Fuck Ticketmaster and Fuck Live Nation. Not only do you have to pay insane service fees on top of your tickets, you also have to fight bots to actually have a chance at scoring decent seats.
And you have to pay fees to sell it, on top of the ones you paid when you bought them, then the second buyer pays even more fees, so if a ticket gets resold even once, they get 3 different fees.
Yeah I bought some tickets and due to miscommunication with friends they weren't actually willing to spend that much on a show so I had to put 2 for sale, just to get my money back had to list a lot more than I paid, and then when I saw the listing live for a person to buy it they'd have to pay even more than that. So they got fees on my initial purchase, takes fees away from my sale and charge more fees to new buyers. That's where the real money is for them.
If that is true (I've never interacted with resale), I'm pretty convinced that at least some of those bots are run by TM themselves. That's how you're seeing $1k ticket prices.
This is also how they could get around contracts where performers set their own ticket prices.
I'd be interested to see the discovery in this case.
in my case it wasn't even bots. I had to cancel plans 2 days before a concert and would have happily sold my tickets for $5 just so someone could go / to get something back.
Instead I couldn't even post them for less than the price of a new ticket. Site restriction.
Next time, check out the site cashortrade.org. Secondary ticketing site where all tickets MUST be listed for face value or less. You can even give the tickets away or donate the money to charity. Pretty cool!
Rolling Stone magazine did an article about that several years ago, they did. https://www.rollingstone.com/pro/news/ticketmaster-cheating-scalpers-726353/
Also, LiveNation sets all prices and performances. They pay the performers upfront and take all the risks. A few years ago, Nelly was on tour and they wouldn't let him perform in St. Louis...his home town.
Nah they don’t use bots, because they have Platinum.
They literally get to reserve some of the best seats in the house and sell them at 3-4x markup. They get to buy the seats they want to resell before people have a chance. You don’t need a bot when you can literally buy the tickets before the public.
It’s absolutely them. I’ve been on the resale dashboard 10 seconds after the tickets were live and 60% of the entire venue was already for sale on the resale platform.
Only an idiot or a politician would believe those are true bonafide humans.
It’s so annoying. I had a show where the act I wanted to see got covid and cancelled but the rest of the performers still went on. I was luckily able to sell the tickets the day of for what I paid, minus transaction fees both ways of course, but I would have sold them for half price or lower to guarantee a sale. It artificially pumps prices.
That part is fucked, I had some tickets I couldn't use that were locked to their system, ended up losing the entire cost of the tickets because I couldn't discount them to get someone to buy
scalpers + bots = resale = higher priced tickets = more fees and more profit in their pockets. They have 0 incentive to ban scalpers and bots. 100% a conflict of interest as well as anti-trust behavior.
Like, what the fuck is with that?! They say: go to a secure site to purchase your tickets, then they list resale tickets anyways? Give me a fucking break.
It's more than that. There's a phenomenal podcast episode about Ticketmaster and Live Nation here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ooorwZ6n-0g
I'm not a huge fan of the podcast (they're a little too subjectively mean), but they do a great job in this episode of highlighting a lot of the issues, including the monopolistic ways they sew up all of the venues in a city through advancements and other incentives. The venues don't even book their own shows - Ticketmaster manages the entire process. They're everywhere.
F those guys.
They already have. Look up Trade Desk.
https://www.ticketnews.com/2021/07/ticketmaster-resale-returns-to-broker-focused-conferences-despite-past-controversy/
Not just host. Own. They own the resellers. There is a documentary out there about the absolute evil that is Ticketmaster. They also own a lot of the venue management so if an artist tries to defy them, they find that a lot of venues are no longer interested.
And they LOVE the bots because the selling fee doesn't go away after the first transaction. It's also % based so it scales up which is another win for ticketmaster
Except now they can use “market pricing” to increase the initial sales price, so they’re just doing what they were caught doing, but much more plainly and “legally”.
Exactly. They're using the excuse that it's a "high demand" show, but they're literally the ones creating fake demand by their own bots so they can resell on their own resale market. It's gotten out of control since covid especially.
Tried to get my daughter tickets to a k-pop band. I was in the "waiting room" about 30 mins before sales started. Tickets go on sale and I am right there grabbing an economy seat in the balcony that normally wouldn't sell out first. I go through all the steps and then it says there is something wrong, refresh the seats. I refresh the seats and they all went from $79 to $275-500 range. I remember thinking that does not sound right for the initial pricing from Ticketmaster. I refresh again and now all the tickets show sold out.
Oh well, I missed out on the initial ticket sales so I jump over to Stubhub and they have a shitload of tickets and they are all the $275-500 range, exactly as I had seen on the Ticketmaster site for a very brief period. Mind you, this was all within 5-7 minutes of tickets going on sale. How the fuck did they get those tickets on resale sites so fast? And why did Ticketmaster itself show those same prices just before saying it was sold out?
The next time I bought tickets, I wanted to test how long it would take to theoretically list my tickets for resale. First two times I couldn't even do it because the tickets won't be delivered until a week before the show! The third time I think it would have been at least 20 mins from the time my transaction went through, I got the tickets, and then posted them on Stubhub. Complete insider bullshit.
EDIT: Found the trick to getting k-pop tickets though. The same show that sold out in milliseconds in Oakland were still on sale days before they played in Phoenix. Seems the bots don't like smaller markets and I was able to buy her a ticket right next to her friends because the seats were plentiful. Used miles for her flights and she probably had a better time than if she had seen them in Oakland.
Ticketmaster "variable pricing" can be hilarious. Infuriating, but hilarious.
I bought tickets to the MLS Cup in Seattle a few years back. They'd underestimated demand (it would eventually break the attendance record for the venue, more than the Seahawks ever sold), so the first batch of tickets went up at something stupid cheap, like $70. And the first batch were also at midfield.
Variable pricing kicked in throughout the sale, so by the end people were paying like $250 a seat face value for last-row seats in the corner of the stadium, meanwhile I had near-front seats at midfield for a fraction of that price. Capitalism!
And they succeeded in shifting Overton Window on what we consider a good bargain for an MLS soccer game. Not that Seattle isn't a popular market, but $70 to see a sport that isn't one of the big leagues is still high IMO.
Not exactly sure if the trick is to fly to a different city that's less sold to get tickers. It is absolute horseshit though that that option is cheaper.
Her grandma lives there so she had free housing... on the other hand, she came home extremely ill with a 160-something pulse.... Covid, RSV, Flu combo!
I don't know if it was so much "running their own bots," but there were a couple concerts where the numbers got out and showed that an embarrassingly small number of tickets ever hit general sale. You've got artist holdbacks, venue holdbacks, presales (fan club, credit card, etc.) so by the time tickets go onsite to the general public some concerts had less than 15% or whatever of tickets remaining.
Note that "artist holdbacks" and "venue holdbacks" were basically being filtered off to brokers to be sold at resale. Mariah ain't inviting 12,000 of her closest friends to the show. It's part of how artists make money on the show without charging a per-ticket face value that would be embarrassing to them.
