A favorite quote of mine:
"If Hitler owned Halliburton, it would not be as evil of a company as Ticketmaster."
https://www.reddit.com/r/pics/comments/c4704/fuck_you_ticket...
Ticketmaster is a horrible company
171–180 of 252 posts
Re: Ticketmaster is a horrible company
#172I 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…
Much of this reminds me of Vistaprint and Ryan Air. Horrible.
Re: Ticketmaster is a horrible company
#173Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
>which is a model that makes sense for many venues. This is the point that so many people miss about Ticketmaster. The customer is the venue and not the ticket purchaser. For the venue, there is no one who offers as complete a package of services as Ticketmaster. They provide so much more than the consumer facing ticket sales website that is the only piece of Ticketmaster that most fans see.
They're ruthless in competing for that business too.
I worked for a startup years ago that got traction with its ticketing solution for certain markets which eventually brushed against TicketMaster. TM was distracted at the time with .com gold rush stuff, and we had traction. They ended up buying the company at a really high premium. A real rarity at the time.
Re: Ticketmaster is a horrible company
#174Earlier quoted context omitted.
Dating myself by mentioning this, but when I was in college Pearl Jam (huge at the time) tried to go around Ticketmaster and got their asses handed to them. They basically had to end up cancelling and offering refunds. http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/pearl-jam-taking-on-t...
It was a really noble effort on their part. They were arguably one of the biggest bands in the world at that time and sadly they failed to make any impact on this issue. Since then Ticketmaster has only grown more powerful. It's interesting to read this article in from that time in NY Times: http://www.nytimes.com/1995/06/15/arts/pearl-jam-bows-to-tic...
Somewhat more recently comedian Louis CK attempted it:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/06/26/louis-ck-ticketmast...
I can't find a good copy of his conclusions from that experiment in my searches right now, but I remember his emails from around that time were not always the happiest.
Re: Ticketmaster is a horrible company
#175Re: Ticketmaster is a horrible company
#176Earlier quoted context omitted.
"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.
The venues have no reason to want to deal with a new company.
Not to mention how many venues are owned by LiveNation what owns Ticketmaster in the first place.
Re: Ticketmaster is a horrible company
#177I 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…
Much of this reminds me of Vistaprint and Ryan Air. Horrible.
What evils has Vistaprint committed? I'm curious. I know their products suck.
Re: Ticketmaster is a horrible company
#178>Interesting, actually, that if you add up all the extra Ticketmaster charges that they are actually making $22.74 - which is more than Japandroids are making and they're doing the actual work.
and this is why Louis CK decided to ignore ticketscam and sell his own tickets directly for 2012 tour. Interestingly I just looked up and current events are all handled by Ticketmaster, guess they offered him something he couldnt refuse, or he was simply unable to find venues willing to work around the scam (tickermaster has exclusive deals prohibiting competing inline sales).
Re: Ticketmaster is a horrible company
#179Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think the main issue is not having a different way to buy tickets, but actually signing deals with bands/venues to sell them. There have been many companies that have tried to compete against them, and typically they only get bands that want to move away from TM (Pearl Jam).
It's focused on providing the platform for developers to build a better ticketing experience thus enabling bands/venues to jump ship.
A better ticketing experience is not what bands/venues are looking for. Sorry, but it doesn't sound like you understand this market (and why Ticketmaster has a stranglehold on it).
Re: Ticketmaster is a horrible company
#180> "If I can help it, I will never order another ticket from them again." I find these to be weasel words. I don't use Ticketmaster. Full stop. If your concert uses Ticketmaster, I'm not going to that. It's not a problem because all the cool acts don't use Ticketmaster. Only lame old decrepit acts use Ticketmaster anyway. And if I wanted to see those, I'd go to Vegas, and at least get a comped all you can eat buffet a…
You're not serious, are you? As a person who goes to dozens of concerts a year, not using Ticketmaster would be a huge hassle. Let's take just one example: I'm going to see Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds in NYC. I have three options to get tickets directly: -Ticketmaster -In person -Over the phone Since I don't live in NYC, I don't want to give my CC number to some random theater employee over the phone, and I am not goin…
>I am not going to skip seeing my favorite band in the world, what do you suggest I do?
See them somewhere else, in a venue that hasn't sold out to Ticketmaster.