There probably are not many Taylor Swift fans on this board, but she is one of the largest musical acts on the planet at the moment and Ticketmaster completely botched the sale of her tickets. So much so that congress got involved. That made me smile, because I detest how they do business and the fees they charge.

Yesterday I needed some tickets. Monster Jam in Orlando. A local law firm has a promo code where tickets can be had for $20 each. So I go online, find some great seats, select 6 tickets, and my total is $209.55. Huh?!? I am fairly proficient in math, but even if I wasn't, it does not take a genius to multiply 6 x $20 in their head. That is $120. After taxes (which cannot be avoided) and fees, my total has grown by $90.

I am fortunate to live near downtown. The box office is 13 minutes from my house. So I hop in the car and make the short drive and walk up to the window. I select the exact same seats. And my total after taxes is $163. I have escaped $47 worth of Ticketmaster charges.

But here's the kicker! I have paid for the tickets and the ticket agent tells me to check my phone for a text and to click the link. I do so. And following a few short steps, the tickets are downloaded onto my phone in the form of a QR code. The tickets were just delivered in the EXACT same method as if I had placed the order from home.

And if that is the case, what the hell was Ticketmaster doing to earn that $47 had I purchased the tickets in a different manner?

quote:

Originally posted by holdem:
Yesterday I needed some tickets.

Do you mind if I ask you why? It's an odd way to phrase it- "I needed some tickets."

quote:

Originally posted by parabellum:

quote:

Originally posted by holdem:
Yesterday I needed some tickets.

Do you mind if I ask you why? It's an odd way to phrase it- "I needed some tickets."

OK, "wanted" some tickets.

But if you asked my 11 year old son, and 3 year old nephew, when it comes to Monster Trucks, need would be the more appropriate term.

Maybe if a small, connected crypto company like FTX also started selling tickets they could provide competition.

My first experience with TM was in 1995. The cost of the ticket was 40$. And then the TM fees added on that doubled the cost. There was even a courtesy fee for being charged fees in the break down. WTF?!?!? And LiveNation/TicketMaster is the only game in town to see shows now. I went to a show last year and had to get tickets through TM. Yep, it sucked.

And John Oliver took on TM even before the Taylor screw up.

Unless I’m missing something, this seems like an ideal use for a distributed ledger.

You want Congress (or the government, whatever that means) to get involved in this???
Careful what you wish for.

I normally want the free market to sort this stuff out, but this schit with TM has gone too far. Most acts below Taylor Swift's level no longer make any money on album sales, so they have to tour constantly to pay the bills. Live Nation owns TM and they also either own or have exclusivity deals with many of the top venues now. So performers have zero clout for going around TM or setting their own prices. There really is no competition and TM has gone far beyond the ticket selling business to make sure no one else can begin to compete with them. This needs to get broken up and I think it's too big for the market to do on its own.

I remember seeing Taylor Swift back when she was an opening act for Kenny Chesney in 2007, she has come a long way.

With that said, I remember trying to get tickets for that concert. My wife joined the fan club and was on line the second tickets went on sale.
She was ready to go and as soon as the tickets went live they were sold out.

She was mad and I mean mad, and in disbelief how this could happen.
She was yelling at her computer so loud the owner came in and asked what was wrong, she told him what happened. He gave her the number of a ticket broker he uses and see if he has the tickets you are looking for. Sure enough he did.

We found it odd he had tickets but we could not buy them on opening day. The owner gets on the phone with the broker, tells him the tickets we want and pays for them. The owner hangs up the phone and tells my wife they were $400.00 and he was paying for them as a reward for her hard work.

We found out the next day It was $400.00 each. We also found out as the concert was getting closer "we had not gotten the tickets yet" that the broker we bought them from did not have them but another broker he knew had them.
When we called him he assured us it was not a problem, he would have the tickets for us at the concert and to meet him there. We thought he would never show up but he did. He said because of the trouble he wanted to upgrade our seats for free. Our original tickets were center of the venue about 30 plus rows back. The tickets he gave us were on the right side of the stage 4 rows back.
I could only imagine how much those tickets would have been.

This was a big problem back then and I guess it still is to some extent.

quote:

Originally posted by holdem:
There probably are not many Taylor Swift fans on this board, but she is one of the largest musical acts on the planet at the moment and Ticketmaster completely botched the sale of her tickets. So much so that congress got involved. That made me smile, because I detest how they do business and the fees they charge.

Yesterday I needed some tickets. Monster Jam in Orlando. A local law firm has a promo code where tickets can be had for $20 each. So I go online, find some great seats, select 6 tickets, and my total is $209.55. Huh?!? I am fairly proficient in math, but even if I wasn't, it does not take a genius to multiply 6 x $20 in their head. That is $120. After taxes (which cannot be avoided) and fees, my total has grown by $90.