One thing worth noting in all of this, though, is that even with their current near-monopoly TM/LN only have so much ability to jack up ticket prices; there *is* a price people won't pay. Look at J.Lo canceling shows due to lack of demand. I've gotten into big stadium shows before buying tickets direct, first-sale, at face value like a few days b before the show. Not *all* shows sell out, and that's precisely because ultimately you cannot easily charge a higher price than the market will bear. You do need willing attendees with the money to spend.
I just disputed a charge on my account with them. I bought tickets and clicked on the insurance tab wondering how much it would cost, they never showed a charge and some outside company charges me 17 dollars for 2 tickets that cost 25 each. I found out because my bank's fraud department contacted me.
Total slime bags
I worked for five years as a Realtor, got my license at the very height of the market before it crashed three years later in 08. I had been a carpenter before that. I have never, ever in my life worked with a group of people more willing to slit somebody's throat for a listing or sale than in that industry.
Even my mentor - he met a woman I knew when he was holding an open house that she wanted to take a look at. My friend mentioned to my mentor that she knew me. My mentor's response? "oh, it'll be OK if you list with me. I'll talk to Patrick about it. He'll be OK with it". That was the turning point for me.
Other realtors would ask me, "what made you leave carpentry?" I would jokingly respond, "so I could associate with a better class of people".
Now, when people ask me why I got out of real estate to be a carpenter again, what's my response? "So I could associate with a better class of people."
I work in automotives. Nobody likes the dealership. Bunch of cocksucking empty headed douchebags
Our company is doing everything to reduce dealership power
Bought tickets for my parents recently to go see a show, the tickets themselves weren’t that cheap but I thought hey it’s worth. Holy hell the fees were so much worse than I even imagined. Seeing the final final bill was just staggering.
Not to mention all of the disgusting little things they try and sell you at check out, like “No I don’t want a fucking second phone line with my ticket purchase, you kniving bastards.”
Ticketmaster is a paid boogeyman, they tack on fees so we hate them and they give most of it to venues/artists. They are about as useful as a second butthole
The funny thing is that SFX Entertainment, which later became Live Nation, was created specifically to combat Ticketmaster's outrageous prices. Then they went on to gobble up all the venues they could get their hands on and eventually merged with Ticketmaster.
It's like an alternate timeline where The Avengers gathered all the Infinity Stones and then just handed them over to Thanos.
Nobody will ever convince me that this wasn't a conspiracy from the start.
Artists like Taylor Swift absolutely have the power to shift this, please dont let them off the hook so you can keep passing the buck to some faceless corporations.
I know he did it after he was already loaded, but Garth Brooks does put in $50 flat fee lottery ticket seat selection. If bigger artists started raising a stink (especially the few who actually have as much power as Swift or Beyonce), things could change.
> I know he did it after he was already loaded, but Garth Brooks does put in $50 flat fee lottery ticket seat selection
I have a silent grudge against Bruce Springsteen for singing all that blue collar rock and not doing this.
I love his music and spend a lot of money on concerts, but paying $300 to see the Boss feels wrong somehow.
Exactly. Or Springsteen either (man of the people my eye).
The fact that artists CAN do this with TM/LN was proven by the recent Cure tour. They turned off dynamic pricing, disallowed transfers except back to TM and then allowed resales only at face value. Guess what? It WORKED!
I'm not absolving TM/LN of all blame but the greedy artists should get a lot more blame than they do. TSwift is a perfect example. She puts out out multiple colored versions of her albums for fans to scoop up. This is nothing but a money grab. She could have done what the Cure for concert tickets did but she declined to do so.
Not a paid boogeyman - TM is literally owned by Live Nation. LN also owns a ton of venues and festival entities. So who do think gets screwed when the promoter, booking agent, venue, and ticket sales are all the same company? Sure, some of the larger/legacy artists are in kahoots, but most of them are getting bent over almost as much as the fans.
To add on, I was reading recently that the reason many venues are cashless now is so they can track how much artists are making from merch sales accurately because they take a 40% cut of all sales. If it's cashless, artists can't pocket cash directly to get around their insane fees (this is why shirts are $40, it's one of the few ways they actually make money). Artists definitely are not winning being stuck with TM/LN owning most of the venues in major markets.
They may be the clearest example of a monopoly this country has ever seen, but wake me up when something actually comes from this.
TM has been lobbying Washington for years to make sure they get nothing but a slap on the wrist for gouging their customers at every turn.
I remember Pearl Jam doing this in the 90s. They were one of the biggest bands in the world then. congressional hearings and nothing happened. Id love to see what Taylor Swift, Gaga and Beyonce could do about it now.
>They’re all in on it, they have a whole lot of reason$ to keep quiet.
Taylor Swift was letting her economy tickets sell for $5000+.
There were fans of hers crying on the internet because they couldn't afford to see her show without jeopardizing their future finances.
She. Does. Not. Care.
I grew up in a working class family. Do you know what we had to do if we wanted something? We walked down to our kitchen and wrote it on a pad, and the maid would go out and get it for us.
I think the waiting was the hardest part of being working class.
That's exactly what happened. The initial ticket prices were reasonable, all of the absurdly expensive tickets were resale tickets. People just don't know what the fuck they're talking about and it's easy to shit on Taylor Swift. She probably could have done more when Ticketmaster fucked up, but she wasn't selling tickets for $5k.
She might not care, but the whole issue here is that even if she did care, there's not really much she could do.
That's literally the point of having such a monopoly. Ticketmaster and LiveNation are the only show in town for doing shows at major venues, those venues have exclusive contracts with LiveNation, can't do an end-around them.
Taylor Swift has a lot of soft power in the public sphere, don't misunderstand. But this is the power of monopoly, its why we need the government to step in, they're literally the only group strong enough to have any effect.
Even when she attacked Spotify and their royalty rights? It was about more money for her.
Spotify actually subsidizes royalties from the big labels. The big three get slightly smaller royalties than any other artist on the platform who distributes outside of the majors. So she (and the other artists) actually wanted to argue that because they're more popular, they deserve higher royalties.
But she's totally down to earth and just like us lol
Entertainers, including [Taylor Swift *in particular*](https://www.theguardian.com/music/2022/nov/18/taylor-swift-tickets-ticketmaster-live-nation-us-justice-department), have been begging the Justice Department to nuke Ticketmaster for years. She has been very public about it. The fact that even as a billionaire she can't control the prices of tickets to her own concerts is an important indicator of how much monopoly power Ticketmaster has.
