Justice Department to file antitrust suit against Live Nation
wsj.com
wsj.com
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.
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.
Tickets aren't transferable. Ticket purchasing platform has a marketplace where people can resell tickets to others if they can't attend, and sale price is capped at whatever they paid in the first place. (Or the ticket issuers can partner with something that already exists, like StubHub, and contractually require the price caps.)
Each attendee must present their ID to enter the event. Names must match, no exceptions. I don't love the idea that you can't anonymously attend a concert (by walking up to the ticket counter and paying in cash, assuming any large venues even have box offices anymore), but I think the benefits of this scheme for the majority of purchasers far outweigh that negative.
This isn't hard. It's almost as if someone in the chain likes scalpers...
Those acts are still the minority of things they book. Within maybe 30 miles of where I live, there are probably 15 big venues that house huge acts like that, but hundreds of smaller clubs, event spaces, halls, theaters, etc that use LiveNation. I used to work at a bouncer at a little rock club with like a 250 person capacity and they used them for ticketing.
More likely, the venues don't have much economic incentive, if any, to reduce ticket reselling and scalping.
resellers really don’t enjoy cc charge backs to pile up on their accounts.
Also, in the US, your driver's license has a 2D barcode on the back which encodes your name.
The venue ticket has a QR code or similar which could also encode your name.
They already scan the venue ticket QR code. They could also scan your ID barcode, and beep differently if the names do not match.
Regardless, this already happens: I went to a concert at Chase Center last year, and they were checking everyone's IDs, not even just a random sampling of them. When I went to EDC in Vegas last year, they were checking IDs at the shuttle stops on the strip. I believe they were only doing that for age verification, but if the ID is already out, that can easily turn into identity verification.
They have already built the electronic ticketing and transfer system that would allow them to prevent resale of tickets at a profit, the system is done. They just choose not to use it that way (and I'd guess artists/labels/venus are in on this too -- what the ticketmaster system does make possible is for them all to take a bite of the scalped ticket resale price!)
https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/ticketmaster-resellers-las-...
so. as mentioned above. it's a hard problem to solve. if you think about it purely as a market/exchange then it's not dissimilar to how market-makers, arbitrageurs and HFT systems keep the market "efficient".
there's a good writeup here. https://www.404media.co/why-scalpers-can-get-olivia-rodrigo-...
TicketMaster ~ bookrunner/sponsor; scalper ~ underwriter;
The general population cannot participate in IPOs, just like we cannot buy primary-market tickets to popular shows.
so, it's a hard one to solve because it actually ends up generating more revenue for the promoters/venues and (sometimes) the artists. but the audience, who have the least power in the relationship, get screwed. well, my feeling is we/they get screwed, but many others would say this is "just capitalism".
https://pitchfork.com/news/live-nation-admits-placing-concer...
The venue, often LN, will charge a base rate then everything else goes on top.
There are several other factors at play that lead to higher ticket prices which often comes down to the artist and its tour production being very expensive rather than pure greed
More often than not the deals are worked out on a 70/30 or 80/20 in favour of the artist and split after breaking even on most mutually agreed costs (ads etc), or a bigger artist flat fee which is risky for them.
It’s like a cartel but it’s lead by one “extractor” (front of house, Ticketmaster in this case).
Taking the insurance example you have the "suppliers" (doctors, drug companies and device companies), the "venue" (hospital) and the "extractor" (insurer).
Similarly you have the "suppliers" (musicians), the "venue" (the venue I guess) and the "extractor" (Live Nation and Ticketmaster). No obvious mapping to the record labels, recording studios or (biggest of all) streamers but hopefully some similarities are present.
I feel like Escobar, the Sinaloa Cartel, etc, are much more top-down.
For what it's worth, they refer to themselves as a "syndicate".
CalFAIR charges 2-3x market rate premiums (for similar houses in the same area insured by the companies that own CalFAIR -- this is on top of charging more due to risk), and then refuses to pay out when your house is damaged, engages in lowballing, etc, etc.
Since all the insurance companies that are "competing" against them own stakes in it, the moral hazard should be obvious. Predictably, CalFAIR's market share has been rapidly increasing in recent years. They're supposed to be temporary insurance of last resort, but they've climbed to over 3% market share.
https://sfstandard.com/2023/10/19/california-insurance-crisi...
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.
A venue is more than having a place, it's having everything necessary to handle an immense volume of people gathering, acting, and dispersing from a single location in a safe and orderly fashion.
But to build / buy thousands with a real estate value in the 100s of billions you would need something like a EFT.