I am fortunate to live near downtown. The box office is 13 minutes from my house. So I hop in the car and make the short drive and walk up to the window. I select the exact same seats. And my total after taxes is $163. I have escaped $47 worth of Ticketmaster charges.

But here's the kicker! I have paid for the tickets and the ticket agent tells me to check my phone for a text and to click the link. I do so. And following a few short steps, the tickets are downloaded onto my phone in the form of a QR code. The tickets were just delivered in the EXACT same method as if I had placed the order from home.

And if that is the case, what the hell was Ticketmaster doing to earn that $47 had I purchased the tickets in a different manner?

Your post shows there was no monopoly, since there was another method by which you could get the tickets. You just want congress to regulate Ticketmaster's fees because you think they are too high. But you can't cry monopoly as the justification if Ticketmaster is not the only outlet.

Don't get me wrong, I dislike Ticketmaster, and will not buy tickets through them. I refuse to pay their fees.

There have been antitrust/anti monopoly laws on the books for over 100 years now. Are you saying they're uncalled for and shouldn't be enforced? This seems like a pretty egregious monopolistic situation where they'd come into play.

quote:

Originally posted by 220-9er:
You want Congress (or the government, whatever that means) to get involved in this???
Careful what you wish for.

The government is not the solution.
As long as stupid people are willing to pay stupid prices, nothing will change.

The average ticket price for an NFL game is over $200 and Roger Goodell makes 60 million annually as of 2022. People are still willing to pay $100 + on a Jersey.

Try getting sporting events tickets.

When the 2020 NHL Winter Classic in Dallas at the historic Cotton Bowl was held, tickets were only sold online and only through Ticketmaster.

It was a frigging clusterfuck, and smaller brokers were overwhelming the TM website with orders for the maximum allowable number of seats and then turning right around and reselling them at exorbitant markups.

The whole system makes it difficult---if not downright impossible---for many sports and concert fans to see events in person.

quote:

You just want congress to regulate Ticketmaster's fees because you think they are too high. But you can't cry monopoly as the justification if Ticketmaster is not the only outlet.

I've only peripherally followed this story, but the fundamental issue is they are becoming more of the only outlet for original purchase of tickets in MANY instances. What you are describing in suggesting there are other outlets is that the secondary ticket market is the equivalent to the primary market, and they couldn't be further apart in price or function.

Before even getting into the performer and venue issues, for the end user Ticketmaster is even more egregious in that they have an incentive to allow as many sales as possible to bots, purchase-farms in China, whatever, that is a buyer who has zero intent to use the tickets, but instead to resell them. That allows TM to double-dip (at a minimum!) on the secondary sale of the tickets at a much inflated price. They get fees and such on the first sale, and get even more on the resale, all while the tickets may yet not be in the hands of end users.

Probably can't eliminate the secondary market, but could probably do much, much better in controlling the purchases of initial allotments.

Beyond that, do some reading on the influence and leverage TM is exerting on venues and performers. I'm not going to try to summarize all of that, but in a nutshell it looks like a mafia shakedown where the venues know if they don't play with TM, and pay their fees, they won't get many of the acts they want, if any. The performers are in the same boat, other than the handful of superstars who can do whatever the heck they want, but those are few and far between in the total volume of performers.

Keep in mind, this isn't just music acts, but every type of performer, show, exhibit, etc. that is booked at one of the mobbed-up-by-TM venues.

It seems pretty bad and worse the more you get into details...

quote:

Originally posted by jhe888:
Your post shows there was no monopoly, since there was another method by which you could get the tickets. You just want congress to regulate Ticketmaster's fees because you think they are too high. But you can't cry monopoly as the justification if Ticketmaster is not the only outlet.

Don't get me wrong, I dislike Ticketmaster, and will not buy tickets through them. I refuse to pay their fees.

Honestly, it’s not a slam dunk, but I can see monopoly/antitrust argument.

I know you know that the antitrust laws don’t require absolute 100% control of a market.

The problem with Ticketmaster isn’t that they sell a lot of tickets (even if they happened to sell ALL the tickets because no one else wanted to, that wouldn’t legally be a problem on its own).

The problem is that Ticketmaster has exclusive sales contracts with most large performance venues and many medium performance venues. No one else CAN sell tickets for performances at those venues (some places have carved out exceptions for on-site in-person box office sales, but I don’t see how that small exception would automatically invalidate an antitrust action, there are almost always a few cracks in even the worst monopolies).