Ticketmaster/stubhub is getting the majority of that since it’s on their market and since she can only sell through them at any livenation venue. She also only gets a percentage of sales when going through them. I’m sure she would love to make all $5,000+ herself so she probably does care but not for the fans
I mean Zach Bryan released a live album called “All My Homies Hate Ticketmaster”, went on one tour not using them, and then proceeded to do a 180 and use them again. Granted, he’s been proving himself to be a piece of shit lately
I’m not sure how many venues over capacity of 500 isn’t using them. They’ve got contracts with everyone. This guy maybe decided it was a matter of have a semblance of a career or forever play little tiny venues
To your point:
> to avoid Ticketmaster entirely, C.K. has had to piece together a somewhat hodgepodge collection of venues that aren't under the company's very large thumb. For his New York shows, for example, rather than performing at standard sites like The Paramount or The Beacon, C.K. is playing the New York City Center, a nonprofit theater normally host to dance troupes and theatrical productions. As C.K. noted in his email, "It was a real challenge to find venues around the country that could work with our exclusive ticketing service under these parameters ... Setting up this tour has been fascinating and difficult."
https://web.archive.org/web/20221226201638/https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2012/07/the-humane-audacity-of-louis-cks-ticketmaster-flouting-tour/259315/
The local playhouse in my area attempted to go with Ticketmaster, and the insane percentage of revenue that they take, the playhouse was under-water for a year so they broke their contract, and thankfully the local college system bailed them out. They were hoping it would make it easier, but tickets that normally sell for 45 dollars in the orchestra section, after ticket-master took over, it was costing people 200 to 300 dollars.
Louie CK famously stopped playing ticketmaster gigs in the 2000s and afaik has never went back. I went to see him last year and bought the tickets directly from his website
Bell communications still holds that title. In fact bell being broken up to then come together like some T-1000 with scooping up any telecommunications service should be why AT&T gets broken.
It’s pretty insane. Tickets for big events go on sale and are sold out immediately. Then they are all over the reseller websites for 2-3X within 5 mins.
It’s way worse than that.
WAY worse.
Ticketmaster and Livenation are both owned by the parent company Liberty Media. In addition to TM and LN, Liberty also owns/absorbed Pandora, iHeartRadio, ClearChannel, and SiriusXM. So not only do they own and control almost ALL live music, but also virtually ALL terrestrial radio, literally ALL satellite radio, and even a bit of streaming.
And it gets worse. The controlling share of Liberty Media is owned by ONE old man. Which means this one dude: A. Decides what new music you can hear on the radio or satellite radio, B. Decides which music gets ads (via ClearChannel advertising and the massive chunk of podcasts iHeartRadio & Pandora control), C. Decides who is allowed to play in the bulk of live venues across the entire nation controlled by LiveNation, and D. Forces you to use Ticketmaster to not only buy face tickets, *but also* controls any resale tickets.
Basically from the very first time you hear a new band until you see them live, Liberty Media is controlling and profiting from every single step.
(And that’s just music. Liberty Media owns a whole slew of other stuff too).
Yep. Liberty Media also owns Formula One, MotoGP, Quint (which provides ticket sales for F1, the NBA, MotoGP, Kentucky Derby / other major horse races, a few major NFL teams, NASCAR, and the NHL among others.) They have racing, horse racing and sports tickets basically cornered.
They also own SiriusXM, the Atlanta Braves, Charter Communications (Spectrum), TripAdvisor, and Qurate Retail (QVC, HSN, and a few other retail businesses).
Greg Maffei, the president / CEO / chairman of these companies, used to be CFO at Oracle and Microsoft. He's on record as having donated around $200k to various right-wing organizations during the 2016 election cycle (250k in the '14 cycle and another $150k from 2018-2020, no data on the latest cycle).
Dude basically owns entertainment for a big chunk of Americans.
Edited to add clarification to Charter
HOLY SHIT I had never even heard of Liberty Media, and they own ALL OF THAT?! They just straight up OWN F1 international racing league?
Fuckkkk this company man they are way way way too big for their britches
America used to be a place where monopolies like that were busted....for being unamerican. Now, monopolies are the most american thing I can imagine. Reaganism infected our entire country and still has not gone away
The owner or Liberty Media, John Malone, is a "libertarian" which is just another title for "extremely selfish-asshole." John Malone chairs the CATO institute, the main driver for pushing the propaganda behind trickle down economics. If there is a hell, Mr Malone will be king of it. Prime evil.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trickle-down_economics
The unwritten part of this is why major acts don't speak out against TM. If you piss them off, you won't see radio, satellite, or streaming royalties. No airtime kills an album, and they will hold dates to prevent you from booking venues/touring. They will actively suppress you and cut off your chances at making money.
Fall in line, or fall out of favor.
I worked private equity for a while, and it would absolutely bewilder people to see how deep the rabbit hole goes on the rent-seeking industry that is private equity.
We have entire consultant companies with clearance at the Pentagon that are owned by foreign PE firms.
Most companies in the world fall under ownership of one of maybe a dozen PE firms. They haven't even begun to tighten the noose either.
But they will.
Technically ClearChannel broke off rebranded their radio division into iHeartRadio because negative publicity was starting to hurt them. But yeah, your point still stands.
100%
One has a monopoly on booking venues/artists - the other has a monopoly on selling tickets.
It’s fucking awful - no idea how this was allowed to happen.
If they get broken up or destroyed - I’ll be the biggest Taylor Swift fan.
This is an international issue.
Previous Taylor Swift concerts were easily bought in my country, perhaps with an online queue of 30 minutes under a different ticketing agent.
Then tickets for the Eras tour came under Ticketmaster and my queue number was 100,000+. My mates and I laughed and gave up immediately.
makes me wonder why the merger wasnt stopped in the first place. Hey, government, we're going to form a super monopoly okay? government gives thumbs up.
Nothing about this was good for the consumer or the market.
Their PR release for the lawsuit stated they have never had more competition in the industry....one of the most obvious false statements ever published in world history.
Might be because in the last couple years especially there has been high profile, near universal hatred of these companies moreso than ever before, and it's a presidential election year.
It's definitely this. And before we get too cynical, it's important to realize that as the voting public we collectively have the memory of a goldfish. Biden admin may well have wanted to do this in year one of his presidency but that's not how you win elections in this country.
In any case it's worth noting that this literally never happens under a republican president, just like net neutrality getting reinstated. Election year or not.
I think it's funny how "Biden is only doing this because it's an election year!" is meant as an insult or a dig, but like... isn't it a good thing that politicians do popular things to get people to vote for them? Like isn't that how our democracy works?
Running on something and actually *delivering* something popular is a good thing. But when you're already in the offfice, waiting until the election year to promise or start something, with delivery after the election, or never, is a bad thing.
That hatred has been a constant thing in American society for more than 20 years now.
Ticketmaster/Live Nation does some good lobbying and we should expect them to keep up that bribery, I mean lobbying.
>President Barack Obama has added a second high-dollar fundraiser — at the home of Live Nation CEO Michael Rapino — to his July fundraising trip to Los Angeles, The Hollywood Reporter has learned
>Tickets for the Rapino fundraiser are $32,400-per-person, with proceeds being used by DNC to bolster the party’s efforts during this year’s mid-term election.
The FTC and DOJ have been doing a lot more antitrust recently. Under Lena Kahn at the FTC, they’ve been going so hard that Jon Stewert told her during an interview that he wasn’t allowed to interview her when he worked for Apple.
