a lot of luck, demand was so high that dynamic pricing kicked in, and the ticket prices were moved up continuously over the course of the days tickets were sold. In almost every case, the primary market charges a fee on every ticket sold. Typically primary markets don’t pay the artist until the show is played, the money raised from selling the tickets is held."

https://www.ticketnews.com/2020/04/opinion-stubhubs-urgent-p...

Although Ticketmaster offers a seemingly simple service, thousands of integrations with venues and the people who create events make them extremely difficult to unseat.

I don't know of many credible competitors besides Big Neon (https://www.bigneon.com/), founded by a former c-founder of Ticketfly.

Years ago, I was working on an idea and interviewed venue owners to understand what gaps their were. At the time, Ticketmaster gave them the cc processing equipment for free and took a smaller % in exchange for exclusivity for years at a time. After hearing that dozens of times at big and small venues, I moved onto another idea.

How can this be legal? They changed the terms and conditions after you agreed to them and provided you no way to opt out of the change?

Even if it isn't legal are people really going to assert their rights in court?

That's one of the major problems with having weak consumer protections in the US. If this happened in one of several European countries ticketmaster could be fined, but in the US each citizen needs to sue in small claims or will be forced into arbitration that may cost more than the claim is worth (essentially nullifying their rights, or losing money to assert them).

Arguing that your rights have been violated with their customer services is a waste of time.

While less efficient than regulatory action, the US does have a mechanism for this: class-action lawsuits.

Class action lawsuits are just another method of regulatory capture. The settlement from the last Ticketbastard class action was a $2 discount on expedited shipping and a voucher for a free show of your choice, to be chosen from an empty list.

> YOU AGREE TO WAIVE ANY RIGHT TO A JURY TRIAL OR TO PARTICIPATE IN A CLASS ACTION LAWSUIT OR CLASS-WIDE ARBITRATION.

https://help.ticketmaster.com/s/article/Terms-of-Use?languag...

What we need is a law invalidating contracts with blanket requirements to give up consumer protections and legal recourse against companies

That's fine. 1000 summary judgements in small claims court will be expensive for Ticketmaster.

To be fair, so is 1,000 arbitrations.

Arbitration is a terrible concept that needs to be outlawed forever

Arbitration clauses, for sure. But not the whole concept.

Although this could be a blessing in disguise. Maybe the fine people over at FairShake and Keller Lenkner can take this on like they did for DoorDash[0]?

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22798118

Companies need to be careful with these clauses. Postmates is deep trouble because thousands of employees actually demanded arbitration, and now Postmates is trying to get a class action instead of thousands of arbitrations.

Arbitration aren't the get out of jail card many organizations believe them to be.

It seems that the issue exposed by DoorDash and Postmates is easily resolved by inserting volume discount language into the contract with the arbitrator. A competitor to DoorDash's arbitrator has already started making that sales pitch. It's possible the fees could be discounted for these existing disputes, too, though perhaps doing so during the pendency of a dispute might be risky--politically, if not legally. In any event, I wouldn't expect this loophole to stay open for long. Occasions for such schadenfreude aren't usually repeated.

As a European who semi-regularly runs into this sort of issue (companies not upholding their own terms of service[2]), who in these several European countries could fine them? Are you talking of local market authorities like the Dutch ACM[1]?

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Netherlands_Authority_for_Cons...

[2] Recent examples are my registrar locking me out of my domain's DNS management (the TOS says I will be given access as part of the service) until I agree to some third party privacy policy that basically wants carte blanche data processing; and a peer to peer lending site suspended withdrawals without a provision for denying me my money in the TOS (unless they are insolvent or are physically unable to reach their keyboards, basically). Other than taking them to court and causing a whole lot of trouble for myself (as the damages amount to peanuts), I'm not sure what options I have here and the power relation feels a tad imbalanced.

I wouldn't be particularly upset if Ticketmaster continue to pay the band as if they'd actually played the show.

