Ticketmaster: Rocking The Most Hated Brand In America
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Ticketmaster: Rocking The Most Hated Brand In America
1–10 of 34 posts
Re: Ticketmaster: Rocking The Most Hated Brand In America
#2No big surprise with that. When you have a dominating monopoly on most of the major venues in America, you probably don't lose any sleep at night worry about user experience. The only way that is ever going to change is if people vote with their wallets and stop going to Ticketmaster events...
Re: Ticketmaster: Rocking The Most Hated Brand In America
#3I talked to the old CEO of TicketMaster years ago about the fees and when I found out that most of the service fees are kicked back to the venues, I found them far less evil. They take all the blame that should be directed at venue owners.
Re: Ticketmaster: Rocking The Most Hated Brand In America
#4It's perplexing that they charge such a large premium when the industry must be saving many millions of dollars a year in printing costs, box office attendants, and sales.
Re: Ticketmaster: Rocking The Most Hated Brand In America
#5I talked to the old CEO of TicketMaster years ago about the fees and when I found out that most of the service fees are kicked back to the venues, I found them far less evil. They take all the blame that should be directed at venue owners.
That seems disingenuous. It is my understanding that the fees are kicked back to the venue owners only if they make TicketMaster their sole agent. If you sell tickets anywhere other than your box office or TicketMaster, you're not going to see a dime of those TicketMaster fees.
Re: Ticketmaster: Rocking The Most Hated Brand In America
#6The LiveNation merger certainly did seem to spark them to update parts of their product, but the user experience is awful. Unfortunately, there's no real major competitor now on that scale. Sure, there are solutions like AudienceView and Tessi but they don't fit the same business model.
And who'd want to compete? LiveNation is owning more and more venues by the minute.
Re: Ticketmaster: Rocking The Most Hated Brand In America
#7No big surprise with that. When you have a dominating monopoly on most of the major venues in America, you probably don't lose any sleep at night worry about user experience. The only way that is ever going to change is if people vote with their wallets and stop going to Ticketmaster events...
The problem is that those events are "Ticketmaster events" they are "events I want to attend that are only handled by Ticketmaster."
So it really comes down to accepting the Ticketmaster model or pretty much not going to any live concert or sporting events.
Of course the other annoying thing that the article didn't mention was TM's habit of "sharing" your email address with partners (which you couldn't opt out of) and then leaving it up to the individual to remove themselves from the subsequent spam lists. I bought a ticket to an NFL game a couple of years back and then spent the next six months trying to get TM partners to stop spamming me.
Re: Ticketmaster: Rocking The Most Hated Brand In America
#8It's perplexing that they charge such a large premium when the industry must be saving many millions of dollars a year in printing costs, box office attendants, and sales.
It's not perplexing at all. They have convinced the public the extra fees are justified.
If you have a monopoly, your buyers are paying extra fees, and the cost of goods actually drops, you do not drop your prices.
Re: Ticketmaster: Rocking The Most Hated Brand In America
#9It's perplexing that they charge such a large premium when the industry must be saving many millions of dollars a year in printing costs, box office attendants, and sales.
One thing in this article that I found extremely interesting was that the infamous charge to print your own tickets -- essentially charging the customer for saving Ticketmaster and the box offices money -- is apparently driven largely by the venues. It claims that Hubbard has been successful in getting a third of their partners to drop the fee, which suggests that two-thirds of venues are holding out, and more responsible for some of the egregious fees than Ticketmaster themselves are.
I definitely came away with the impression that Hubbard may be the right guy for the job. It seems clear he understands exactly what consumers hate about Ticketmaster, and appears to be trying to address it as best he can.
Re: Ticketmaster: Rocking The Most Hated Brand In America
#10No big surprise with that. When you have a dominating monopoly on most of the major venues in America, you probably don't lose any sleep at night worry about user experience. The only way that is ever going to change is if people vote with their wallets and stop going to Ticketmaster events...
The problem is that those events are "Ticketmaster events" they are "events I want to attend that are only handled by Ticketmaster." So it really comes down to accepting the Ticketmaster model or pretty much not going to any live concert or sporting events. Of course the other annoying thing that the article didn't mention was TM's habit of "sharing" your email address with partners (which you couldn't opt out of) an…
So it really comes down to accepting the Ticketmaster model or pretty much not going to any live concert or sporting events.
I haven't paid a TicketMaster fee in years, and I go to live music events all the time.
How, you ask? Indie music. It is alive and well, and the best bands working right now are not playing in arenas. In any major city in the country on any given night (and at least once or twice a week in most mid-sized cities), you can see a great band for five to fifteen bucks. They'll be ecstatic that you showed up, you'll probably be able to sit or stand within spitting distance of the band if you want, and you'll share a unique experience with 50-300 like-minded individuals. You'll also meet more interesting people, be able to drink good beer (not that swill they serve at arenas for 9 bucks a pop), and you can do it all again the next night, and the next, if you want, without breaking the bank.
I swore off of arena shows for reasons unrelated to TicketMaster, but it's an equally valid reason to opt out of the bullshit commercial entertainment industry and instead focus on artists for whom the work is the important thing, and not merely the money they're paid to do the work.