Variety: Ticketmaster is essentially accused of colluding with scalpers — and collecting double fees in the process — in a bruising weeks-long investigation published by CBC and the Toronto Star Tuesday and today. The outlets sent two undercover reporters to a live-entertainment conference in July, where representatives for Ticketmaster pitched them on TradeDesk, the company’s invite-only proprietary platform for reselling tickets.
10 comments:
The concept of ticket sales is tough to wrap your head around. People have been manipulating how ticket are purchased since the first one was sold. Regulating the buying and selling of ticket has always been something that ticket providers have tried to put a stop to. I think the reality of a company like Ticketmaster preventing this is highly unlikely. So this leads me to the question if you can’t beat them, join them? I’m sure many people would find this to be very hypocritical, but I find it to be the nature of business.
I wonder if the accusations put forth in this article will have any effect on Ticketmaster in the long run. The article does an excellent job of giving relevant facts, but will anything come of this? My ultimate guess is most likely not. It can be assumed that the idea of double-dealing has been going on for years at this point, in fact, Ticketmaster doesn’t even seem to be hiding their interactions with scalpers.
Yikes. Ticketmaster's take on their responsibility/function alone just made me cringe: "“Ticketmaster is a technology platform that helps artists and teams connect with their fans,” the company said. “We do not own the tickets sold on our platform nor do we have any control over ticket pricing — either in the initial sale or the resale. In both cases, prices are set by the seller. We also do not determine when tickets are available for purchase or how they are allocated — those decisions are communicated to us by our client, the venue, after consultation with the event presenter."
Followed up with: "Asked whether Ticketmaster will ban scalpers who thwart ticket-buying limits — a violation of the company’s terms of use — a different company employee told one of the reporters, “We’ve spent millions of dollars on this tool. The last thing we’d want to do is get brokers caught up to where they can’t sell inventory with us. We’re not trying to build a better mousetrap.”"
I really have to wonder about this. I get it, tick master is a business, but the idea that banning those who abuse the system and violate the companies own terms of use seems hypocritical at best. I don't see Live Nation liking this bad press, but I have to wonder how high up this methodology goes. Then again, public reaction in this viral age is important, and I can't see Live Nation producers tolerating anything that will effect sales and bottom lines. Event Presenters have so much going on in order to get a concert up, I expect the last thing any of them will want to deal with at all is ticket best practices and any scandal resulting from this. Sometimes ticketmaster is the only option for tickets, but not all artists present at Live Nation venues, and I wonder if that could mean an increase of turning to different venues--something I'm sure Live Nation would like to avoid. Taylor Swift for example isn't a Live Nation artist nationally (she is internationally) and is presented by AEG. I wonder if this will give AEG, who has really only a small part of the musical artist pie an advantage. Taylor was able to come in and perform at the Mercedes Benz stadium before Live Nation brought in Beyonce--stadiums aren't necessarily presenting company owned.
It's a shame that Ticketmaster may have been colluding with scalpers. Since Ticketmaster is a platform that does not sell anything, so besides taking a larger cut they don’t have a way to increase their profits. Hopefully the bad press will encourage the company to act more ethically. Unfortunately, when these events occurs, neither the artist nor the fans can win. The artists don’t make more money and the fans lose money. Besides bad publicity I don’t see much reason for Ticketmaster to change their system. The workers that were interviewed indicated that Ticketmaster is aware of the “problem”. Since Ticketmaster is not likely to hold themselves accountable, I wonder who can. I don’t know if I see a way for artists to work with ticketmaster and since fans rely so heavily on it it would be hard for them, short of boycotting the company. Overall, I wonder how this problem will be fixed, if it will be.
Eh, honestly not that surprised. I mean yeah that sucks but it does not in anyway shock me that this is a common practice. My dad is a long time Chicago Blackhawks season ticket holder, he had the tickets before they were good. Because of this I am very familiar with these kind of practices. He sold one of the playoff games on year and they paid for the next seasons tickets in full, that is just the way it goes it is basics of business, supply and demand. But what is not okay with me is when they artificially increase the price or play with the timing of tickets to try and gauge more money out of people. I wanted to go see John Williams conduct his greatest hits last year at the Chicago Symphony but we could not get tickets direct from the CSO fast enough but there seemed to be plenty of seats available on Ticketmaster. The only problem was that for a dress circle seat one ticket would run you $1500, like hell if I am paying that for any ticket, even if it was for the greatest living film composer. Honestly some kind of huge overall or government intervention would be the only real way to really fix this, and as bad as it is, we do have more pressing issues in our world to attend to.