I'd bought 3 concert tickets for shows that got cancelled due to the lockdown, for a total of a few hundred $. I can listen to the music online, but I know that musicians make much more money from touring, so that's my way to support them.

As long as the performers get paid, I don't mind, because half the reason I go to concerts is just to pay the bands I like. The other half is bragging rights to tell friends which bands I saw live.

Credit card chargebacks are going to put that company out of business.

I've always wanted to do a chargeback!

IMHO, this is the ONLY way to get Ticketmaster to revert its policy. Refusing refunds on postponements was likely a stopgap measure as the ticket sales were likely forwarded on to the venues/promoters on a rolling basis and Ticketmaster is holding insufficient funds to immediately issue blanket refunds.

I also suspect Ticketmaster does not have the manpower, nor the contractual ability to pass along a tsunami of chargeback losses on to the venues so it will raise the alarm bells very quickly if there are 100k new chargebacks this month. Not only will that freeze millions of dollars in revenues it will also cost a couple million dollars in chargeback fees.

Bonus! It also has the potential to mess with their CC processor discounts as they can get in big trouble for high chargeback numbers.

My bank refused, as their policy is to not do chargebacks for postponed events. (PayPal also denied my dispute claim.)

Can you chargeback on the reason that Ticketmaster reneged on their initial terms instead of the postponed event itself?

Not sure, I may try again with that reasoning.

The only good thing Ticketmaster ever did was employ Terry A. Davis.

I'm not a Ticketmaster fan from back in the Pearl Jam days, but I think there's a misunderstanding in a lot of these comments. If you are just the platform that venues use, and someone asks for a refund, it's pretty heavy for the platform to be on the hook for the full cost right now (due to a massive amount of refunds). In the short term it can effect your cashflow (covering refunds to consumers while you try to collect from the venue), and in the long terms it could be a huge loss if you're unable to collect from a significant amount of your venues (money already spent).

In general you probably wouldn't want to hold excessive amounts in reserve from the venues because it could be a huge negative factor for them (money needed to setup the event), but right now with Coronavirus it's gotta be really messing with them.

>If you are just the platform that venues use, and someone asks for a refund, it's pretty heavy for the platform to be on the hook for the full cost right now

So, Ticketmaster should make profit off of distributing tickets for venues and events, but not be responsible for issuing refunds for the tickets they sold?

Seems like that should be part of the risk of operating as a middleman whose sole purpose in existing is to sell something for somebody else, that basically would sell itself however it was being sold while sitting in the middle just sucking up money.

This is why Eventbrite has stopped issuing advanced payouts to venues. Given the increased risk, they need to keep the money on hand for potential refunds. I wonder if Ticketmaster has done something similar.

https://www.eventbrite.com/blog/advanced-payouts-changes-rel...

No doubt. Typically they would hold a reserve based on a risk calculation. This epidemic would have completely invalidated the old math on how much to reserve and I suspect has therefore left a lot of platforms in a shitty position or cash strapped.

Original article this one cites, published four days ago:

https://www.digitalmusicnews.com/2020/04/10/ticketmaster-qui...

The Times covered this on the 8th. The policy didn't change

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/08/arts/music/ticketmaster-r...

Something tells me this is going to increase the amount of chargebacks from customer using credit cards, and from my limited understanding of them I don't see why credit card companies wouldn't accept them, which would damage the reputation of Ticketmaster.

It wouldn't surprise me if this is immediately illegal under EU law, but even if it's not, in my country customers shopping with a credit card are under additional protection since the credit card company is actually the "responsible party", not the merchant, so they would legally have to pay up. Smells like a potential lawsuit in that case between Ticketmaster and any generic credit card company affected by this.

Should I just do a credit card chargeback for an postponed event? Are there any drawbacks? I tried to chat with their customer service and it wouldn't let me because my event wasn't eligible for a refund.

Unless you are a nuisance customer that frequently files chargebacks, there shouldn't be any drawbacks for you. The onus of responsibility lies with the merchant who must provide the processor with sufficient evidence that your claim is fraudulent or unjustified. Which, in this case, almost certainly means you will win the claim and Ticketmaster will lose the funds and be assessed a chargeback fee for the privilege.

