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Ask HN: Why hasn't there been a real competitor to Ticketmaster yet?

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Re: Ask HN: Why hasn't there been a real competitor to Ticketmaster yet?

#211

Post by loloquwowndueo »

fakedang wrote: post #125
loloquwowndueo wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Stadiums are still going to be full, that’s why it will keep happening. People voting with their wallets goes both ways.

> "Every match is already sold out," Fifa president Gianni Infantino said in February. "We keep some tickets back for some last-minute sales, of course, but every match is sold out." > Like most things about this World Cup, the reality appears to be different. > Fifa should not have a problem selling out the games featuring the marquee teams - Argentina, Brazil, England, Germany and Spain, to name a few. > We should…

74k tickets across all 86 matches? That’s less than 1k tickets per match. Azteca Stadium in Mexico has 87k capacity - 1k unsold tickets is nothing.

Re: Ask HN: Why hasn't there been a real competitor to Ticketmaster yet?

#212

Post by maleldil »

iamben wrote: post #139
peteforde wrote: post #109

Many of the other commenters have explained how the ownership structure of Ticketmaster gives them near monopoly control because they also own the radio stations and the venues and the promoters. (I'm using "they" and "own" very liberally in this paragraph.) The simple fact that there's an ownership link between Ticketmaster and the scalper I mean totally legit resale sites is so wildly corrupt that, well, it's textb…

Go to a lot of smaller shows, been using DICE for a long time - I think they dominate the smaller venues (in the UK at least). They've made tickets as easy as Amazon made ecom. Alerts when for when tickets go on sale, (almost one click!) buy for friends and share, bans if you sell over face value, and (for a lot of places) you can return tickets to the pool to resell if you can't go (so there's often last minute wait…

DICE is awesome. I'm bummed when I need to use anything else. I rarely ever need to use Ticketmaster.

Re: Ask HN: Why hasn't there been a real competitor to Ticketmaster yet?

#213

Post by wilkommen »

ipaddr wrote: post #206
wilkommen wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ticketmaster uses their monopoly power to unfairly squeeze the venues and the artists too. They're using their monopoly power to squeeze all sides of the live music marketplace - fans, artists, venues, and promoters. So the bad guys are really Ticketmaster, not the artists.

They own the venues. And the artists are to blame because without them ticketmaster would have no product. Pearl Jam took a huge career hit trying to fight them.

Yeah Pearl Jam did take a huge career hit trying to fight them, and that's admirable, but they shouldn't have had to do that. Why should artists carry the burden of having to sacrifice their careers to fight an illegal monopoly? That's the role of government. You may as well say that fans are to blame for going to ticketmaster-promoted concerts and buying tickets on ticketmaster because they were enabling ticketmaster. Both fans and artists are being harmed by the ticketmaster monopoly.

Re: Ask HN: Why hasn't there been a real competitor to Ticketmaster yet?

#214

Post by zer00eyz »

peteforde wrote: post #109

Many of the other commenters have explained how the ownership structure of Ticketmaster gives them near monopoly control because they also own the radio stations and the venues and the promoters. (I'm using "they" and "own" very liberally in this paragraph.) The simple fact that there's an ownership link between Ticketmaster and the scalper I mean totally legit resale sites is so wildly corrupt that, well, it's textb…

> link between Ticketmaster and the scalper

Except this was going on back in the 90's. https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1990-05-27-ca-579-st...

Then it was an informal, local, criminal enterprise. Local promoters, would get tickets from management, to drop to local re-sellers (scalpers, and brokers) and make money on the back side (for management).

With the death of album sales, concerts became the main revenue driver for making money... Formalizing the old system, centralizing it, turning it into a business was just "cleaning up" the mess that used to be there. Look at the Altimont stabbing, and the Rolling Stones role in that (demanding even MORE money and upfront).

Live Nation / TicketMaster is "Bill Graham Presents"... it was his dream and he is a product of that era (go read up on how his partner got stabbed).

Is Live Nation awful... sure. But breaking them up wont change the economics or the system (sadly). Artists are just as much a part of the problem as any fan.

Re: Ask HN: Why hasn't there been a real competitor to Ticketmaster yet?

#215

Post by ndriscoll »

goodmythical wrote: post #208
iso1631 wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

literally has had two meanings for decades, maybe centuries 1) Literally Literally 2) Figuratively It's semantic bleaching

Not sure why you're downvoted. People have literally been using literally both ways for at at least 25 years by my own observational record. You know, "I could literally eat a horse." in which it is clearly understood that the speaker is not claiming that they could physically fit a horse inside their stomache.