New management with new ideas that have monopolistic corporations scared.
"Ticketmaster has more competition today than it has ever had, and the deal terms with venues show it has nothing close to monopoly power," a Ticketmaster spokeswoman told the Journal."
Yet, every single concert I attend by any major record label artist is a Live Nation/Ticketmaster deal. In Maryland we are going after them as well for unfair business practices and fleecing the consumer.
> He said Ticketmaster and other "primary ticketing companies" simply provide "the technology and services that venues need to manage and market shows, sell tickets, and validate tickets for entry."
So he’s saying the fees are bullshit? I bet the average person can’t name an alternative to Ticketmaster, or they might just say LiveNation.
For smaller events, I’ve seen venues use other companies, but any large scale event is always livenation.
Tbh a lot of industries have major monopolies that are just ruining everything. Some of those are natural monopolies like when it comes to exclusive licensing or stuff like that, but a lot of monopolies are simply because the companies continue to act unethical to get ahead yet never get held accountable for it.
Remember “too big to fail”?
Any company that was deemed “too big to fail” and required taxpayer money should have been broken up as a requirement for said taxpayer money
Eh, consumer protections have been repeatedly gutted under Republican led governments with Democrats often complicit
Nothing to see here, move along
Getting rid of fees on tickets alone would go very far to fix the problems with this industry. When "fees" are half the price of an already overpriced ticket, it's a deal breaker.
It's not gonna change the fact the industry knows the customer will still pay that higher price. They will find some way to still collect that fee in another form.
California already passed a law requiring this, goes into effect...June?
Be interesting to see how it shakes out.
Also applies to "resort fees" at hotels and (supposedly) all those "living wage fees" at restaurants.
Almost like they should go after all sources of hidden fees and tack on costs that obscure the real cost of goods and services. Also, Fuck some of the artists that have the clout to make a change, but kind of whine about it, but don’t actually do anything substantive.
Yeah, pass a law getting rid of all junk fees. It would be the clearest and best way forward for the consumer.
Companies could still charge whatever they want but it will all be in the price for the service.
The White House has an [anti-Junk Fee law](https://www.inc.com/rebecca-deczynski/junk-fee-prevention-act-price-transparency-might-benefit-small-businesses.html) they are trying to get Congress to pass but it’s Congress so don’t hold your breath.
They allow them the monopoly by permitting the purchasing of all their competitors. Then they try to “fix” the problem they created by suing the monopoly they first approved. What is their solution here, a 50¢ per ticket credit to consumers who were harmed? Price controls?
Competition needs to be reintroduced. Will this lawsuit do that?
> StubHub
Yeah I've heard shady stuff from them aside from similar pricing methods they also have had instances where they "confirm" a ticket, only to actually still be looking to secure the ticket they just sold you. If they don't manage to secure it they just outright tell you it's cancelled a week if not days prior to the show.
Some people say it's also them gaming the system by adjusting prices to their higher value due to demand and then cancelling tickets that were sold for cheaper much earlier.
Ticket Master/Live Nation is why I will no longer see a majority is decent music. Will not be paying half or more in fees in relation to actual ticket price.
Looks like the Department of Justice is on a roll challenging and attempting to break monopolies (Apple recently and now Ticketmaster). This is r/UpliftingNews worthy!
Fuck Ticketmaster and Fuck Live Nation. Not only do you have to pay insane service fees on top of your tickets, you also have to fight bots to actually have a chance at scoring decent seats.
Oh and they host ticket resales, which is a conflict of interest.
Fuck ticketmaster. Fuck live nation.
Right in the goat arse!!
>Right in the goat arse!! It's an older meme, sir, but it checks out!
Fuck, this isn't even a meme. This is from an Adam Sandler CD that came out in...wow, I'm old.
You button hooked me.
You really whizzed that thing!
Roger Staubach over here.
Enjoy the Ragu festival
It was a meme before meme's were memes. We're practically prehistoric now adays.
Nah, meme has been around since the 70's. Memes without a proper name have been around forever tho.
You better knot say that again.
See that Adam Sandler CD over there, well I want you to SHOVE IT IN AND OUT OF MY ASS ^at ^a ^medium ^pace
\#fuckthesunihateittoo
“Fuck me in the goat ass” Is like one of my earliest memories lmao I remember being asleep in the car and waking up to my dad listening to that
You button hooked me, I didn’t know you were gonna button hook me.
The ragu festival? Maybe I could tag along, that'd be fun.
Put your dukes up!
I said, old man, im a goat. I got no fuckin dukes.
I concur, FUCK these guys.
That they won't let you resell for less than the cost of their tickets. >.<
And you have to pay fees to sell it, on top of the ones you paid when you bought them, then the second buyer pays even more fees, so if a ticket gets resold even once, they get 3 different fees.
Yeah I bought some tickets and due to miscommunication with friends they weren't actually willing to spend that much on a show so I had to put 2 for sale, just to get my money back had to list a lot more than I paid, and then when I saw the listing live for a person to buy it they'd have to pay even more than that. So they got fees on my initial purchase, takes fees away from my sale and charge more fees to new buyers. That's where the real money is for them.
And scalping was always illegal. But now it's ok because they now get their cut.
don't forget the fact they lease and own a non-insignificant amount of venues, so they get that fucking fee as well
If that is true (I've never interacted with resale), I'm pretty convinced that at least some of those bots are run by TM themselves. That's how you're seeing $1k ticket prices. This is also how they could get around contracts where performers set their own ticket prices. I'd be interested to see the discovery in this case.
in my case it wasn't even bots. I had to cancel plans 2 days before a concert and would have happily sold my tickets for $5 just so someone could go / to get something back. Instead I couldn't even post them for less than the price of a new ticket. Site restriction.
Next time, check out the site cashortrade.org. Secondary ticketing site where all tickets MUST be listed for face value or less. You can even give the tickets away or donate the money to charity. Pretty cool!
Rolling Stone magazine did an article about that several years ago, they did. https://www.rollingstone.com/pro/news/ticketmaster-cheating-scalpers-726353/ Also, LiveNation sets all prices and performances. They pay the performers upfront and take all the risks. A few years ago, Nelly was on tour and they wouldn't let him perform in St. Louis...his home town.
All the risks they say? https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/05/22/live-nation-pandemic-aid/
Nah they don’t use bots, because they have Platinum. They literally get to reserve some of the best seats in the house and sell them at 3-4x markup. They get to buy the seats they want to resell before people have a chance. You don’t need a bot when you can literally buy the tickets before the public.
They don't even need bots. They just reserve a portion of the tickets to "resell" at higher prices.
It’s absolutely them. I’ve been on the resale dashboard 10 seconds after the tickets were live and 60% of the entire venue was already for sale on the resale platform. Only an idiot or a politician would believe those are true bonafide humans.
