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Ticketmaster is a horrible company

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Re: Ticketmaster is a horrible company

#111

Post by jbverschoor »

gpvos wrote: post #98
csydas wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To elaborate for the above commenter, ticket master sales for popular events often sell out within seconds of the sale starting as a swarm of bots attacks the site and buy up available tickets. It usually takes just a few minutes for ticket sales to go up on Craigslist or eBay. Users see just a blank page or ticket masters internal loading errors while scalping bots buy up tickets. I remember trying to get tickets fo…

So, if all tickets go to scalpers and no-one (including presumably the scalpers) can transfer a ticket, it must be that the venues remained empty. How is this a sustainable business for anyone?

You can simply sell the tickets. Sometimes people were scammed by buying doubly sold e-tickets.

ticketswap.com solves this problem in coop with also ticketmaster if I'm not mistaken

Re: Ticketmaster is a horrible company

#112

Post by bradleyankrom »

zdean wrote: post #102
smallnamespace wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ticketmaster either owns or has deals with all the venues. I wouldn't be surprised if all those deals specified exclusivity. No venue will switch to a new entrant unless the new entrant can guarantee the same demand, so you have the normal chicken and egg program.

Yeah, but I would think there's a corner of the market that TM doesn't have yet...maybe the really small venues. Start with those as MVP/proof of concept and then "wow" the medium venues, repeat.

There are a handful of smaller companies that have enough market share to be relevant. Ticketfly comes to mind. Parent mentioned an important point: Ticketmaster is owned by Live Nation, which also owns many of the venues (eg, the entire House of Blues chain). Independent venues are becoming more scarce, especially at the 500+ capacity size.

Re: Ticketmaster is a horrible company

#113

Post by Spooky23 »

Bartweiss wrote: post #30
SOLAR_FIELDS wrote: post #3

Can anyone offer any evidence to confirm or dispute the rumor I frequently see online in message boards that Ticketmaster is passing most of the profit from these fees onto the venues and it's really the venues that are doing the price gouging here? The idea that is frequently floated is that Ticketmaster bears the brunt of the hate from fans in exchange for letting the performers and venues collect most of the extra…

Sort of. Ticketmaster buys some venues (as LiveNation), and acquires exclusive online-ticket-sale rights to others. They enable this by pouring profit from fees into the venues (either to fund purchases or to afford licensing). The result isn't greedy venues letting TicketMaster take the heat - if that were the case box office tickets wouldn't be so much cheaper. Instead, it's TicketMaster/LiveNation using venue lock…

It's more complicated than that and has nothing to do with zoning at all. TicketMaster aggressively seeks out venues and lands exclusive contracts, which is a model that makes sense for many venues.

They buy venues and operators/promoters. Some of these "facility" fees are really just payments going into the promoter/operators pockets. In many cases, those people are TicketMaster.

Re: Ticketmaster is a horrible company

#114

Post by 67726e »

blowski wrote: post #61
jandrese wrote: post #13

That insurance scam is only reason #8382 not to use Ticketmaster. Of course there is one reason to use Ticketmaster: you often don't get a choice anymore. The Venue box office is a joke, and Ticketmaster has an exclusive agreement for the rest so it's either them or pay even more to a scalper. This is why I go to barely any shows anymore. The ones I do go to are at the one local venue that doesn't use Ticketmaster (W…

Agreed. I go to small gigs with max 200 people. I don't miss the overpriced crap beer, half a kilometre from the stage. I like the fact you can talk to the band after.

Agreed as well. It's a bit easier for me that my city is out of the way and generally doesn't get national touring acts (at least mainstream ones, we get plenty of (inter)national punk) and when we do the cheapest tickets are incredibly pricey and I'm paying at least $6 for a PBR.

Re: Ticketmaster is a horrible company

#115

Post by kenbaylor »

The Federal Trade Commission very actively prosecutes 'Deceptive Practices' that affect consumers. Sounds like the author (or anyone else affected) should file a complaint. A FTC 'consent decree' is effectively a $100m fine. Google, Microsoft and others have had to comply with FTC consent decrees: https://www.federalreserve.gov/boarddocs/supmanual/cch/ftca....

Re: Ticketmaster is a horrible company

#116

Post by mikeryan »

zdean wrote: post #87
jandrese wrote: post #13

That insurance scam is only reason #8382 not to use Ticketmaster. Of course there is one reason to use Ticketmaster: you often don't get a choice anymore. The Venue box office is a joke, and Ticketmaster has an exclusive agreement for the rest so it's either them or pay even more to a scalper. This is why I go to barely any shows anymore. The ones I do go to are at the one local venue that doesn't use Ticketmaster (W…

"It is a testament to our weak antitrust laws that Ticketmaster has been able to gouge the public for decades with no repercussions whatsoever." Genuinely interested to know what is keeping a nimble new startup from stepping in and blowing this up.