That's a 70,000-seat stadium [1][2]. Arenas (5 to 20k) can be built for a few hundred million [3].
Unfortunately, that would mean either nosebleed ticket prices or rationing tickets to fans. The former would earn the fans' ire. The latter reduce the artist's revenue.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SoFi_Stadium
[2] https://uk.sagepub.com/sites/default/files/upm-binaries/5174...
[3] https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/18/business/concert-halls-li...
Ticketmaster: oh the tragedy, our shareholders..they might not get as much profit! housing! think of the homeless! if you build this arena, it will sit dormant 95% of the year, this space could be used to house homeless, so VOTE NO! on question 45 to protect $CITY's homeless!
ABBA actually built their own venue for their ongoing "ABBA Voyage" shows in London[1]. That's a residency, though. I'm not sure about the viability of doing it for a world tour!
It was a hit with their fans, but the problem is that only so many acts have the ability to do so (and as you say - it's actually not in their best fiscal interest, so you're going to self-select even further).
Ticketmaster willingly plays the bad guy role, and makes a fuck ton of money in the process.
That said, the vertical integration it has with Live Nation should be considered a monopoly, and trust-busted as such.
I think the real issue is the limited supply of tickets to the most popular shows. Supply and demand dictates that the prices for these limited goods be very high, yet social norms discourage artists from charging the true market value for their tickets (fans will rebel against their favourite artist for perceived greed). So TM provides an effective reputation-laundering service to the artists and collects a hefty fee for it. If the DoJ were to win their case and succeed in breaking up the TM monopoly then I bet the extra revenue would go to some other ticket brokers, not to the artist or into consumers’ pockets.
Tell me more about how the “TV Service Provider” Xfinity (a subsidiary of Comcast) is separate from the various TV networks run by NBC Universal, LLC (a subsidiary of Comcast).
But then there was a drastic change in approach to anti-trust during the Reagan era:
"Bork argues that the original intent of antitrust laws as well as economic efficiency makes consumer welfare and the protection of competition, rather than competitors, the only goals of antitrust law. Thus, while it was appropriate to prohibit cartels that fix prices and divide markets and mergers that create monopolies, practices that are allegedly exclusionary, such as vertical agreements and price discrimination, did not harm consumers and so should not be prohibited."
"From 1977 to 2007, the Supreme Court of the United States repeatedly adopted views stated in The Antitrust Paradox in such cases as Continental Television, Inc. v. GTE Sylvania, Inc., 433 U.S. 36 (1977), Broadcast Music, Inc. v. CBS, Inc., NCAA v. Board of Regents of the University of Oklahoma, Spectrum Sports, Inc. v. McQuillan, State Oil Co. v. Khan, Verizon v. Trinko, and Leegin Creative Leather Products, Inc. v. PSKS, Inc., legalizing many practices previously prohibited."
https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/1473571/united-states-...
https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/2311543/united-states-...
[0]: https://www.reddit.com/r/interestingasfuck/comments/lcy7zc/a...
Beatport, a service that sells music for DJs, has started doing exactly this sort of nonsense. They now have "exclusive" tracks for twice the price, and I would guess that the artists also get a portion of the increased profits. However, for consumers the only change is less choice and DOUBLE the price. Seems very similar to what ticketmaster is doing. I have no idea if they force artists to make all their tracks exclusive if one is, but no doubt that is the next step.
There has got to be a better solution here as it doesn't seem very reasonable to literally be doubling and tripling prices like this. And at the least, if an artist is going to do that, it should be transparent and not hidden under the guise of an exclusivity.
Then perform smaller venues and ration tickets to your most-devoted fans. Unfortunately, if you do that, it's tough to become a billionaire. (Analogy: wineries. On the 4 x 4 of size and price point, you have wines positioned in each quadrant.)
TicketMaster is, or more accurately its exclusivity requirements are, the root of the problem. But everyone around them--from the municipalities that publicly finance and permit exclusivity deals by these stadiums to the artists who perform at them--are profiting from and complicit in the market failure. (Ethically, not legally.)
If you do that, it's tough to make any money at all. If you're, say, Dave Matthews Band and you have 50,000 people who want to come to each show, and you start saying you'll only play to 1,000 people at a time, the economics start going sideways. The size of the band has to shrink and/or the cost per ticket has to go way up. The secondhand/scalper market sends tickets sky high.
Ticketmaster/LiveNation allows big acts to fill big venues, which (despite how it may feel sometimes) actually makes the show available to more people at a lower price.
There are plenty of 5 to 20k-seat venues that would be fine.