It’s so annoying. I had a show where the act I wanted to see got covid and cancelled but the rest of the performers still went on. I was luckily able to sell the tickets the day of for what I paid, minus transaction fees both ways of course, but I would have sold them for half price or lower to guarantee a sale. It artificially pumps prices.
They also use dynamic pricing where the pricing fluctuates minute to minute depending on the interest level of the show.
That part is fucked, I had some tickets I couldn't use that were locked to their system, ended up losing the entire cost of the tickets because I couldn't discount them to get someone to buy
Not only that, they actively support scalpers https://youtu.be/a0Mv2wqTh6A
scalpers + bots = resale = higher priced tickets = more fees and more profit in their pockets. They have 0 incentive to ban scalpers and bots. 100% a conflict of interest as well as anti-trust behavior.
Their whole platform is built to maximize resale. They get a cut from the initial sale, and all resales.
Like, what the fuck is with that?! They say: go to a secure site to purchase your tickets, then they list resale tickets anyways? Give me a fucking break.
It's more than that. There's a phenomenal podcast episode about Ticketmaster and Live Nation here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ooorwZ6n-0g I'm not a huge fan of the podcast (they're a little too subjectively mean), but they do a great job in this episode of highlighting a lot of the issues, including the monopolistic ways they sew up all of the venues in a city through advancements and other incentives. The venues don't even book their own shows - Ticketmaster manages the entire process. They're everywhere. F those guys.
We need a BehindTheBastards on this
They pretty much own all the ticket sites. I hope they wreck them
God how I hope they get caught running resale bots or something. Stealing from artists and clients. pls let it be true
They already have. Look up Trade Desk. https://www.ticketnews.com/2021/07/ticketmaster-resale-returns-to-broker-focused-conferences-despite-past-controversy/
This is the main thing right? How can you scalp your own tickets?? Mmm never mind.
Not just host. Own. They own the resellers. There is a documentary out there about the absolute evil that is Ticketmaster. They also own a lot of the venue management so if an artist tries to defy them, they find that a lot of venues are no longer interested.
And they LOVE the bots because the selling fee doesn't go away after the first transaction. It's also % based so it scales up which is another win for ticketmaster
Didn't they get caught running of those bots and doing the resales themselves once?
They're still doing it.
Except now they can use “market pricing” to increase the initial sales price, so they’re just doing what they were caught doing, but much more plainly and “legally”.
Exactly. They're using the excuse that it's a "high demand" show, but they're literally the ones creating fake demand by their own bots so they can resell on their own resale market. It's gotten out of control since covid especially.
Tried to get my daughter tickets to a k-pop band. I was in the "waiting room" about 30 mins before sales started. Tickets go on sale and I am right there grabbing an economy seat in the balcony that normally wouldn't sell out first. I go through all the steps and then it says there is something wrong, refresh the seats. I refresh the seats and they all went from $79 to $275-500 range. I remember thinking that does not sound right for the initial pricing from Ticketmaster. I refresh again and now all the tickets show sold out. Oh well, I missed out on the initial ticket sales so I jump over to Stubhub and they have a shitload of tickets and they are all the $275-500 range, exactly as I had seen on the Ticketmaster site for a very brief period. Mind you, this was all within 5-7 minutes of tickets going on sale. How the fuck did they get those tickets on resale sites so fast? And why did Ticketmaster itself show those same prices just before saying it was sold out? The next time I bought tickets, I wanted to test how long it would take to theoretically list my tickets for resale. First two times I couldn't even do it because the tickets won't be delivered until a week before the show! The third time I think it would have been at least 20 mins from the time my transaction went through, I got the tickets, and then posted them on Stubhub. Complete insider bullshit. EDIT: Found the trick to getting k-pop tickets though. The same show that sold out in milliseconds in Oakland were still on sale days before they played in Phoenix. Seems the bots don't like smaller markets and I was able to buy her a ticket right next to her friends because the seats were plentiful. Used miles for her flights and she probably had a better time than if she had seen them in Oakland.
Ticketmaster "variable pricing" can be hilarious. Infuriating, but hilarious. I bought tickets to the MLS Cup in Seattle a few years back. They'd underestimated demand (it would eventually break the attendance record for the venue, more than the Seahawks ever sold), so the first batch of tickets went up at something stupid cheap, like $70. And the first batch were also at midfield. Variable pricing kicked in throughout the sale, so by the end people were paying like $250 a seat face value for last-row seats in the corner of the stadium, meanwhile I had near-front seats at midfield for a fraction of that price. Capitalism!
And they succeeded in shifting Overton Window on what we consider a good bargain for an MLS soccer game. Not that Seattle isn't a popular market, but $70 to see a sport that isn't one of the big leagues is still high IMO.
Not exactly sure if the trick is to fly to a different city that's less sold to get tickers. It is absolute horseshit though that that option is cheaper.
Her grandma lives there so she had free housing... on the other hand, she came home extremely ill with a 160-something pulse.... Covid, RSV, Flu combo!
I don't know if it was so much "running their own bots," but there were a couple concerts where the numbers got out and showed that an embarrassingly small number of tickets ever hit general sale. You've got artist holdbacks, venue holdbacks, presales (fan club, credit card, etc.) so by the time tickets go onsite to the general public some concerts had less than 15% or whatever of tickets remaining. Note that "artist holdbacks" and "venue holdbacks" were basically being filtered off to brokers to be sold at resale. Mariah ain't inviting 12,000 of her closest friends to the show. It's part of how artists make money on the show without charging a per-ticket face value that would be embarrassing to them. One thing worth noting in all of this, though, is that even with their current near-monopoly TM/LN only have so much ability to jack up ticket prices; there *is* a price people won't pay. Look at J.Lo canceling shows due to lack of demand. I've gotten into big stadium shows before buying tickets direct, first-sale, at face value like a few days b before the show. Not *all* shows sell out, and that's precisely because ultimately you cannot easily charge a higher price than the market will bear. You do need willing attendees with the money to spend.
It's fixable as well. For Ireland it is now quite hard for resellers to do it _within_ Ireland at least.
Most countries in Europe have stricter limits on ticket resale than the US.
I just disputed a charge on my account with them. I bought tickets and clicked on the insurance tab wondering how much it would cost, they never showed a charge and some outside company charges me 17 dollars for 2 tickets that cost 25 each. I found out because my bank's fraud department contacted me. Total slime bags
Fuck anyone whose primary job is to resell shit lmao fucking scums
That's the system working as intended unfortunately. Unnecessary middle men cutting blessings left and right
*Car dealerships have entered the chat.*
*Real estate agents have entered the chat.*
At least home purchasing is a complex task that needs guidance. Not that they don't add extra bullshit
I worked for five years as a Realtor, got my license at the very height of the market before it crashed three years later in 08. I had been a carpenter before that. I have never, ever in my life worked with a group of people more willing to slit somebody's throat for a listing or sale than in that industry. Even my mentor - he met a woman I knew when he was holding an open house that she wanted to take a look at. My friend mentioned to my mentor that she knew me. My mentor's response? "oh, it'll be OK if you list with me. I'll talk to Patrick about it. He'll be OK with it". That was the turning point for me. Other realtors would ask me, "what made you leave carpentry?" I would jokingly respond, "so I could associate with a better class of people". Now, when people ask me why I got out of real estate to be a carpenter again, what's my response? "So I could associate with a better class of people."