Ticketmaster is now part of LiveNation entertainment. LiveNation "owns, leases, operates, has booking rights for and/or equity interests in a large number of U.S. entertainment venues"

If a large band is going on tour they're going to have to go through LiveNation/TM at a number of stops to use the premier venues.

A small startup can take on ticketing (and many do). But taking on the the venue infrastructure is no small undertaking.

Re: Ticketmaster is a horrible company

#117

Post by parthdesai »

RUG3Y wrote: post #63
parthdesai wrote: post #41

I wanted to buy tickets for MLS final in Toronto this year. General Sale was at 1pm. I log on at 1pm, site doesn't load. Keep refreshing and all tickets are sold by 1:01pm. And rows appear on stubhub at 1:20pm for ~$500 a ticket. I can fucking watch Real Madrid vs Barcelona (arguably the biggest soccer game in the world after CL final) for a ticket price cheaper than that. Fuck Ticketmaster.

I've repeatedly experienced this frustration when trying to buy tickets to see big bands. It's impossible to buy a ticket for a major band these days, I just stick to small bands at local venues now.

I'm lucky i'm into underground music where tickets are usually sold on wanttickets or i can message the promoter and directly buy tickets from them. Hate it when i have to use ticketmaster.

Re: Ticketmaster is a horrible company

#118

Post by ritchiea »

jason_slack wrote: post #83
giarc wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Re: the time ticker. Is that true, because if you let that timer expire, you are indeed kicked back to the "Select Tickets" page and have to browse again.

back then, when a user selected seats, they were temporarily "locked" (at least from our end). If other users were "browsing" seats, they would see those seats as unavailable. Honestly, we did this because it was easier to "lock" the seats as it made searching easier for other users on the systems. It lessened the e-mails that said: "I thought I had these seats XYZ picked, but I didn't get them...". We weren't really…

The timer is/was the worst, I once decided not to buy tickets for an event because the timer wasn't giving me enough time to fill out my CC info and I didn't want to bother rushing or filling out some kind of user profile w/saved card to fit their awful UX.

Re: Ticketmaster is a horrible company

#119

Post by ishields »

creaghpatr wrote: post #55
teddyh wrote: post #14

Ticketmaster recently lost a class action suit, but managed to be allowed to pay the customers it unfairly charged not in money, but in coupons for Ticketmaster . http://www.billboard.com/articles/business/7370600/ticketmas...

I was a recipient of those vouchers, they were only good for a certain subset of shows and then they didn't work when I tried using them. That said, I never felt baited and switched by TM, the fees are ridiculous but they've always been right there in front of you when you buy the tickets. It was a shock the first time but hundreds of shows later you just kind of accept it. In any case the market drives the show pric…

> "In any case the market drives the show prices for the most part"

I completely disagree. Maybe for the ticket face value that may be true but look at the provided example:

$18.50 face value for a ticket (driven by the market/demand)

+ $1.50 "facility charge" + $4.50 "service fee" + $4.00 "order processing fee" + $2.25 "shipping"

so no you're paying $18.50 for the ticket plus $12.25 in fees just in order to get your ticket. That's 66% of the face value of the ticket in fees alone (assuming you don't get tricked into the $8 "protection" which would bring the fees to 109% of face value of the tickets)

Want to get 2 tickets? You'd think that you'd only have to pay the fees once since it is all processed together but nope, now the fees all double.

There are no alternative ticketing options short of going to the venue and getting tickets in person, so there is not really any competition, so I'm not sure how you can say the market drives the prices when the prices are set by a company that has no competition (and the lack of competition is due to exclusive deals, not really anything else)

Re: Ticketmaster is a horrible company

#120

Post by rewrew »

codazoda wrote: post #88

Listen, I'm no fan of Ticketmaster but you should be very careful in your wording of a piece like this. Although clearly opinion, it contains real slander and you should tread lightly. For example, "Which means that ticketmaster is purposefully delaying their efficiency in order to get people to purchase more expensive shipping times". This is the conclusion you came to but the company may be able to prove it has the…

You need to look up libel law (this would be libel, because it is written, not slander). This is all opinion, there is nothing legally actionable in this piece. I don't think you have a background in this kind of law to be giving this kind of advice (at least not in the U.S.). The article is definitely protected speech here.
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