Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Live Nation illegally monopolized ticketing market, jury finds

bloomberg.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 193 posts

Re: Live Nation illegally monopolized ticketing market, jury finds

#71

Post by traderj0e »

bsimpson wrote: post #46
jazzpush2 wrote: post #8

Now do service fees and 'convenience' fees. Every ticket I buy for a movie somehow costs $2 extra now. (As with everything else). Robbery.

The one that pisses me off is when the waitress tells you to pay with your phone, and it's charged a "convenience fee."

I won't go anywhere that wants you to pay with phone period, cause it's just annoying and usually means bad food/service. If they somehow hid this fact until the end and wanted a fee for it, I'd just slap a bill on the table and leave. Don't think that's even a crime.

Re: Live Nation illegally monopolized ticketing market, jury finds

#72

Post by traderj0e »

autoexec wrote: post #29
jp57 wrote: post #16

The horizontal control of venues is only one issue. A perhaps bigger issue is the vertical integration (if that's the right term) of first-party ticket sales and resale in one company. Ticketmaster has no real incentive to try to prevent resellers from buying up all the tickets on first sale, because it gets to charge fees on all the resales through its platform. The more times a ticket is resold, the better. I don't…

Why not just ban the transfer of tickets and allow refunds? You buy a ticket, you show your ID at the door. Early refunded tickets get resold online and late refunds are sold at the venue. All seats, including the best seats, go to actual fans instead of scalpers just hoping to make a profit while providing zero value. First choice in seats goes to the most passionate and attentive fans.

The venue would make less money this way, and preferential seats would be given to whoever managed to get a request in first.

Re: Live Nation illegally monopolized ticketing market, jury finds

#73

Post by switz »

autoexec wrote: post #29
jp57 wrote: post #16

The horizontal control of venues is only one issue. A perhaps bigger issue is the vertical integration (if that's the right term) of first-party ticket sales and resale in one company. Ticketmaster has no real incentive to try to prevent resellers from buying up all the tickets on first sale, because it gets to charge fees on all the resales through its platform. The more times a ticket is resold, the better. I don't…

Why not just ban the transfer of tickets and allow refunds? You buy a ticket, you show your ID at the door. Early refunded tickets get resold online and late refunds are sold at the venue. All seats, including the best seats, go to actual fans instead of scalpers just hoping to make a profit while providing zero value. First choice in seats goes to the most passionate and attentive fans.

Though this would be mildly annoying for the earnest case (selling a ticket to a friend), it would be the actual solve to the problem.

The parent's suggestion still creates artificial scarcity, which is the real issue: people buying tickets they have no intention of using.

The problem is that the artists, venues, and ticketing companies benefit from this artificial scarcity. So we'll never see it change.

Re: Live Nation illegally monopolized ticketing market, jury finds

#74

Post by hsbauauvhabzb »

Avamander wrote: post #68
srmatto wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It should also be said that they could do anything at all to prevent these professional scalpers from scooping up all the tickets at once, including even merely closing those APIs entirely but they continue to do nothing about it. The verified re-sale thing as you have correctly pointed out just allowed them to pretend like something was being done about scalping while it actually just let them make more money on the…

> including even merely closing those APIs entirely but they continue to do nothing about it. At the same time I've been bit by a ticket vendor's anti-bot block by simply browsing the site and clicking their own "retry" button. I'm sure if I'd've written a script, it would not have gotten hit by that garbage.

Creating a market by enabling middleman to sell you tickets at a higher price but with a better UX really is something.

Re: Live Nation illegally monopolized ticketing market, jury finds

#75

Post by GuB-42 »

jp57 wrote: post #16

The horizontal control of venues is only one issue. A perhaps bigger issue is the vertical integration (if that's the right term) of first-party ticket sales and resale in one company. Ticketmaster has no real incentive to try to prevent resellers from buying up all the tickets on first sale, because it gets to charge fees on all the resales through its platform. The more times a ticket is resold, the better. I don't…

AFAIK Ticketmaster doesn't decide, they are a service provider with a variety of options for their customers (the performers).

The customer picks an option (no resale, limited or not resale price, etc...) and Ticketmaster does it, taking a commission in the process. Maybe the commission changes depending on the formula, but really, they don't care about the details, they are getting the money no matter what.

The problem is not the situation about resale and all that, I would say that part is the customer fault, not Ticketmaster, they are the ones who picked a formula. The problem is that by being in a monopoly position, they can charge high fees, making the tickets more expensive. And by more expensive, I mean something like 30% more expensive, not 300% more expensive.

I don't think Ticketmaster offers a dutch auction, but I guess that if you are big enough and if that's what you want and if you can pay, they can deliver.

Re: Live Nation illegally monopolized ticketing market, jury finds

#76

Post by traderj0e »

tjwebbnorfolk wrote: post #58
zeroonetwothree wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s kind of annoying in practice. For example you buy four tickets to go with your friends. But you get sick so you offer your ticket to a different friend instead. Oops that’s not allowed so now no one gets to go? Or you buy tickets as a gift for someone. There’s a lot of legit reasons to want transfers, outside of scalping.

I can't do this with airline tickets, hotel bookings, train tickets, dinner reservations, or any other kind of receipt that allows me to put my butt in a seat at a specified time. Why are concert tickets special?

I think they do kinda work that way. When you buy an airline ticket through some third-party website, the price is lower than the main site, yet they're making a profit. They must be hoarding then reselling tickets with the airline's permission, right? Same with cruises.

The thing is, you as an individual can't transfer tickets because of what the other person said.

Re: Live Nation illegally monopolized ticketing market, jury finds

#78

Post by foobarchu »

jazzpush2 wrote: post #8

Now do service fees and 'convenience' fees. Every ticket I buy for a movie somehow costs $2 extra now. (As with everything else). Robbery.

I looked at buying tickets for a local hockey game last week, and the venue goes through Ticketmaster. The service fees were exactly the same as the actual ticket cost, maybe the total 200% of the list price.

I ended up going to the physical box office, where they still charged an extra 40% of the ticket cost in service fees.

Post reply on HN