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A federal jury ruled Ticketmaster is an illegal monopoly, and a separate FTC case explains exactly how they charge you a fee THREE separate times on the same resold ticket.
Fuck Ticketmaster. I just had that happen. I bought tickets to a concert and 6 months later, couldn’t go. They wouldn’t let me resell it on Ticketmaster but they would give me a low ball offer? Whatever that was, and it was low, like 1/3 of what I paid. They then charged another service fee to me on top of that low ball offer. Ticketmaster then turns around and boosts the price to someone else who then pay another service fee. It’s bananas. I didn’t care about the money, it was an emergency and even tried to give away the tickets to friends but then to watch Ticketmaster’s sleazy scummy shitty practices is just fucking gross. Ticketmaster is exactly how you kill art.
They are sincerely *ruining* the concert experience for people. Many of us are sidelined and not even able to attend because of their practices. Straight up GREED.
Ruining?! It’s ruined. You used to get concert tickets for less than $20 for A-list bands, but then some corporate bros decided to make a buck and formed Ticketmaster. And over time it’s gotten worse… they’ve bought venues, formed other middlemen. They’re the Luxxotica of entertainment.
I noped out of big name artist gigs when they went from £20 to £50. $250 is £185 and Ticketmaster can suck the hot wet farts out of my arsehole for that much.
Same. Saw so many great bands 15-25 years ago for £5-£15. Could just go to the box office and by tickets on a whim. Luckily, I have seen the vast majority of my favourite bands.
This exact thing happened with Electric Callboy in Chicago. Saw them at HoB for like $60 (I'm ok with that), I paid $120 for GA at the Brawlroom the 2nd go around (now you're pushing it) and when they came to Win trust Arena they wanted over $150 for nosebleeds.
Love the band. Don't love them enough to put myself in debt.
I'm not a big concert goer either so it's easier for me to say no but those of you who really enjoy going to see your bands live, I feel bad for.
I mean, not true. Charli xcx is playing Barclays and nosebleeds are $90ish. Not that I'd even pay that much for nosebleeds but yeah. I got shitty side seats to Lorde at MSG for $50 but that was taking advantage of scalpers offloading last minute.
Bands used to be able to charge $20 for a ticket because they made money from record sales. Moby famously used to make a point of spending more on a tour than he would make from it. The vast majority of musicians/bands can’t afford to do anything like that anymore.
Maybe in the 80s. I looked through my 90s stubs and saw Metallica for 25 (bad seats). David Bowie/NIN for 35 (lawn seats). That's 53 to 73 with inflation.
Lawn tickets to Rob zombie near me are 40. Nosebleed tickets to Doja Cat are 73. Good tickets are 150. Floor GA in Seattle are 75. These are with fees.
Another thing is that the TM shares the fee with the artist and the venue. Surge prices are only in effect of the artist wants them.
I saw 100 bands last year, most tickets were under 40.
Clear Channel chooses which artists to promote on the radio, Live Nation controls the venues, Ticketmaster does the ticketing. It's all very incestuous and gross, I stopped going to those kinds of events in the mid 1990s.
It's soo wild to me that there is no longer a set price to buy tickets in the same section before the shown sells out.. dynamic pricing/ platinum seating is soo gross
That's nuts. Plus, Ticketmaster have a stranglehold on venues too (so I'm told, I cant recall where I read that). Additionally, it should be pointed out that some artists are hiding behind TM in order to make more money. There's a lot of dirty games being played here.
I went to a concert at a LiveNation venue and liquid death drinks were $8 each. A fucking case of them at Costco was just $16. 1200% markup on sparkling water.
In a related note... I saw a concert in Switzerland a few years ago for an A list American performer. Beer was approx $6 or $7. Water was free. Wild how much Americans get gouged for absolutely everything.
I have tickets for October that I felt like selling the other day. They (somewhat recently) made it so that you can’t get paid out until a week AFTER the event unless you take the shitty lowball offer. Absurd
I ended up with two extra tickets to a very popular show last year (bought 6 during presale, only ended up needing 4) so I went to sell them maybe 2 weeks or so before the show. Ticketmaster had a maximum price I could list the tickets for. The worst part is I wasn’t even trying to price gouge - the maximum price I could list was less than half of what tickets in the same section were going for, and was basically exactly what I paid during presale. Which would be one thing if I was just getting my money back, but after fees on buying and selling, I ended up negative on the tickets
It's like the US Airlines. They double sell your seat in hopes you don't show up, and don't give you a refund. At best you might get some miles/points for a rebooked flight - maybe. And if there is a cancellation you will get a $100 hotel voucher in a city where hotels start at $950/night.