Companies end up bankrupt with your line of thinking. Assuming infrastructure is sufficient for each situation to be profitable is magical thinking.
The point is artists want to have their cake and eat it too. Any artist performing at a stadium could make a solid profit performing at non-TM 5 to 20k-seat arena while charging a similar (or lower) price. They don't because it's more lucrative to perform at a 70,000-seat stadium.
LiveNation is a monopolist. But they also give many market participants cover to charge more without offending their fans.
There you go, magical thinking again.
Nobody in this thread has argued against enforcement.
Right off the bat, exclusivity clauses shouldn't be legal, it's the definition of anti-competitive.
Freedom of association is an essential part of freedom of speech because, in many cases, and as the US Supreme Court has stated, people can engage in effective speech only when they join with others.
The only way you can take this position is IF one of the parties is subject to antitrust action. Which in this case, it is. So we have to trust antitrust!
That being said, I think that is certainly valid to argue for antitrust action to be automatic - so enforcement is not wholly dependent on subjective criteria.
I'd like to see what you think is viable.
I'm not the person you're replying to, but I do live in the US, and unenforceable/illegal contract provisions are pretty common. What is fundamentally different between banning non-compete agreements, and banning exclusivity clauses?
Also I feel like you kinda have it backwards: an exclusivity clause restricts someone's freedom of association. While that's not automatically illegal (since 1A only applies to the government), exclusivity agreements like the ones we're talking about go against the spirit of the idea of freedom of association.
So yes, I'm totally fine with banning exclusivity clauses in contracts (maybe not in all cases; I'm sure there are times when they might be appropriate), and I don't think there's really any conflict with 1A. IANAL, of course.
The 1st amendment is not absolute if there's competing laws against it. Which i believe is your point, or at least helps your argument as you will see below.
>>> unenforceable/illegal contract provisions are pretty common.
Agreed, for the same reason that it is illegal to sell your body parts. This is because the illegal provisions (freely entered between consenting adults) would be in direct conflict with another established law, and the constitutionality of said law would have been brought up in front of (higher) courts to debate whether X type of association does not run afoul of other rights.
>>> What is fundamentally different between banning non-compete agreements, and banning exclusivity clauses?
There's nothing fundamentally different except the former is now law, under the 13th amendment [1]. The latter has yet to do so. So you could be correct. The 13th amendment is a better pillar vs going strictly against the 1st amendment for (reasons).
[1] https://www.jurist.org/commentary/2023/02/rebecca-zietlow-13...
Freedom of association like... an exclusivity clause?
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.
> 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.
The artists aren't upset with their take. If they are it's because their own management has their hands deep in pockets, or just plain suck. Live Nation knows dam well who butters the bread.
The history of Live Nation is that it is the decedent of bill graham presents. You might want to go look at the history of bill. There is a statement about his funeral, and it having the longest lines of stretched black limos in SF history. It's probably true. Bill made everyone money, himself included as a "promoter" and every penny of that came from fans.
The music industry has been doing its own version of pay to win / loot boxes since the 70's. When they break up LN (if?) its just going to get worse as the greed is gonna just be right out in the open. The lesson of the last decade is that you dont need LN/TM to cover it up. Artist given choice will make tickets non transferable and just auction them off... the new starting bid will be the same as the current all in price.
It's greedy fucks all the way down.
P.S. As I have said elsewhere in this thread, I speak from having spent a few years working in the industry. Find someone who works in "music" like that and it's the same nonsense as game devs, long hours and shit money cause people are passionate...
That's fine, though, and arguably better. Right now the consensus among concert-goers seems to be, "man, this is all expensive, but looks like I'm getting screwed by [TicketMaster | the venue]; I bet $ARTIST thinks this sucks too". For artists who want to charge an arm and a leg to see them perform live, pricing a lot of people out, that ire should be directed at the artists, where it truly belongs.
And maybe that drives some fans away, and that's what artists need to see happen. But I don't believe that all artists who play ball with LN/TM are greedy like that. Certainly some are, and maybe even most are. But those who are not... well, they should be able to play in huge venues across the country and charge less for admission if they want to.
https://harrystylestour.us/vip/
Chris Brown is 1000 bucks too... (you can find that link with ease, and the funny blow back)
I know you're looking at that and thinking "these must not be that popular".
The concert industry has been harpooning whales since the 90's and the internet only made it more lucrative.
>> But I don't believe that all artists who play ball with LN/TM are greedy like that.
Touring, merch, licensing... These are the ways artists make money. Music is basically free. Price is a function of popularity, no one is going to leave money on the table, ever.