The history of TicketMaster ripping off their customer base is long and regular. Truthfully, nothing else should be expected of them. Ticket resale sites such as these are nothing but bad for consumers. For years, tickets have sold out instantly for high demand concerts, because Ticketmaster and other such sites have done nothing to prevent (in some cases, even encouraged) bots being used in order to buy mass amounts of tickets to resell at 200% or 300% profit. In fact, some concert venues are required to hold tickets purely for resale sites, such as ticketmaster, in order to use their service at all. The fact that TicketMaster has been colluding with other third parties in order to turn even more of a profit is absolutely horrendous. This is especially awful when you consider the other fees that TicketMaster charges for no reason other than “convenience.” In other words, how convenient it is for them and other resale sites to take our money.
It is not surprising what so ever that Ticketmaster is involved with ticket scalpers and in the business of reselling tickets. Over the past couple years Ticketmaster and the government have been working together to stop ticket scalping and selling fake tickets. Ticketmaster and the Government have been writing laws to help with this problem. Now Ticketmaster is in on it, and what will be the future of ticket selling? It was state din the article that ticket master has been accused of waiting on releasing the less expensive tickets so fans will think there is more demand and people will buy the more expensive ticket. I think this is extremely problematic as most people cannot afford to spend a lot on tickets and the cheap tickets are their only way to see their favorite artist. Ticketmaster needs to be honest and fair because if they are not there is no hope in being able to buy affordable tickets anymore.
This is huge news in the ever and ongoing battle to put ticket purchasing power back in the hands of the everyday consumer. It shouldn’t be surprising to me that a huge entertainment marketing and distribution center like Ticketmaster would collude with scalpers, but it was. I guess the logic of it all didn’t seem to click until the article outlined exactly how Ticketmaster was making a profit. And truthfully, I don’t know what’s worse. Having Ticketmaster collude with scalpers or having all of the power in the hands of Ticketmaster unchecked. It’s like a lesser of two evils situation. Because the only difference between price gouging via Ticketmaster (which happens) or gouging via scalpers is who the profit goes to. I know ideally the power for entertainment distribution would lie in the hands of the consumer, but I don’t think we have a viable scenario for that at this point sadly.
Though I am really not all that surprised that Ticketmaster is colluding with scalpers in order to increase profits, it is a for-profit business after all, it is still disappointing to hear. I personally much prefer purchasing tickets, and I feel much more comfortable, when tickets are sold directly from the artist or organization. I have also seen a lot of articles supporting the claim that Ticketmaster artificially inflates demand so that people will buy the higher priced tickets, only to lower the prices as time goes on. I have definitely found that to be true in the past, and have often waited until the last minute to buy tickets and have ended up paying substantially less than other other people who attended the same event. I am not sure what is to be done about this, as online ticket sales have become the default way to purchase tickets on the whole, but I do hope there are perhaps a few laws put in place to protect the everyday customer on these sites.
I have read articles about this story for the past couple days and I truly think this is some of the shadiest stuff that has ever been pulled in the live entertainment industry. Scalping is an extremely dishonest practice that actually hurts so many people whose livelihood is directly dependent upon ticket live entertainment ticket sales. Scalping artificially drives prices up and sells show out that should not be sold out, driving away people who could potentially be seeing shows and taking money directly out of the hands of venues and acts. It is truly an irreprehensible act. We knew also that Ticketmaster is not exactly an angel in terms of ticket sales and honest practices; we all know and hate the myriad fees and overpriced tickets we have endured whenever we have purchased any tickets from ticketmaster. It is honestly not very surprising that Ticketmaster is colluding with scalpers to drive prices up and so drive their profits up. It's just disappointing.
Tickets are a necessity for any and all performances that go on. It is really the only concrete way to keep track of how many people are in attendance and where they are all supposed to be and when. But with any system, there are always people that try to exploit it and profit from it. Scalpers are people that buy tickets early and then sell them back to the general public at a later date for more money trying to profit from the difference. This is an issue for a venue in a lot of ways if someone is buying a bulk amount of tickets then the venue might report a sold-out performance when in reality one person bought twenty tickets and has no intention of attending therefor skewing the box office records. Ticketmaster has been one of the largest online ticket buying websites for a while now and to hear that they are cooperating with scalpers is not all that surprising. Ticketmaster is just trying to turn a profit just as much as every other service out there and by hiking up the ticket prices, that means they get more money in return.
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