They don’t just sell a lot of tickets, they engage in anticompetitive behavior and use it to charge outrageous fees.

quote:

Originally posted by 220-9er:
You want Congress (or the government, whatever that means) to get involved in this???
Careful what you wish for.

Would that not be the DOJ enforcing existing laws, since they do seem to be operating on the edge of monopolistic trade.

Surprised actually that Amazon hasn't wandered into the market and taken a huge hit out of TM customer base. You'd need someone that big to take them on, maybe even E-Bay and Amazon.

quote:

Originally posted by snoris:
Try getting sporting events tickets.

When the 2020 NHL Winter Classic in Dallas at the historic Cotton Bowl was held, tickets were only sold online and only through Ticketmaster.

It was a frigging clusterfuck, and smaller brokers were overwhelming the TM website with orders for the maximum allowable number of seats and then turning right around and reselling them at exorbitant markups.

The whole system makes it difficult---if not downright impossible---for many sports and concert fans to see events in person.

The reselling shows that the face price for the ticket is too low. The demand clearly far outstrips the supply or there would be no business in buying tickets at $200 and reselling them immediately for $400. If the original sellers sold the tickets for a real, market price - that is the price the market will support, resellers would vanish in an instant.

Regulating resellers in the way many advocate would just be a back door way to impose a price control. We don't do that in a free market economy.

I'd like to see Jackson Browne in concert. I'd pay $100, but I wouldn't pay the $300 resellers wanted. But that is the actual market price of that ticket. The answer is that I don't go see Jackson Browne. I don't want the government to limit resellers.


And, it is true that Ticketmaster's relationship with Live Nation, which does have a lot of control over venues may allow illegal anti-competitive behavior. That does seem problematic - the vertical integration. I don't know enough about anti-trust law to know if it violates the law.

quote:

The reselling shows that the face price for the ticket is too low. The demand clearly far outstrips the supply or there would be no business in buying tickets at $200 and reselling them immediately for $400. If the original sellers sold the tickets for a real, market price - that is the price the market will support, resellers would vanish in an instant.

Except, this practice limits supply, when supply is limited prices rise, since we don't have a fair an open competitive market for tickets purchasing it's difficult to say what is the fair market price.

It could in fact be much lower, if venues had an open source ticket sales option where they could post tickets in direct competition with TM at the price the venue feels it needs to cover expenses then the price paid could very well be closer to face value.

TM and it's resellers JMO collude to restrict access, and in doing so, drive up prices. People may be willing to pay higher prices since they want the "hot" ticket, but it's not really a fair market set price in the manner in which supply/demand affects normal pricing, since the product is highly controlled.

Just to take the other side against some of my point, part of the control of the product is the sheer scarcity of the tickets in relation to the number of people who want them, in primary OR secondary market.

There are only so many concerts with ABC on the schedule, no way to increase that by any meaningful number without cloning ABC, and way more people that want to attend if they could all get tickets at the face value.

That leads you to increasing the face value of tickets. If you want to make a certain number available to financially disadvantaged, "biggest fans", etc. then surely a method could be developed to do this.

I poo-pooed much of this as just being market forces at work. Admittedly the awareness of even some of the leverage being exerted by Live Nation is what made me start to reconsider.

quote:

Originally posted by HRK:

quote:

The reselling shows that the face price for the ticket is too low. The demand clearly far outstrips the supply or there would be no business in buying tickets at $200 and reselling them immediately for $400. If the original sellers sold the tickets for a real, market price - that is the price the market will support, resellers would vanish in an instant.

Except, this practice limits supply, when supply is limited prices rise, since we don't have a fair an open competitive market for tickets purchasing it's difficult to say what is the fair market price.

It could in fact be much lower, if venues had an open source ticket sales option where they could post tickets in direct competition with TM at the price the venue feels it needs to cover expenses then the price paid could very well be closer to face value.

TM and it's resellers JMO collude to restrict access, and in doing so, drive up prices. People may be willing to pay higher prices since they want the "hot" ticket, but it's not really a fair market set price in the manner in which supply/demand affects normal pricing, since the product is highly controlled.

No, it doesn't limit supply. The supply is the number of tickets - the number of seats less some promotional seats. Allowing or requiring some other seller wouldn't make more tickets available - there is a finite number of tickets. TM may capture large fees, but the fact that resellers can turn around and sell for a multiple of the price they paid shows that there is unmet demand.

The simple fact is that more than 28,000 people in Houston are willing to pay over $700 to see Taylor Swift. But, even with fees, TM sells that ticket for less that the price people are willing to pay. So, the price is too low, relative to the market. So resellers step in.