>> charge an arm and a leg to see them perform live, pricing a lot of people out ... be able to play in huge venues across the country and charge less for admission if they want to
This is from 89, from a mid level artist at a small venue: https://archive.is/moWdH
Sometimes the prices are so dam high that you only even care about half the venue and then you paper over the rest... It's kind of common for a large venue to just get asses in seats and sell beer and tshrits if they can.
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".
Venue owners have a choice of ticket sellers, artists do not.
If you don't like what a concert ticket price costs, don't go.
Yep, that's what I do.
What you are failing to address is the artists being harmed by not participating in this 'fleecing' scheme.
https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/pearl-jam-taki...
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?
>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.
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.
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.
They crushed all of the meaningful competition that long ago. Even breaking the company up into parts wouldn't suddenly fix the industry.
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.
> On January 25, 2010, the U.S. Justice Department approved the merger pending certain conditions.
It's just using their vertical integration and monopoly to move as much money onto their books and increase ticket prices and margins.
Shady.
move as much money onto their books and increase ticket prices and margins
Or ticket prices and fees will stay the same, and artists' share of fees will go up (it's not zero today).
All of these price increases have margin, which goes to Live Nation in the end.
TM will then say "ticket prices are increasing due to increase costs!" and skirt scrutiny of the fact that they're just diverting higher monetary amounts to companies they own and control.
It's a cartel of vertical integration.
They also squeeze artist's revenue by doing the same. They can only do this because they control so much of the market. Control that is anti-competitive and prevents the free-market pricing you describe.
The picture is bleak. The last 3 gigs I have been to, Live Nation owned:
Ticket supply and distribution (Ticket Master), the venue, the security (ShowSec), the tour buses and logistics, the catering at the venue, the promoter, ...
They control all the costs and competition in the market. If Showsec do the security for all their venues, nobody can compete on cost. Same with everything else.
Presumably the _average_ fee is the cost to provide the service (including the profit they want to make on it). So the more expensive tickets subsidize the cheaper ones.
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.
It’s really funny that anti-governmental slogans of the ideological fights of the Cold War during which US Government was way more powerful than it was not got into the brains of so many people. As someone who grew up in USSR that’s really funny to observe.
Airframe certification is so costly that nobody's making new ones would be the counterargument re Boeing, but like I said they're a cheap example.
More broadly, "regulatory capture" is another driver of the centralizing black hole at the heart of the USG.
This is actually equally as cancerous - there is a reason realtors have one of the biggest lobbying groups in America.
They're rentseeking
They're just charging exorbitant fees to a customer base with no alternatives.
Like prison phone companies.
> They’re just charging exorbitant fees to a customer base with no alternatives.
The term for that is “monopoly rent”, it is a subtype of economic rents (which are distinct from, but overlap, “rents” of goods or services for a finite time as distinct from sales.)
Actions taken in pursuit of economic rents are called “rent-seeking”.
Rent-seeking is not merely pricing your product as high as the market will bear.
Ticketmaster adds value. They just charge exorbitant fees.
...
Edit: But OK, you can argue that their full vertical integration (ticketing-venue-artist management) is maximizing their position for the furtherance of increasing their fees, and that would be rent-seeking. I don't see it that way, but I won't argue against interpreting them as a coercive monopolist, which is close enough.
No, that's “economic rent”, of which monopoly rent is an extensively-studied subtype. (Monopoly is position.)
Rent-seeking is pursuing economic, including monopoly, rents.
I'm not going to claim Ticketmaster is charging a "honest" amount but I will claim it should be called a "fee" and not a "tax".
Fee is a fee, no matter it is fixed sum of percentage. Same with taxes - they are not always a percentage.
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.
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...
I haven't read the full paper yet, just the abstract, but the abstract talks about ticket window prices. Do they analyse the prices actually paid by the average attendee, which includes prices paid to scalpers? Or am I misunderstanding the term "ticket window"?
As a lay person, my gut asks: if scalpers don't cause attenders to pay more overall, then why do they exist?
Unclear--the source describes the price variable as the "weighted average of seats normally available to the public" [1]. (It's also from 1992.)
> if scalpers don't cause attenders to pay more overall, then why do they exist?
Same reason underwriters do: they reduce risk for the seller and increase convenience for the buyer. You can absolutely have a situation where a minority of buyers pay more, thereby allowing the remaining 90% to pay less.
The point is they can get their pay-out while the venue/artist and consumers win. Scalper gets paid. Venue and artist get stability. Consumer who buys from the scalper gets availability. And the other 90% of consumers get cheaper prices.
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?
