The real question is, why is TicketMaster allowed to strongarm venues into essentially perpetuating its monopoly forever?
the venues are in on it and get paid
Internal emails reveal Ticketmaster helped scalpers jack up prices, FTC says
21–30 of 137 posts
Re: Internal emails reveal Ticketmaster helped scalpers jack up prices, FTC says
#22The real question is, why is TicketMaster allowed to strongarm venues into essentially perpetuating its monopoly forever?
As I understand it, all the crazy fees are shared with the venue and performers. I don't know that a whole lot of strongarming is going on.
Re: Internal emails reveal Ticketmaster helped scalpers jack up prices, FTC says
#23There is no reason that event tickets couldn't be sold similarly to airline seats.
The issue that spawned scalping and Ticketmaster is that musicians want to sell tickets under their market value. There's no analogous issue with airline pricing.
Only recently I realized the fact of musicians purposefully selling tickets much below of what people would actually pay. Never occurred to me, had to hear it in an podcast/interview.
I wonder how many simple facts of life like that one remain hidden right under my nose.
Re: Internal emails reveal Ticketmaster helped scalpers jack up prices, FTC says
#24Not in any way to defend Ticketmaster's unscrupulousness, but my undergraduate university used TM for the student football tickets and we had none of the unfairness, which leads me to agree with the sentiments that TM is actually following the will of the artists / event managers. At school, we could sell our tickets to other students gray-market, and just "transfer" them for "free" in the TM app without issue. They…
This is also what I am experienced.
In the music festival world, there is a TM subsidiary, In the same venue you can see fees differ by dozens of percent based on who the Artist, the ones known for being good people are much lower even if the base ticket price is identical
Re: Internal emails reveal Ticketmaster helped scalpers jack up prices, FTC says
#25We bought $700 tickets to see a show we really wanted to see, but ended up being unable to make it. We tried selling it on Ticketmaster, where you can in theory set your own price, or accept their "best offer". Our best offer was somewhere in the neighborhood of $150, and given that it was the night of the show, we accepted it. We paid $54 per ticket in "processing fees" when purchasing, and paid $50 in more "process…
Solution that might be anti user friendly. Tickets are bought and assigned to a persons name at time of purchase. They can only be refunded at cost and resold at cost to buyers. Release of tickets refunded shall be reposted for resell at a random time after attempting a refund. This will however allow people to pay for bots that will purchase tickets on their behalf. But I believe a verification system can prevent th…
I’ve heard of this before, it might be Joe Rogan that does this
Re: Internal emails reveal Ticketmaster helped scalpers jack up prices, FTC says
#26Hard to care what happens to a company like TicketMaster. As you build your company, ask yourself how they ended up like this. Do you think the founders had this outcome in mind when they started (everyone hating them and seeing them as an evil money grab)? They probably started with a different ethos. A good reminder that what we do can change - we need to instill our values into the basics of everything we build, o…
I’m not sure what Ticketmaster has to do with the show experience. But to answer your question, last week. I have another concert tonight
Re: Internal emails reveal Ticketmaster helped scalpers jack up prices, FTC says
#27There is no business that I hate more than TicketMaster.
In 2016, the OKC Thunder were making a playoff run. They just advanced to the finals and tickets were set to "go on sale to the public" at 10am on a certain day. I signed up for an account, got logged in, etc. and kept refreshing the page around 10am that day, card in hand to buy. The second that time elapsed, all tickets were sold out. Yet somehow thousands of tickets were available for "resale" instantly at $100+ more per ticket PLUS a transfer fee. My jaw was on the floor. Absolute and complete bullshit. I knew the gig then. It was obvious they just let all tickets get bought up by resellers/scalpers/bots without a care in the world for the actual fans. They actually make even more money allowing it to be this way due to the extra transfer fees on top of the original sale. I watched the finals on TV instead since I didn't have the money for that earlier in my career. Burn this company to the ground with the heat of a thousand suns.
Re: Internal emails reveal Ticketmaster helped scalpers jack up prices, FTC says
#28Earlier quoted context omitted.
Expand on what you mean by that?
You can't resell a plane ticket. You can get a credit or cancel the purchase depending on the airline's terms. But there is no secondary market in plane tickets. If you show up at the airport and your ID doesn't match the name on the ticket, the ticket is invalid.
Venues don't want to be checking all that at their gates plus they don't want to prevent scalping it's only really the artists and fans who are anti scalping the rest of the parties in the pipeline loooove scalpers.
Re: Internal emails reveal Ticketmaster helped scalpers jack up prices, FTC says
#29How many times is Ticketmaster going to be slapped on the wrist before something is actually done? They are clearly corrupt and colluding with scalpers and every 4 years or so the FTC says "hey now don't do that" and Ticketmaster goes back to their old schtick. It's immensely frustrating because they are also a monopoly and no one can feasibly compete with them because they also control the event venues. I guess this is end-stage capitalism though..
Re: Internal emails reveal Ticketmaster helped scalpers jack up prices, FTC says
#30Earlier quoted context omitted.
The issue that spawned scalping and Ticketmaster is that musicians want to sell tickets under their market value. There's no analogous issue with airline pricing.
The issue is that scalpers can buy a significant portion of tickets at initial pricing and artificially drive up demand when the event says they're "sold out". Plus, many events like to set low initial prices to try to get money flowing in earlier, and raise prices closer to the day of the event, which makes them a potential "investment" for people who have no plans to attend.
The demand is the demand. TM should just set the initial price higher. This will discourage scalpers because their return is lower and their risk is higher. Fans will get to see the concert if they are willing to pay. If they aren't, then the price is too high, or the tickets will go to other fans who value them more.