Unfortunately these sort of practices are getting very common. This should be submitted to http://darkpatterns.org/
Ticketmaster is a horrible company
121–130 of 252 posts
Re: Ticketmaster is a horrible company
#122The unfortunate truth is that it is impossible for a live music fan to completely avoid Ticketmaster in 2017 without missing many of the best shows. They strongarm venues into exclusivity agreements: all phone and online tickets at those venue must be sold through Ticketmaster. Even walking up to buy a ticket at some box offices results in a venue using Ticketmaster as point of sale. Their parent company Live Nation…
Then the path to disruption is clear -- bypass the venues. Hmmm, maybe this Internet thing might be useful after all, assuming you can set up a decent streaming service and avoid the pitfalls.
Sounds like someone that hasn't seen music live, physically, for a long time.
Computer speakers are incapable of replicating the sounds and air distortions that your body can actually feel. Computer screens are incapable of emulating the pyrotechnics that your body can actually feel even from way back of the venue.
There are plenty other nuances that limit the utility of a streaming service.
Re: Ticketmaster is a horrible company
#123I 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.
What would be fair is an auction. Then the price would be more representative of the market value. The reason those tickets all sell out in 30 seconds is that they are too cheap.
While this may be true in a pure capitalistic sense, many believe that experiencing the arts isn't something that should be limited to the rich
Re: Ticketmaster is a horrible company
#124Hey, first off: chillllll out. Choose your battles carefully. Ticketmaster is not a great company, but it's become a lot better than it used to be. Truth! Anyhow, you need to be aware that venues absolutely will charge a venue fee. Even purchasing tickets at my local club in Toronto from the front bar there is a 10% markup or $1 minimum, whatever is greater. You don't have to get tickets printed and mailed to you for…
I'm not sure any of this is accurate. First: how has TM gotten better? Their fees have gotten higher, they merged with Live Nation to gain market control and raised prices, and they lost a class action suit but are still doing exactly what they were sued for the first time. Not all venues charge a venue fee - some of my local theaters are fee-free at the box office, some aren't. (They all take a cut somewhere obvious…
> I'm not sure any of this is accurate.
"We don't know that he's lying, but do we know that he isn't lying?"
I have a long memory. You used to have to go to a physical location and wait in line while a student worker called up tickets on a green screen terminal. And TM's web checkout experience through the late 90s and last decade was AWFUL; none of the mapping, seat selection was there. You'd just sit there and refresh. You could also accidentally purchase two tickets by hitting Back. It was Not Good.
First, a venue that isn't charging a fee is a rare exception and I have two shoeboxes full of paper tickets that prove this. I'm going to draw a line and say that Real Venues charge fees. The fact that there are >0 outliers is still an outlier.
TicketMaster was acquired by LiveNation but functions as a separate business unit in all of the ways that serve their interests. So, of course they are collecting fees on behalf of venues. Just because they are all owned by the same corporate interests doesn't make this less true. Do you know that there are IT depts in major banks that charge other depts for installing network jacks?
Different venues and different countries have different fees attached to pickup methods. Here in Canada, I can get a ticket by email/SMS that shows up as a QR code that I don't have to pay extra for. The order processing fee (total bullshit) is in a separate category from ticket retrieval fees.
Anyhow, you're welcome to your opinion about whether TicketMaster exists to absorb hate or not. It doesn't make you any more correct, but if it makes you happier then I absolutely agree to whatever it is that you said next. Ticketmaster is awful, but not for the motivations that the OP suggested.
Re: Ticketmaster is a horrible company
#125That 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.
My understanding:
Major artists and promoters have contracts stating they'll exclusively use LiveNation venues if the metro area has one.
Major venues have contracts stating that they'll exclusively sell tickets their LiveNation.
There's no tech problem at all. It's an issue that ticket related startups can't get major artists, promoters, or venues on board. It's a network effect.
Re: Ticketmaster is a horrible company
#126Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
The dirty secret is that those fees are really part of the ticket price. It is still the market at work, albeit a dark and slimy kind of market that makes you feel bad about the future of commerce. If in your example you truly couldn't/wouldn't pay more than 18.50 once you saw the fees, someone else would.
Re: Ticketmaster is a horrible company
#127Listen, 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…
This comment is closer to defamation than the article is. And neither is close. (Assuming U.S. law, as Live Nation is U.S. company.)
Re: Ticketmaster is a horrible company
#128I used to do web contract work for a company that was eventually bought by Ticketmaster. I left before the sale. I was actually "let go" because I didn't comply with design goals. One of the things that was encouraged in the design was to "hide away" things that detracted the user from checking out quickly. This included: * Smaller font for things that you would gloss over or not even read, when you really needed to…
I see the "time ticker" thing suggested as a strategy for successful marketing campaigns in pretty much every online marketing book I read. You see it in the offline world as well. "Buy now, because once these prices are gone, they are gone forever . . . ever . . . ever..."
I think a lot of companies use some sort of limited-time strategy to pressure people to buy. Most aren't quite as blatant, or short lived, as Ticketmaster's though.
Re: Ticketmaster is a horrible company
#129I've stopped using them for similar reasons. I don't mind them adding all the fees as much. But it's wrong for the original price listed by them to be so far off from what you will actually pay. You see something listed for $15, and end up paying $30.
That's misleading and should be prohibited. Unfortunately this seems to be common practice in most marketing now ... smartphone plans come to mind...
Re: Ticketmaster is a horrible company
#130Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
I mention the zoning thing only to explain why you can't push "just open a competitor" one level deeper and create your own vertically-integrated competitor - most regions have an essentially fixed number of major venues, so getting 100% buy-in is totally possible.
But yeah, it's not the proximate cause. That's just vertical control of the market, where TM took over online sales for people who needed a POS service for the web, then merged with LN to get control over promotion and venue operation (which among other things means that many box offices charge fees that get passed on to TM).