We don't need any more surveillance, data-mining and sales, thank you. Your stated cure is worse than the disease.
https://www.dnalounge.com/backstage/log/2018/01/31.html (HN referers banned, so cut & paste into a fresh tab)
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?
TM is so hated that, if the DoJ goes for the jugular and misses, there might be appetite for Congress to re-empower the DoJ.
Monopolies aren't just anti-consumer. They can strangle the country's ability to innovate and compete in a global marketplace.
This. As a small business owner I'm much more interested in the effects of monopoly on industries than on consumers. After all, most people have jobs, right? They feel the effects of monopoly at work, as well as at home.
How would that work? Do you have some example of proposed legislation around this?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AMERICA_Act
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Innovation_and_Choice...
https://www.cnn.com/2024/02/26/investing/kroger-albertsons-m...
Historically, what do monopolies do when they capture a market is the opposite of lower prices and increase choice for the consumer.
And yes, when regulators are so ham-fisted as to literally destroy many neighborhoods’ only grocery store with their dumb divestiture demands, yes, that was bad for consumers!
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.
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.
That the ticket could not be sold via their system for whatever reason, is not a 'simple' act, although TBH maybe they should write to the DOJ or whatever... given some of the other stuff they've been caught doing, it would not at all surprise me to see some `if (!ticket.HadRefundOption) throw` hidden in their sales system.
TBH OP (Not a lawyer, not legal advice) you could always try small claims, they might not even show up and then you can collect a default judgement
Yea, this is something that has to be protected by consumer rights laws. Otherwise companies will be like "It's unfortunate we have a monopoly, but fuck off and give us your money. Thank You. Your case has been closed".
Frankly, I'd think it better if they just cut off those bad retailers from the system, which is where the failing is. Alas, monopolies in -that- sector as far as I know prevent a single bank from doing a whole lot, especially when it's a vendor that does so much volume that all the legitimate chargebacks won't risk their standing with the payment processors.
The playing field has been rapidly shrinking, and the customer base is much more stressed and unwilling to fight.
Not to mention that's also roughly around the timeframe that binding arbitration really got pervasive.
Amazon has a lot of flaws, but I've never once had an issue returning an item for a full refund. I'm sure chargebacks are up in recent years, but I'm not sure it's Amazon that's to blame.
For the record I'm very pleased with USAA overall and I think quite highly of them.
It wouldn't surprise me if we're seeing a tragedy of the commons: chargebacks were easy as long as people were inculturated to use them as a last resort. Now that enough people reach for them first, banks have to look at each one more closely and they're going to err in the direction that takes less work.
edit: Ha! Here is a guide on how to sue Ticketmaster: https://fairshake.com/ticketmaster/how-to-sue/
Did you possibly agree to binding arbitration for all disputes?
I can't believe I forgot -that- loophole facepalm
That said, if they don't show up, you'll get a default judgement. And if TM doesn't pay, they can have fun with it if there is an office nearby. A while back someone got a judgement against a bank, they didn't pay out. He came by with the sheriff and they started loading up chairs/etc when they hesitated to cut a check. :)
Or, whatever other 'collection' action you may have to motion for after the fact if they don't pay.
That's only true in a handful of states. Most allow you to bring a lawyer.
Small claims courts will generally have simpler and friendlier procedures so that even if a lawyer is allowed you will be fine without one in most cases.
If they were sold as marketable pending function(situation) with the implication that function(situation) was not simply "return false" but it turns out that function(situation) was actually "return false," that too is a problem.
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.
This is why monopoly is a market failure. There isn't a market mechanism that can correct this.
Unclear. There are limited cities that can support a 30,000+-seat stadium. Most of them have some already. Unless there is way more demand for these venues than I realise, I'd also guess they're close to saturation, i.e. adding another venue would result in lower utilisation.
This natural monopoly in large concert venues creates a condition where winning is Pyrrhic, since it results in no profits for everyone playing.
I guarantee you that Ticketmaster's pockets are much deeper. They have entrenched themselves. This romantic notion that consumers should strike against situations like this or that smaller players should find edges in are just not realistic to me because of the entrenchment, coercion and scarcity at play here.
A very popular band in the 90s tried to fight Ticketmaster. They failed. So I just don't understand this narrative in the face of all the evidence that these tactics just don't or won't work.
https://news.yahoo.com/1994-pearl-jam-took-ticketmaster-2300...
Breaking up LiveNation/Ticketmaster would wreck the biggest artists, not little ones. Really we should be asking: What has Taylor Swift done for small artists? Whom has she featured on her tracks? Ed Sheeran, Bon Iver, Brendon Urie, Haim, Maren Morris... You might not have heard of Maren Morris, but she has millions of monthly listeners on Spotify.