A company reneging on their terms seems like a perfect case for a chargeback. They took your money and promised to abide by certain terms and are now changing them retroactively without letting you opt out of the deal and get your money back.

Shameless Plug: It’s still a WIP, and obviously this covid stuff has been hard for us, but my company sellout.io is trying to build a fair alternative that ultimately gives artists the ability to sell tickets directly to fans. Ticketmaster’s rein will end soon.

That’s always going to be a WIP. If artists want to cut out Ticketmaster, they already can, and sometimes do. Ticketmaster exists solely because artists want to charge lots of money but maintain a warm relationship with their fans.

This is not true for artists. 1/3 of all tickets end up on the secondary market, a few of which Ticketmaster owns. This where fans spend a huge amount of money that artists never see. If Ticketmaster is charging a 10% markup in the primary market and a ticket sells for $100, they make $10. If they charge the same percentage in the secondary market (tip: they don’t) they would make $40. That money the artist never has a chance to see. Even though a fan is willing to pay $400, most of it goes to Ticketmaster’s scalpers and Ticketmaster.

Ticketmaster is still around because of anti-competitive practices, not because they’re a lightening rod.

You have a compelling offer to Ticketmaster's free money? Those giant stadiums are likely getting million dollar annual upfront payments for signing exclusive multi-year ticketing deals. Not even the mighty Pearl Jam (in their prime, no less) could beat the hated Ticketmaster.[0]

[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ticketmaster#History

Yes, make more money over a longer period of time, create a better experience for your customers, and be treated well.

Their free money isn’t free, and venues are starting to notice.

Is Ticketmaster the definition of an anti-competetive monopoly that anti-trust laws exist to break up?

From what I can tell based on this post, it is up to the event organizers.

Ticketmaster is corporate cancer that could probably be 90% replaced by a couple folks with a webapp.

Something else to know is that Ticketmaster is happy to list and collect commissions from 3rd party ticket sales, but they excuse themselves from "Ticketmaster Fan Support" policies. Caveat emptor.

Generally speaking, I think blockchain is not a good answer for most things, but this is leading me to consider whether it might be an excellent tool for ticket economics.

Consider: Each ticket is already nearly a contract; making them into smart contracts seems very straightforward. Tickets do not have the "oracle" / "reality capture" problem many block chain applications have - tickets are essentially pure information to start with. Initial ticket sales combined with an aftermarket very closely resemble ICOs and subsequent coin trading.

AFAICT the big stumbling block is the ticket-coin-to-USD conversion; maybe a perfect fit for stable coins? Ah - the other big stumbling block is the UX around ticket redemption; making sure it's convenient, reliable and not exploitable. Hmm.

The _interesting_ part IMO is how this could work with spending money from ticket sales prior to the show; you have proof that you'll make X revenue and could borrow against it, at some rate that already includes risk factors. If you have to cancel your show, refunds are "automatic" as per whatever the smart contract specified, and the risk (borne by the lender) is (is the word?) actualized?

Let’s apply the “do you need blockchain” test: do we need zero trust distributed consensus? No? Then no.

Fair-ish. Issue is that any entity that has free reign to modify the state of the chain can modify the tickets; such as deciding to no longer give refunds.

AFAIK, there are four entities in shows, with varying levels of trust between then: fans, venues, performers, and the ticketing company. (I'm considering ticket redemption are part of "venue"). Some ability to decentrally coordinate without complete trust seems worth exploring at least as a thought experiment.

I'm not saying this definitely is a valid application of block chain, just that it looks more like it could be than anything else I've seen.

That’s what we have legal systems for. Even if there was some technical barrier for modifying contracts, it still doesn’t work. Not sure if there’s a name for the opposite of the oracle problem but on the output side, but the theaters can still just refuse to honor the tickets. Again we’re back to it being all about the actual contract.

Also does every ticket holder run a node? Is that practical? If not, we have the oracle problem at the other end.

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