No middlemen? I just bought tickets, and the purchase was powered by etix.com. I'm assuming they used a payment processing gateway for my credit card, there's another middleman. Don't you imagine the money owed to these entities is just built-in to the price of the ticket?
Louis CK selling tickets to latest tour exclusively on his site
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Re: Louis CK selling tickets to latest tour exclusively on his site
#12This is obviously great news, but I really hope he has plans to take it to the next step. It's great that an incredibly successful comedian can get away this this, but nothing will really change in the long run unless smaller acts have access to this direct-to-consumer approach as well, and that will only happen if someone like Louis CK goes out of his way to share the network, tools, and process that he's developed.…
AFAICT, everything is being handled by etix.com, since that's where his "Buy Tickets" links redirect: http://event.etix.com/ticket/online/performanceSearch.jsp?pe...
Even though the purchase page is on etix.com, it shares all chrome with his site, and the tickets don't seem to appear in any public listings or directories elsewhere. Presumably, there's still a charge, it's just small, and included in the pricing model (along with taxes).
Obviously, it would be awesome if this works out and etix.com (or someone else) makes this low-fee approach more accessible to other performers.
Re: Louis CK selling tickets to latest tour exclusively on his site
#13Part of me is happy that he's getting rid of scalpers. The other part of me likes knowing that I can always get tickets for sold out shows from Stubhub.
Unrelated- He's using eTix.com and I think he killed them. Trying to buy tickets for SF show and getting "Please wait while accessing the system...." from eTix.com.
Re: Louis CK selling tickets to latest tour exclusively on his site
#14This is great to see. Just this past weekend I went to a music festival in NYC (The Governor's Ball) whose ticketing was handled exclusively by Eventbrite. I can't remember the last time I was able to buy anything music related online without Ticketmaster being involved. I hope to be able to do it a lot more.
The "refunding your ticket if you try to sell it" thing, well, that's going to be a pain. Glastonbury Festival in the UK has tried to combat this, and ended up basically producing photo IDs for every ticket. A whole ton of effort, especially for a small attempt like this.
Re: Louis CK selling tickets to latest tour exclusively on his site
#15This is obviously great news, but I really hope he has plans to take it to the next step. It's great that an incredibly successful comedian can get away this this, but nothing will really change in the long run unless smaller acts have access to this direct-to-consumer approach as well, and that will only happen if someone like Louis CK goes out of his way to share the network, tools, and process that he's developed.…
Isn't being a middle-man in "direct to consumer" sales kind of an oxymoron?
Re: Louis CK selling tickets to latest tour exclusively on his site
#16The tour dates, if you're interested: https://gist.github.com/2992090 (Not my github)
From his site, with buy links: https://buy.louisck.net/tour-dates
Re: Louis CK selling tickets to latest tour exclusively on his site
#17"Also, you'll see that if you try to sell the ticket anywhere for anything above the original price, we have the right to cancel your ticket (and refund your money). this is something I intend to enforce."
I thought this was great at first, but I wonder how this will work.
Won't canceling the ticket hurt the person who buys it from a scalper? I don't see a way for him to stop scalpers from selling them, and after it's out of their hands the scalper doesn't care if the ticket is cancelled. I foresee buyers not finding out until the event and being angry.
Re: Louis CK selling tickets to latest tour exclusively on his site
#18benefit
Re: Louis CK selling tickets to latest tour exclusively on his site
#19The site is down, but here is the text: hello folks! I'm going on tour this year from October through Feb. I'll be all over the goddamn place. This year, I'm trying something new, building on the fun, success and fan-benifit of selling my content online. We are selling tickets to this tour exclusively here on louisck.com. I only wanted to do this if there was a way, like with LIVE AT THE BEACON, that it could bring t…
I'm one of those people who enjoyed reading the long emails. It's easy to believe HE wrote them, and there's an appeal to that.
But I find it hilarious that, after that long email, he mentions they'll be sending a TL;DR version later. I have to wonder if that was humor, or just a legitimate "ah well" moment. I can't tell, and that makes it better.
Re: Louis CK selling tickets to latest tour exclusively on his site
#20It was my understanding that TicketMaster/IAC had contracts with most venues that secured its position as the only place to buy tickets online. For example: http://iac.mediaroom.com/index.php?s=43&item=604
Is that no longer the case? Or did Louis CK figure out some hack around those agreements?