The problem with what the Justice Department is proposing has similar energy to many of their efforts in the creative industries: they don't know what their fucking side is. They think it's "consumers." Man, if only it were so simple.
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.
As a luxury. Put on by a Roman politician running for office, or as a rare treat travelling through town.
Also, caveat: TicketMaster has a monopoly on ultra-large venues. You can see small bands and plays without ever touching TM.
Seeing a live event is not a luxury. Seeing the most popular entertainer in the world in a giant stadium is a luxury.
As it is, those get funneled off earlier in the process, and people get annoyed.
And I really don't get your example with credit card fees. You're suggesting the credit card processor not collect the fee at the point of sale and instead send all the money straight to Swift's bank account and then expect her to turn around later and cut a check? How is that more efficient than just having them collect their fee at the point of sale? It is just shuffling money and complicating it unnecessarily.
And once again, would most artists really even want to personally get involved in handling all the mechanics of who pays who when and how? I doubt it, they'll once again probably just contract that part out as well. They have a lot of work they need to do as the performer to get ready for the show. So once again it'll still just be some middleman they hire to do all this financial plumbing.
I agree, it looks like there's a certain level of monopoly with TM/LN in this space, and it sounds like artists pretty much need to take the whole package or none of if the artist wants to play at major venues. Maybe allowing these things to split up and be a bit more competitive will reduce prices, make things better for the artists, or whatever. Maybe forcing these people to separate just creates more friction and it gets harder to put on a big show or ends up more expensive overall.
In the end, these middlemen will continue to exist in some form because they do provide value, especially at the scale of putting on a show for many tens of thousands of people.
In general the public doesn't like how the sausage is made, and if you reveal parts of the making they get angry about it - even if everyone involved basically agrees it's for the best.
(Ask the random Swift fan how much the A/V company is paid to manage the equipment and they'll probably be off by an order of magnitude or more - the most famous example of this kind of thinking is "I can make eggs at home, how come a restaurant is so expensive?")
Maybe TM/LN are an abusive monopoly in their current position. Maybe they're too integrated in the whole market. Sure sounds like it. But even then Swift isn't getting the full $300 of the ticket cost while the hundreds of other people involved in getting the show together get $0.00.
It did not. Lots of live events happening all the time everywhere for very cheap, even free. Look around local bars and clubs.
Probably not going to find top performers for cheap though.
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.
If they are breaking the law, the government should throw the book at them and yea they should have done it long ago, but also people should stop giving money to a company they hate, regardless of whether they are a monopoly.
I fundamentally disagree with your characterization of a consumer's options. Is your argument that I should have the fortitude and knowledge to opt out of coercive economic relationships? Why should I, as the consumer, bare the brunt of the responsibility for holding a corporation responsible for their misdeeds when they utilize their scale and volume to nullified my actions? Do I, as an individual, have any sway over corporate decision making when my fellow consumers do not have that fortitude or knowledge?
I do not agree that every scenario of corporate abuse should fall on the consumer to hold the corporation accountable because we are on unequal footing. This is regardless of the product being offered. These particular companies are taking advantage of shell games to keep customers in the dark on how they are being abused. I, as a simple consumer, withdrawing my dollars have no weight on the scale.
You really should read up on how Pearl Jam tried to fight Ticket Master in the 90s and lost popularity because they were effectively unable to host a show for years.
If Pearl Jam wasn't able to defeat Ticket Master, I find it laughable that you think individual consumers have any more weight in this matter.
Know what effect it has had on them? That's right, zero. As consumers, we're not even gnats on an elephant's toenail in our ability to affect the outcome. Maybe you'd like to brainstorm another solution.
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.
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?
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.
...does that make me more morally qualified to complain than other people? Why?
I think artists should reserve a small fraction of their seats for "real" fans that are willing to do something like this. Make the tickets obtained this way non-transferable to prevent scalping.
Heck, a "solution" to scalping would be to implement the above, and sell the rest of tickets via an auction, so the artist captures the revenue and doesn't leave room for the scalpers to make money.
Every system has its tradeoffs.
Your system is fantastic if you want to make sure that people who have invested the most money in the past get priority over those willing to pay the most for a future game. It still works against fans who can't afford season tickets. With your system a corporate lawyer that buys season tickets to hand out as perks to clients will get priority over a "true" fan who can only afford to go to three or four games a year.
As I said, EVERY system has its tradeoffs.
