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Fuck Ticketmaster.
All have lost. Nothing has changed.
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...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Ticketmaster has exclusive contracts with venues and usually owns the venues outright, so it doesn't matter where the money goes, it's all back into their coffers. http://www.livenationentertainment.com
Indeed, look at their filings: https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1335258/000119312512... LOL: "Competition in the live entertainment industry is intense. We believe that we compete primarily on the basis of our ability to deliver quality music products, sell tickets and provide enhanced fan and artist experiences. We believe that our primary strengths include: [...] • ticketing software and services; [...] "
TicketMaster's big advantage is that competition between venues isn't intense. Smaller cities will generally only have 1-2 venues of a decently large size, especially if you require things like alcohol licenses and permission to stay open late at night.
In any market where opening a new competitor was easy, someone would be fighting TicketMaster on prices and services. But since they deal in heavy venue lock-in, and opening new venues is essentially impossible (hi there, zoning laws), they get to gouge basically everyone involved.
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 read it.
* A "time ticker" when one really was not needed. Create the illusion that those seats would be gone if they didn't checkout as fast as possible. In reality users were seldom in any danger of losing the seats.
* Put in the users face the event they were checking out for. Keep them reminded that they want to go to this event. Show them stuff about it and then show the cost and fee's in smaller font and break it up into steps so they see a smaller total first, keeps them happy, then add fees on but keep that "time ticker" going so they don't look to much.
Working there, I felt almost like we were a sleazy porn site.
Edits: clarifications
Edit 2: added that I didn't work for Ticketmaster.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Indeed, look at their filings: https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1335258/000119312512... LOL: "Competition in the live entertainment industry is intense. We believe that we compete primarily on the basis of our ability to deliver quality music products, sell tickets and provide enhanced fan and artist experiences. We believe that our primary strengths include: [...] • ticketing software and services; [...] "
Wow what did they do in 2009 to 2010 to increase their customer database from 25 million to 96 million?
Ticketmaster has been horrible since forever. Having no real competition, Ticketmaster has zero motivation to treat customers decently. They're kind of like taxis before Uber.