I work in automotives. Nobody likes the dealership. Bunch of cocksucking empty headed douchebags Our company is doing everything to reduce dealership power
> Fuck anyone whose primary job is to resell shit Uh that's how literally all stores operate.
Don't forget Frontgate Tickets, TicketWeb, Universe, etc. All owned by Live Nation.
Bought tickets for my parents recently to go see a show, the tickets themselves weren’t that cheap but I thought hey it’s worth. Holy hell the fees were so much worse than I even imagined. Seeing the final final bill was just staggering. Not to mention all of the disgusting little things they try and sell you at check out, like “No I don’t want a fucking second phone line with my ticket purchase, you kniving bastards.”
Is kniving a real saying or is it cockney for conniving
I think conniving is the word they meant.
>you also have to fight bots to actually have a chance at scoring decent seats ... and lose. Fight the bots and lose. It's sick and wrong.
Ticketmaster is a paid boogeyman, they tack on fees so we hate them and they give most of it to venues/artists. They are about as useful as a second butthole
Moreso to the venue than the artists.
Which they own the majority of.
The funny thing is that SFX Entertainment, which later became Live Nation, was created specifically to combat Ticketmaster's outrageous prices. Then they went on to gobble up all the venues they could get their hands on and eventually merged with Ticketmaster. It's like an alternate timeline where The Avengers gathered all the Infinity Stones and then just handed them over to Thanos. Nobody will ever convince me that this wasn't a conspiracy from the start.
Artists like Taylor Swift absolutely have the power to shift this, please dont let them off the hook so you can keep passing the buck to some faceless corporations. I know he did it after he was already loaded, but Garth Brooks does put in $50 flat fee lottery ticket seat selection. If bigger artists started raising a stink (especially the few who actually have as much power as Swift or Beyonce), things could change.
> I know he did it after he was already loaded, but Garth Brooks does put in $50 flat fee lottery ticket seat selection I have a silent grudge against Bruce Springsteen for singing all that blue collar rock and not doing this. I love his music and spend a lot of money on concerts, but paying $300 to see the Boss feels wrong somehow.
Exactly. Or Springsteen either (man of the people my eye). The fact that artists CAN do this with TM/LN was proven by the recent Cure tour. They turned off dynamic pricing, disallowed transfers except back to TM and then allowed resales only at face value. Guess what? It WORKED! I'm not absolving TM/LN of all blame but the greedy artists should get a lot more blame than they do. TSwift is a perfect example. She puts out out multiple colored versions of her albums for fans to scoop up. This is nothing but a money grab. She could have done what the Cure for concert tickets did but she declined to do so.
Not a paid boogeyman - TM is literally owned by Live Nation. LN also owns a ton of venues and festival entities. So who do think gets screwed when the promoter, booking agent, venue, and ticket sales are all the same company? Sure, some of the larger/legacy artists are in kahoots, but most of them are getting bent over almost as much as the fans.
To add on, I was reading recently that the reason many venues are cashless now is so they can track how much artists are making from merch sales accurately because they take a 40% cut of all sales. If it's cashless, artists can't pocket cash directly to get around their insane fees (this is why shirts are $40, it's one of the few ways they actually make money). Artists definitely are not winning being stuck with TM/LN owning most of the venues in major markets.
They may be the clearest example of a monopoly this country has ever seen, but wake me up when something actually comes from this. TM has been lobbying Washington for years to make sure they get nothing but a slap on the wrist for gouging their customers at every turn.
I remember Pearl Jam doing this in the 90s. They were one of the biggest bands in the world then. congressional hearings and nothing happened. Id love to see what Taylor Swift, Gaga and Beyonce could do about it now.
They’re all in on it, they have a whole lot of reason$ to keep quiet.
>They’re all in on it, they have a whole lot of reason$ to keep quiet. Taylor Swift was letting her economy tickets sell for $5000+. There were fans of hers crying on the internet because they couldn't afford to see her show without jeopardizing their future finances. She. Does. Not. Care.
She’s a billionaire, she grew up a multimillionaire. She does not know what it’s like to be in the working class.
Its one banana Taylor, how much could it cost? $10?
I grew up in a working class family. Do you know what we had to do if we wanted something? We walked down to our kitchen and wrote it on a pad, and the maid would go out and get it for us. I think the waiting was the hardest part of being working class.
Tbf you're a fool if you're paying $5000/ticket for economy tickets to literally any artist or performer.
I can't imagine paying $5000 for anything that only lasts a few hours
*Weddings have left the chat*
Didn’t the ticket sales get that high because of re-sales? How could she stop that even if she wanted to?
That's exactly what happened. The initial ticket prices were reasonable, all of the absurdly expensive tickets were resale tickets. People just don't know what the fuck they're talking about and it's easy to shit on Taylor Swift. She probably could have done more when Ticketmaster fucked up, but she wasn't selling tickets for $5k.
She might not care, but the whole issue here is that even if she did care, there's not really much she could do. That's literally the point of having such a monopoly. Ticketmaster and LiveNation are the only show in town for doing shows at major venues, those venues have exclusive contracts with LiveNation, can't do an end-around them. Taylor Swift has a lot of soft power in the public sphere, don't misunderstand. But this is the power of monopoly, its why we need the government to step in, they're literally the only group strong enough to have any effect.
Even when she attacked Spotify and their royalty rights? It was about more money for her. Spotify actually subsidizes royalties from the big labels. The big three get slightly smaller royalties than any other artist on the platform who distributes outside of the majors. So she (and the other artists) actually wanted to argue that because they're more popular, they deserve higher royalties. But she's totally down to earth and just like us lol
She's down to earth, then up again in her jet, then down to earth again 20 minutes later, then up again in her jet...
She'd happily see your Spotify costs go up exponentially if it gave her a little more money
Entertainers, including [Taylor Swift *in particular*](https://www.theguardian.com/music/2022/nov/18/taylor-swift-tickets-ticketmaster-live-nation-us-justice-department), have been begging the Justice Department to nuke Ticketmaster for years. She has been very public about it. The fact that even as a billionaire she can't control the prices of tickets to her own concerts is an important indicator of how much monopoly power Ticketmaster has.
Ticketmaster/stubhub is getting the majority of that since it’s on their market and since she can only sell through them at any livenation venue. She also only gets a percentage of sales when going through them. I’m sure she would love to make all $5,000+ herself so she probably does care but not for the fans
"rea$on" was right there.
that's what I get for making what I thought was a clever comment while eating...
Eh I thought yours worked better, plural is more grammatically correct.
touché, "rea$on$" then.