I do think the loyal fan systems with their drawbacks are still much better than the purely market economic approach. In the example of Super Bowl, the people who wanted to be sure to get tickets would need to have season tickets to all teams. The only resource we are awarded fairly is time. Estimating how much time we dedicated to the team/artist is fair game.
In the span of 1 comment I'm now sold on lottery rationing as my preferred option here.
The problem with this approach is how the price fixing that can be involved blocks the signal needed to tell the market to modify supply. When supply is meant to be fixed, this isn't an issue.
In this particular case, the Japanese law wasn't clearly explained or referenced. My best guess for the reference is the law Japan passed before the Olympics to ban the resale of many tickets at more than their list price. This isn't price fixing so much as an anti-speculation measure. This does also have the effect of making a lottery needed for many tickets as the secondary market can't balance supply and demand.
The second sentence is ridiculous. The Obama administration was pro-monopolist basically across the board for eight straight years. The record is pretty easy to understand.
The more money you allow into politics, the more politics becomes about money.
It might be more accurate to say that rubber-stamping mergers maxed-out under the Obama DoJ.
Comcast - NBCUniversal (2011)
AT&T - T-Mobile (2011)
Express Scripts - Medco Health Solutions (2012)
Google - Motorola Mobility (2012)
Anheuser-Busch InBev - Grupo Modelo (2013)
US Airways - American Airlines (2013)
Oracle - Sun Microsystems (2010)
Comcast - Time Warner Cable (2014)
Heinz - Kraft Foods (2015)
AT&T - DirecTV (2015)
What DoJs were not eager to do was push back against pressure from Elected Congresspeople who 1) held DoJ purse strings and 2) had elections that needed funding.
In the past year, I've tried this a few times and there is simply nobody selling tickets near the venues at all.
Someone with money can spend their money however they want. They can gamble it, they can snort it up their nose, they can invest it, they can do WTF they want. If what they do with the money contributes to the problem, then they are still part of the problem.
The only anti-consumer force at play is the monopoly power Live Nation is granted to dictate the price of tickets. There's very little that can be done via boycott when it comes to monopolies.
Here's a screenshot of my receipt from that one: https://i.imgur.com/7mesmdj.png
Edit: cardinals tix were $135.91ea x2 and $100.09 in fees.
IE/Netscape bad or this apparently.
The Justice Department is preparing to sue Live Nation
The specific claims the department would allege couldn’t be learned.
The whole ticketing space is run by narcissistic assholes who should be in jail.
It's also worth noting that sometimes things change after prices have been set. For example, a baseball game in which tickets were sold but now there's a lot of attention/love suddenly and unexpectedly on the team (maybe they just pulled off a big upset or something) so "market rate" for tickets jumps much higher than what it was immediately before that when the tickets were sold. They weren't originally trying to price lower than market rate. Also the pricing they do for market rate is calculated to optimize for maximum revenue which includes some balance of selling max number of seats but only until the delta of additional sales means a net loss of revenue (i.e. you can sell every seat for $1 but that would make a lot less money).
For artists who are maxing out their # of shows and selling out you're right though.
What would be nice would be having independent venues that aren't all selling the same canned water and ticket prices showing the fees.
I think the church idea is a brilliant TM workaround, until they lock that up too.
Also, yes, a giant ultra megachurch like Lakewood might get 45,000 attendees a week. That's usually split between a few services each of which is like 90 minutes long. So like maybe 18k people peak. The average Taylor Swift concert has 72,000 people in the stadium for several hours.
Also, while yes a large church probably has a cafe or something similar, its usually not equipped to provide food for 70,000 people. Nor bathrooms for said 70,000 people, as most people going to the church are once again only there for like 90 minutes instead of several hours.
This is before we get to the notoriously censorious and fragile beliefs of the people operating those facilities.
Not in capacity of people nor production facilities.
The whole reason for this suit is that essentially the same outfits doing ticketing have exclusive licenses with the majority of facilities that can support the big acts.
(Seriously though, we have so many olig/monopolies I’ve lost count. Sad.)
one of my favourite songs
https://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/clydelawrence/falsealarms.ht...
- 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.
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.
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.
Hotels operate in a similar fashion as well.
In the airline model, your ticket is tied to your identity. If you don't want to use it, you get a refund instead of selling it.
You can also choose a ticketing agent instead of being forced to use just a single outlet.
In the concert model, you (or a complex entity) buys as many tickets as you can get your hands on from the only seller, and if you don't plan on using the tickets sell them for multiples of what you paid via a shady network of reselling.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_distribution_system
Why not this but for concert seats?