Except in this case e.g. Shannon Hoon of Blind Melon actually did literally piss on the audience, so using the word literally to mean "not literally" is confusing because it's not obviously some exaggeration (and considering the timelines, the original comment may have been referring to a literal event but confusing who did it).

Re: Ask HN: Why hasn't there been a real competitor to Ticketmaster yet?

#216

Post by peteforde »

trumpdong wrote: post #159
peteforde wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I remember Oasis. They're the ones who literally pissed on the audience here back in the 90s. The idea that they care if their fans live or die really comes down to whether they could get sponsors on board or not.

Can't find any evidence of this urination incident, got a link?

Mea culpa: upon waking up and being challenged, I realized that I had conflated the Shannon Hoon story and the [very real] Oasis "piss bomb" story into one.

If I'm really and truly honest, I still remember this happening quite clearly so consider this my own personal Mandela Effect moment.

However, there's an unforgiveable gap between fans throwing urine bottles around and my claim [that I very clearly remember Liam as the brother who pissed on an audience at Molson Park but can't prove it and now look like a dumbass] so I do sincerely apologize.

Re: Ask HN: Why hasn't there been a real competitor to Ticketmaster yet?

#217

Post by carlosjobim »

washadjeffmad wrote: post #153
vova_hn2 wrote: post #152

A question only tangentially related to the original post, but I always wonder about it when I read such discussions. To all the people, who complain about "price gouging" or "scalpers" and "lack of regulations": if there are no fair market price, how exactly are you planning to judge who is "worthy" of getting a ticket and who isn't. Let's say, you somehow forced them to sell tickets at low prices and somehow magica…

First come first serve, and multiple show dates if you're optimizing for sales. There are lots of platforms for ticket sales and venue management. That's how they run high school and college events, local theaters, etc. Ticketmaster is doing something completely different.

Not all artists want to do as many shows as the market demands.

Not all artists can do as many shows as the market demands.

People should instead consider the vanity of thinking they absolutely need to see a certain artist perform live on stage.

Re: Ask HN: Why hasn't there been a real competitor to Ticketmaster yet?

#218

Post by peteforde »

gosub100 wrote: post #176
peteforde wrote: post #109

Many of the other commenters have explained how the ownership structure of Ticketmaster gives them near monopoly control because they also own the radio stations and the venues and the promoters. (I'm using "they" and "own" very liberally in this paragraph.) The simple fact that there's an ownership link between Ticketmaster and the scalper I mean totally legit resale sites is so wildly corrupt that, well, it's textb…

> while leaving the musicians looking like neutral parties. Then why wasn't Pearl Jam able to shake them in the mid 90s?

Several things can be true at the same time.

I truly believe that Pearl Jam and many others who have been harshly critical of TM and Live Nation genuinely want to fight back.

However, a person much more cynical than me could make the argument that a band can fight Ticketmaster, still get their bag AND look like folk heroes in the process.

Re: Ask HN: Why hasn't there been a real competitor to Ticketmaster yet?

#219

Post by peteforde »

FrustratedMonky wrote: post #177
peteforde wrote: post #109

Many of the other commenters have explained how the ownership structure of Ticketmaster gives them near monopoly control because they also own the radio stations and the venues and the promoters. (I'm using "they" and "own" very liberally in this paragraph.) The simple fact that there's an ownership link between Ticketmaster and the scalper I mean totally legit resale sites is so wildly corrupt that, well, it's textb…

" leaving the musicians looking like neutral parties." Isn't this giving Ticketmaster too much credit, for helping artist profit. When part of the problem is the artist also does not get as much from the high ticket price. Since Ticketmaster owns the venues, and the entire supply chain, the artist is also enthralled and must take whatever 'lower payout' that Ticketmaster feels like giving. So, tickets might be high,…

If monopoly laws were applied to Live Nation, who would pay the lobbyists? And if the lobbyists weren't paid, who would pay the politicians?

Your argument works on paper, but the ground truth is that the base price of tickets is 5x what it was when I was in high school. If you're a big enough artist to fill venues, trust that you've done just fine under this arrangement.

Recorded music is literally just a loss leader to sell tickets now.

And when you sell tickets, you can sell merch. Did you know that venues usually take a (large) cut of merch sales? The same venues that are owned by the same company that owns Ticketmaster, the venue, the promoter and the radio stations?

What monopoly? No monopoly here!

Re: Ask HN: Why hasn't there been a real competitor to Ticketmaster yet?

#220

Post by cush »

jorisw wrote: post #129
marysol5 wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OASIS did that one when they announced their return tour. "We have no control over the ticket prices" Yeah you do, there's no show without you...

What incentive would Oasis have to help bring down the prices for their own shows anyway?

They don’t have control over the margins. They could set the MSRP as low as they want - the customer will still pay the same amount.
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