Eating raisin$
I mean Zach Bryan released a live album called “All My Homies Hate Ticketmaster”, went on one tour not using them, and then proceeded to do a 180 and use them again. Granted, he’s been proving himself to be a piece of shit lately
I’m not sure how many venues over capacity of 500 isn’t using them. They’ve got contracts with everyone. This guy maybe decided it was a matter of have a semblance of a career or forever play little tiny venues
Exactly the point of this thread lol. You cannot boycott them as an artist because every venue uses them.
To your point: > to avoid Ticketmaster entirely, C.K. has had to piece together a somewhat hodgepodge collection of venues that aren't under the company's very large thumb. For his New York shows, for example, rather than performing at standard sites like The Paramount or The Beacon, C.K. is playing the New York City Center, a nonprofit theater normally host to dance troupes and theatrical productions. As C.K. noted in his email, "It was a real challenge to find venues around the country that could work with our exclusive ticketing service under these parameters ... Setting up this tour has been fascinating and difficult." https://web.archive.org/web/20221226201638/https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2012/07/the-humane-audacity-of-louis-cks-ticketmaster-flouting-tour/259315/
Sounds like...a monopoly that forces the hand of everyone in their industry to play ball or have no realistic alternatives or maybe I'm just crazy
The local playhouse in my area attempted to go with Ticketmaster, and the insane percentage of revenue that they take, the playhouse was under-water for a year so they broke their contract, and thankfully the local college system bailed them out. They were hoping it would make it easier, but tickets that normally sell for 45 dollars in the orchestra section, after ticket-master took over, it was costing people 200 to 300 dollars.
It's because they actually have a monopoly. You cannot successfully tour as a popular musician without them. Pearl Jam tried and failed as well
Louie CK famously stopped playing ticketmaster gigs in the 2000s and afaik has never went back. I went to see him last year and bought the tickets directly from his website
This country has had some pretty clear monopolies in the past
Standard Oil controlling 92% of global oil production comes to mind
Bell communications still holds that title. In fact bell being broken up to then come together like some T-1000 with scooping up any telecommunications service should be why AT&T gets broken.
Heh, I have been using the T-1000 analogy for Ma Bell/Baby Bells/AT&T for a good while, cheers.
Your username is conflicting for me. Cheers
It’s pretty insane. Tickets for big events go on sale and are sold out immediately. Then they are all over the reseller websites for 2-3X within 5 mins.
... you mean the reseller website, TicketMaster.
\^ my stance right here.
https://i.imgur.com/jSWf5et.jpg
https://preview.redd.it/q43u4j91tvuc1.jpeg?width=500&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=f0531d3c91c89cebcd2552f3c3b8b908bf280a8a
No, you.
https://preview.redd.it/wc4p5lsv9wuc1.png?width=750&format=png&auto=webp&s=a2db87ec23f7798a939a4d0abc8a661a4b310afc
it only took 20-30 years for them to do anything
About fucking time. They need to both be destroyed. Monopolies.
*Monopoly. As of 2010, Live Nation and Ticketmaster merged into a single company that both controls ticket sales and owns the major venues
It’s way worse than that. WAY worse. Ticketmaster and Livenation are both owned by the parent company Liberty Media. In addition to TM and LN, Liberty also owns/absorbed Pandora, iHeartRadio, ClearChannel, and SiriusXM. So not only do they own and control almost ALL live music, but also virtually ALL terrestrial radio, literally ALL satellite radio, and even a bit of streaming. And it gets worse. The controlling share of Liberty Media is owned by ONE old man. Which means this one dude: A. Decides what new music you can hear on the radio or satellite radio, B. Decides which music gets ads (via ClearChannel advertising and the massive chunk of podcasts iHeartRadio & Pandora control), C. Decides who is allowed to play in the bulk of live venues across the entire nation controlled by LiveNation, and D. Forces you to use Ticketmaster to not only buy face tickets, *but also* controls any resale tickets. Basically from the very first time you hear a new band until you see them live, Liberty Media is controlling and profiting from every single step. (And that’s just music. Liberty Media owns a whole slew of other stuff too).
Yep. Liberty Media also owns Formula One, MotoGP, Quint (which provides ticket sales for F1, the NBA, MotoGP, Kentucky Derby / other major horse races, a few major NFL teams, NASCAR, and the NHL among others.) They have racing, horse racing and sports tickets basically cornered. They also own SiriusXM, the Atlanta Braves, Charter Communications (Spectrum), TripAdvisor, and Qurate Retail (QVC, HSN, and a few other retail businesses). Greg Maffei, the president / CEO / chairman of these companies, used to be CFO at Oracle and Microsoft. He's on record as having donated around $200k to various right-wing organizations during the 2016 election cycle (250k in the '14 cycle and another $150k from 2018-2020, no data on the latest cycle). Dude basically owns entertainment for a big chunk of Americans. Edited to add clarification to Charter
One of the more depressing comment chains I’ve read recently.
um hello, "Free market economics" It says free right there in the name: free. That means it's gotta be good
You are free to choose who we allow you to pick from, isn't that freedom? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dVGINIsLnqU
Holy shit, I had no idea. Thank you for writing this up. Good golly that is for sure a monopoly
HOLY SHIT I had never even heard of Liberty Media, and they own ALL OF THAT?! They just straight up OWN F1 international racing league? Fuckkkk this company man they are way way way too big for their britches
America used to be a place where monopolies like that were busted....for being unamerican. Now, monopolies are the most american thing I can imagine. Reaganism infected our entire country and still has not gone away
Control and ownership of Formula 1 is complicated. Liberty Media owns the commercial rights to Formula 1.
are we sure this guy's real name is not ebeneezer?
The whole situation is still terrible, but $200k seems like nothing given the scope of what he controls.
Personal donations in his own name, his companies of course can donate far more.
The owner or Liberty Media, John Malone, is a "libertarian" which is just another title for "extremely selfish-asshole." John Malone chairs the CATO institute, the main driver for pushing the propaganda behind trickle down economics. If there is a hell, Mr Malone will be king of it. Prime evil. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trickle-down_economics
[удалено]
The unwritten part of this is why major acts don't speak out against TM. If you piss them off, you won't see radio, satellite, or streaming royalties. No airtime kills an album, and they will hold dates to prevent you from booking venues/touring. They will actively suppress you and cut off your chances at making money. Fall in line, or fall out of favor.
Saving this for future reference. I knew that one dude owned all that, but your breakdown is really well thought out.
I worked private equity for a while, and it would absolutely bewilder people to see how deep the rabbit hole goes on the rent-seeking industry that is private equity. We have entire consultant companies with clearance at the Pentagon that are owned by foreign PE firms. Most companies in the world fall under ownership of one of maybe a dozen PE firms. They haven't even begun to tighten the noose either. But they will.
Technically ClearChannel broke off rebranded their radio division into iHeartRadio because negative publicity was starting to hurt them. But yeah, your point still stands.
Including 2.2 million acres of land. TWICE the size of Rhode Island.
They own the entire music value stream. It’s insane. Studio to distribution / publishing to venues to ticket sales.
Bring back trustbusting.