There isn't a lot of obvious utility in allowing anyone in the world to buy a concert ticket (unless you want speculative resellers in your ecosystem). For people travelling to an event, that's what the will-call window is for, and it requires a matching ID. Whereas airlines cannot reasonably maintain a network capable of selling a ticket to anyone worldwide despite their being a very good set of reasons for that to happen.
This probably also explains why airlines allow independent agents, but no reselling. The original market (pre-internet) required it, but the airlines didn't really want to sacrifice their margin to speculative resellers (scalpers).
Concerts used to be sold in a centralized way (you could buy tickets to a specific show at one of a few authorized venues, in person). This worked fine before the internet, since it meant that fans stood on equal footing with speculative resellers. If I want to scalp tickets, I have to go stand in the rain with the fans, and I can't buy 50 tickets since the sellers won't sell more than a few at a time.
Contextualized with how the different industries were created, we can see why GDS made sense at one point, but doesn't really anymore, and why it would never make sense for event ticketing.
There's like 50+ lines at an event, if TSA had 50+ lines then the airport would be so much faster.
you want to solve the problem of airline tickets, let people resell their tickets to other travellers.
Considering it's an antitrust suit, the answer should be self-evident.
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.
edit: it's a joke y'all, obviously they got great tickets with those family and Ivy League connections
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.
Actually allowing auctions for tickets might make it so they can make money directly and not bother ... .ahahaha I can't even write it.
In that case, that is a better future for consumers, because right now, Platinum Pricing is where we really get screwed.
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.
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)
Doing onsales is pretty hard, your basically making every one stand in line all be it virtual.
No one wants to deal with that. The current all in price is just going to become the "minimum bid" put down more money and possibly get better seats. When ever one has bids in, then close them and run an algorithm to distribute seats and start charging cards. The tech is cheaper, you cut out scalpers for the most part and every one makes more money.
Ticketing can get worse and it probably will.
So what makes it better? Should we be thankful for the current status quo?
Taylor Swift cleared a billion dollars at the box office (that's tickets) she's gonna walk away with half that.
There are countries with GDP's that small. Taylor Swift made so much money selling tickets that she could be a micro nation. Thats not t-shirts, that's not concessions, that's not kickbacks. Thats half a bill on just tickets.
Look at an artist like Dave Mathews. Who went out of his way to have his own ticketing and merch platform (Music Today)... Now it is a "presale" for Citi Customers...
When money fell out of the sales of physical media concerts, merch and licensing were the only avenues left to make money. When artists get big they cash out, the fans pay for that...
I dont think the status quo is going anywhere, sadly. Like loot boxes and pay to win games the genie is out of the bottle, the only thing you can control as a consumer is your own spending. That might mean going to local shows or staying away from major artists...
As I said before, no problem paying more for tickets if artists feel this is how they make money, but none of this scammy fee-based structure where I am charged 20% of my ticket value as a convenience fee due to getting it virtually (lol?)
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.
Ticketmaster is the result of consolidating all the regional ticking systems that existed back when printing and retail sales were a thing. This lawsuit is against Live Nation, that Ticketmaster is a part of... It's the evolution of what Bill Graham started. Your thinking ticket master is the problem but promoters are the ones maximizing value from ever aspect of the experience.
Bill Graham made EVERYONE money, and it all came from the fans...
>> Why wouldn't a band want to play several ticketing companies off against each other
Ticketing is a zero sum game... You dont really need paper tickets or local markets. If ticket master dies ... "oh no were auctioning tickets now the other tech is hard" is going to the excuse.
>> It's also not in a band's best interest to rip off their own fans... There are two artists who give a shit about this.
I did point that out, there are a few... but there aren't many. The only money is in touring and licensing. There are lots of artists who say this, and push low "ticket prices" and take their cut of the "high fees". The only ones who give a shit: non transferable tickets. It cuts out the secondary market (and means they, or their promoter, can sell there themselves...
>> In Europe there is a much more competitive market in the ticketing/events space... And there's certainly no shortage of big bands on tour.
It isnt that much different. AEG is 2nd after LN/TM and owns O2 they also own AXS, and Eventim, independent but now into venues in joint deal with AEG... It's a bit of an insestuous circle jerk not as "free" as it appears.
Europe as a market is still a region in America. Taylor Swift is doing as many dates in Indiana as she is in any EU city...
>> secondary and resale-market ticketing companies like Viagogo/Stubhub, DICE, Ticketswap
Here is the well known inside secret, why do shows still have "promoters" instead of marketing departments? Because lots of these secondary sales were never primary sales.
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?