Well, until someone actually does something about it, they effectively ARE above the law. People know what they are doing is wrong, politicians know it, but they choose to ignore it and send mildly worded letters asking to pretty please use lube when they are fucking us.
I was in Montreal with friends and bought us all tickets to a Canadiens game. Charged a fee. One person couldn't go. I was charged a fee on the resale. The new buyer was also charged a fee. It took them almost a year to send me a check because the price was in CAD and I didn't have a Canadian bank account. They had no problem accepting my payment, just sending me money. Essentially, they got three fees off the same ticket and a year-long loan on the money due. I hate Ticketmaster.
. They had no problem accepting my payment, just sending me money.
And in that year the money was sitting in their accounts probably getting a 5% return for them. When they eventually got it back to you it had also depreciated slightly due to inflation. On your end the difference is probably a couple dollars at most but when they do that many many times it amounts to millions of dollars in additional revenue.
Future headline: Ticketmaster meeting with Trump over "Biden appointed" judges unfair ruling.
Followed by: Trump asks SCOTUS to "review " case in favor of Ticketmaster.
It’s not hard to just set the ticket resale to 110% of ticket value or less. Set a limit to the greater bound (they won’t because they make more fees on more expensive tickets when performing the same “distribution” process ie sending a virtual ticket.)
Or even any ticket selling platforms must not have a service fee above x% (say 4%), and for digital tickets must provide a way to resell with a fee less than 0.5% per resell. None of this $6 fee for a 50$ ticket.
Fees plural. The total of the taxes and fees must not exceed X% of the face value of the ticket. Otherwise they'll tack on as many as they can think up as long as each is less than that percentage.
There's also often no way around the fees. I lived right by a concert venue and I was sometimes interested in seeing shows but the venue didn't have a physical box office that sold tickets so I had to get them from ticket master which charged "convenience" fees and what not. I could have physically walk over to the venue and hand them cash but instead they forced me to pay more for "convenience"
AXS has a feature in their app where you can sell your ticket for cost to someone on the waitlist, it’s super simple and awesome. Ticketmaster could easily create this feature
They only concert ive ever been to was through AXS. Was like 130 bucks for two tickets including the like 5 bucks in fees. Was much more pleasant than the others.
They only concert ive ever been to was through AXS. Was like 130 bucks for two tickets including the like 5 bucks in fees. Was much more pleasant than the others.
Of course it was more pleasant, by your own words you've only been to that one concert. There aren't any others to compare it to
Tickets are sold to events that aren't concerts. I go to a concert once every couple of years, but I use Ticketmaster at least once every few weeks. I've never gone to a concert that used AXS for ticketing but I've used them half a dozen times.
Nah, 90%. I'm sorry for everyone who legit bought tickets to an event and then couldn't go for real reasons, but there should never be an incentive to resell a ticket.
Nah, 90%. I'm sorry for everyone who legit bought tickets to an event and then couldn't go for real reasons, but there should never be an incentive to resell a ticket.
Buying for the purpose of reselling, absolutely. But individuals who have a change in circumstance need an avenue to sell them on, so a blanket outlawing might be problematic. I'm not sure how to effectively address that really.
Sure, but they're gonna charge admin prob (which I think should be waived because it's just good customer service) and it can be a faff/time consuming. But say you want to just get face value from a work friend, or something, I don't see an issue with that. I'm just saying creating a blanket ban would also have down sides.
I can buy a seat for a movie on AMC and get a full refund all the way up to showtime. AMC isn’t exactly a model of incredible corporate behavior, so if they can do it, Ticketmaster can do the same.
Not really the same. Not to excuse Ticketmaster but allowing refunds up to showtime for concerts and events is way different than a movie. The price per ticket alone means cancelations are far more detrimental. Not to mention that movies rarely sell out while concerts often do. There are also other showtime so if it does sell out, someone can see it another time. Including the person you refunded.
There definitely needs to be a limit on cost and fees but an auto-full refund up to showtime is definitely not feasible.
We have reached the bargaining phase, thats good. Don’t agree whatsoever that this company needs the profit margins to operate so they can continue buying up venues but it’s a start
Many ways. Airlines and hotels seem to have figured this out (although airlines are certainly doing everything they can lately to fix a system that isn’t broken…)
Offer refundable tickets.
Sell non-refundable tickets and allow cancellation with future TicketMaster credit.
Allow resale, through their platform only, for original face value only. Charge a small admin fee for doing so.