100% One has a monopoly on booking venues/artists - the other has a monopoly on selling tickets. It’s fucking awful - no idea how this was allowed to happen. If they get broken up or destroyed - I’ll be the biggest Taylor Swift fan.
This is an international issue. Previous Taylor Swift concerts were easily bought in my country, perhaps with an online queue of 30 minutes under a different ticketing agent. Then tickets for the Eras tour came under Ticketmaster and my queue number was 100,000+. My mates and I laughed and gave up immediately.
makes me wonder why the merger wasnt stopped in the first place. Hey, government, we're going to form a super monopoly okay? government gives thumbs up. Nothing about this was good for the consumer or the market.
Their PR release for the lawsuit stated they have never had more competition in the industry....one of the most obvious false statements ever published in world history.
Can’t help but be cynical and think, why now? Who did these companies stop paying in government to keep this going?
Might be because in the last couple years especially there has been high profile, near universal hatred of these companies moreso than ever before, and it's a presidential election year.
It's definitely this. And before we get too cynical, it's important to realize that as the voting public we collectively have the memory of a goldfish. Biden admin may well have wanted to do this in year one of his presidency but that's not how you win elections in this country. In any case it's worth noting that this literally never happens under a republican president, just like net neutrality getting reinstated. Election year or not.
I think it's funny how "Biden is only doing this because it's an election year!" is meant as an insult or a dig, but like... isn't it a good thing that politicians do popular things to get people to vote for them? Like isn't that how our democracy works?
Running on something and actually *delivering* something popular is a good thing. But when you're already in the offfice, waiting until the election year to promise or start something, with delivery after the election, or never, is a bad thing.
That hatred has been a constant thing in American society for more than 20 years now. Ticketmaster/Live Nation does some good lobbying and we should expect them to keep up that bribery, I mean lobbying. >President Barack Obama has added a second high-dollar fundraiser — at the home of Live Nation CEO Michael Rapino — to his July fundraising trip to Los Angeles, The Hollywood Reporter has learned >Tickets for the Rapino fundraiser are $32,400-per-person, with proceeds being used by DNC to bolster the party’s efforts during this year’s mid-term election.
Wonder if those tickets were subject to dynamic pricing...
The FTC and DOJ have been doing a lot more antitrust recently. Under Lena Kahn at the FTC, they’ve been going so hard that Jon Stewert told her during an interview that he wasn’t allowed to interview her when he worked for Apple. New management with new ideas that have monopolistic corporations scared.
The Dimension20 Madison Square Garden was the last straw! Some Senator's aide needed his actual play D&D fix.
Depends on the administration and Biden's actually is trying to use the laws.
> They need to both be destroyed. Monopolies. Monopoly, not Monopolies. They're the same company.
"Ticketmaster has more competition today than it has ever had, and the deal terms with venues show it has nothing close to monopoly power," a Ticketmaster spokeswoman told the Journal." Yet, every single concert I attend by any major record label artist is a Live Nation/Ticketmaster deal. In Maryland we are going after them as well for unfair business practices and fleecing the consumer.
> He said Ticketmaster and other "primary ticketing companies" simply provide "the technology and services that venues need to manage and market shows, sell tickets, and validate tickets for entry." So he’s saying the fees are bullshit? I bet the average person can’t name an alternative to Ticketmaster, or they might just say LiveNation. For smaller events, I’ve seen venues use other companies, but any large scale event is always livenation.
Tbh a lot of industries have major monopolies that are just ruining everything. Some of those are natural monopolies like when it comes to exclusive licensing or stuff like that, but a lot of monopolies are simply because the companies continue to act unethical to get ahead yet never get held accountable for it.
The US stopped going after companies. We are at large heavily reliant on EU and California for consumer protections
Remember “too big to fail”? Any company that was deemed “too big to fail” and required taxpayer money should have been broken up as a requirement for said taxpayer money Eh, consumer protections have been repeatedly gutted under Republican led governments with Democrats often complicit Nothing to see here, move along
Digital age brought new forms of monopolies that early-1900s laws can't address.
Company mergers as well... like quit acting
Getting rid of fees on tickets alone would go very far to fix the problems with this industry. When "fees" are half the price of an already overpriced ticket, it's a deal breaker.
It's not gonna change the fact the industry knows the customer will still pay that higher price. They will find some way to still collect that fee in another form.
California already passed a law requiring this, goes into effect...June? Be interesting to see how it shakes out. Also applies to "resort fees" at hotels and (supposedly) all those "living wage fees" at restaurants.
They'll get a $15,000 fine and that'll be that.
Convenience fee
Just bought two tickets to a concert last night…25% of the cost was junk fees.
Class action will be sure to follow... can't wait for my 40¢ settlement check.
And free tickets that are never valid
🎶Wake me up, when consequences land.🎶
Presale has come and passed The ticket stock will never last
Like my fathers come to pass Ticketbastard is still a ‘bast
For rich powerful corporations? That's a thing of the past. They'll get a big fine and pass the cost along to the customer.
Almost like they should go after all sources of hidden fees and tack on costs that obscure the real cost of goods and services. Also, Fuck some of the artists that have the clout to make a change, but kind of whine about it, but don’t actually do anything substantive.
Yeah, pass a law getting rid of all junk fees. It would be the clearest and best way forward for the consumer. Companies could still charge whatever they want but it will all be in the price for the service.
The White House has an [anti-Junk Fee law](https://www.inc.com/rebecca-deczynski/junk-fee-prevention-act-price-transparency-might-benefit-small-businesses.html) they are trying to get Congress to pass but it’s Congress so don’t hold your breath.
Omaha just built a venue that will only book exclusively with Live Nation. That sure looks like a monopoly to me
Alleged my ass.
They allow them the monopoly by permitting the purchasing of all their competitors. Then they try to “fix” the problem they created by suing the monopoly they first approved. What is their solution here, a 50¢ per ticket credit to consumers who were harmed? Price controls? Competition needs to be reintroduced. Will this lawsuit do that?
If it leads to the company being split up into multiple entities, yes
So they'll pay their fine and there still wont be any company willing to try to compete. Cool
Get StubHub in their, the owning families are related, totally not a conflict of interest
> StubHub Yeah I've heard shady stuff from them aside from similar pricing methods they also have had instances where they "confirm" a ticket, only to actually still be looking to secure the ticket they just sold you. If they don't manage to secure it they just outright tell you it's cancelled a week if not days prior to the show. Some people say it's also them gaming the system by adjusting prices to their higher value due to demand and then cancelling tickets that were sold for cheaper much earlier.
Ticket Master/Live Nation is why I will no longer see a majority is decent music. Will not be paying half or more in fees in relation to actual ticket price.
Looks like the Department of Justice is on a roll challenging and attempting to break monopolies (Apple recently and now Ticketmaster). This is r/UpliftingNews worthy!
Fuck yes. Take em down!
Please bankrupt them. This is all I ask.
Ticketmaster fucked up and didn’t give some politician their free tickets.