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Comment by magicalhippo | Hacker News Reader

I'm from (and live in) Norway. Ticketmaster is used for a lot of shows here too, especially the larger venues.

While I wouldn't call them the best thing since sliced bread, overall my experience over the years is that they take my money and give me my tickets.

Today I bought some tickets. I vent to the venue, saw there was a show, clicked on Buy tickets, took me to Ticketmaster, logged on, found ticket, paid via local payment provider[1] (verified on phone, super simple), and I got my tickets on email. All was just a few clicks and over in a couple of minutes.

This is my typical experience. Is US Ticketmaster particularly worse, or am I living in an alternate reality?

Or are there some other aspects that I'm missing?

[1]: https://www.vipps.no/

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Can you describe the fees of those tickets?

Stupid invented fees are what flipped the "never again" switch for me. Every step of the buying process, there'd be a new fee tacked on. You'd get things like "order processing fee, $20, facility fee, $10, service fee, $23, digital copies fee, $10, fee to see what all the fees add up to, $20".

You'd end up spending $120 on a pair of tickets, and $500 on invented fees that any sane person would have a very difficult time justifying.

I just bought a couple of tickets to a small venue, tickets were $26 each (NOK is weak these days) including a fee of $2.25 each, so grand total $52 of which $4.50 total in fees. Checking my card, this is indeed what my card was charged, so no additional hidden fees.

I bought some tickets earlier this year for a mid-sized venue, $44 per ticket including $3.50 in fees each.

I did not select the optional "services" like physical ticket (just eTicket which is e-mail with PDF) or the ticket insurance.

Checking my ticket history (~10 concerts through Ticketmaster last couple of years) it's always been around this 10% in fees. It's comparable to the other ticket vendors other venues use that I've bought from like TicketCo and Tikkio.

edit: I checked Bryan Adams, he's coming to a larger venue next year which also uses Ticketmaster. Only tickets left were the least expensive ones (standing) at $75 per ticket, including a $5 fee.

edit2: Besides Ticketmaster not owning venues as mentioned by sibling reply, I guess a big factor is that, AFAIK, any non-optional fees must be included in the "sticker price" here in Norway. So they can't tack those on later.

I think it's likely that Ticketmaster operates differently in Norway. What you describe sounds reasonable, but what Ticketmaster does in the United States is simply ridiculous.

Ticketmaster is a vertical monopoly in the US. They control all major venues in the country, all ticketing, and resale of that ticjeting. They are awful. I assume they have yet to achieve total market dominance in norway.

Ah yes, they don't own any of the venues I frequent, or any at all that I know of.

I can certainly see them being able to get away with more shenanigans in that case.

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