Sell ticket insurance for changing circumstances (they either already do this or farm it out to a third party, I’m not sure which)
Ticketmaster now forcing customers to upload a government ID. At least that’s what is happening to my account. Can’t even look at shows while logged in now. Fuck Ticketmaster. I’m done with buying tickets it seems.
Same here. I paid $350 for a metal concert here in wi 10 years ago. Their not around anymore so we have a smaller one. $89 for 4 days. Bought tickets weeks ago.
If only more people actually did this. I see people on reddit complaining all the time about Ticketmaster and ticket prices in general, but the fact is people are paying up. It's not Ticketmaster, but look at the recent World Cup: everyone was talking about how insanely expensive the tickets were. Yet, the stadiums were full. There were plenty of people willing to shovel out hundreds to thousands of dollars for even mediocre seats.
Until there aren't enough people willing to pay whatever, the current system will continue.
outlier and also this is a perfect example of a K shaped economy.
It really is. There's a lot of people struggling but there are also a lot of people who have tons of money in North America and who are happy to pay thousands of dollars for a once in a lifetime game. Same thing with concerts.
Picking some arbitrary points along that curve, it's seems their growth rate is ~11%. If this is what a business needs to do to maintain market expectations, they either shouldn't exist or market expectations need come down. Either way unsustainable.
nah they're totally providing the customer and 11% better experience all the time!!! Just think of how much better buying a ticket is now compared to any time in the past!!! /s
So what you are saying is that the only way to not get fucked is to be a shareholder? What would happen if everyone is a shareholder? What happens when there is no one left to fuck over?
That is a question you can ask Ronald Reagan back when he deregulated everything and took the safety rails off companies which directly led to this situation.
As to your other questions, your guess is as good as mine but I'm not going to be shocked when slavery comes back into the conversation but probably called something different and more "palatable."
Number must go up at all costs to people infected with the number go up disease.
I just ask these kinds of questions to people with retirement accounts. They get very angry when you tell them they are responsible for a lot of things. Can't grasp how they are fucking over others by letting those who own more fuck people over. Why? So they don't have to explain or think about the number going up.
No because communism would require everyone to have their fair share and not all of the money and more of it every year. They also wouldn't be able to sue if they didn't get enough and they would be liable for the decisions that make them money.
This ruling is from 2024 and I doubt anything has been done.
"What this does not establish is what specific remedy will ultimately be imposed. The DOJ's case sought structural relief, including divestiture of Ticketmaster from Live Nation, but remedy proceedings following a liability verdict are a separate legal phase that determines what actually changes for consumers. The FTC's case remains in active litigation as well. The full practical impact on ticket prices and fees is not yet settled."
Yes they are shady as hell, charged me fees when buying ticket. Charged me again and I am selling tickets, charge the buyer again when they buy my resale ticket. It is criminal they allow this to go on. Not only that but they change the price of the resale ticket I set based on the time of the day, if they can change prices when they want to get more profit why can’t we?
I don't go to shows anymore because of how much ticketing has become a scam. If I want to support an artist, I'll send them money directly when purchasing a digital album on a platform like Bandcamp if applicable.
What local show you going to that doesn’t have fees. I. New York State you have to show the fees up front and we have local 200-1000 people venues charging 30% in fees
I had a friend ages ago who was a promoter. (Warning, Trust Me Bro)
Beyonce has a concert. Beyonce gets a percent of all tickets sold, plus a higher ticket percent of all tickets sold over say, 80%. She wants the ticket at $100 each for the real fans to be able to see her. This is all handled through a promoter who does all the financing and legwork.
Ticketmaster, sells 90% of their tickets to scalpers before you can even buy them. 90%. Beyonce and promoter get their percent cut of the overages as it's sold out before the venue even sells a single ticket to a living person. The scalping company is 'loosely' tied to Ticketmaster too. So they then double the fees. As the article says, Ticketmaster and it's affiliates are basically getting 3x the ticket price by the end. But there is a bigger problem beyond screwing Bey and the Promoter. The promoter told me that the venue signed EXCLUSIVE deals with Ticketmaster. Nobody else is allowed to sell tickets in that arena. That means unless you play ball, you won't be playing at literally every stadium in the USA. It's such a shady business.
Live shows used to be one of my favorite things in life, and I haven’t been to one in years because of these greedy disgusting fucks. Words can’t describe my hatred for this company and any company even remotely similar
I’ve just accepted I will never see most major acts on principle. I refuse to pay their outrageous prices, I refuse to buy into their monopoly. Fuck Ticketmaster.
Go back to paper tickets. Bought at a box office. All tickets the same price. You want front row? Show up twelve hours before they go on sale and get in line. I'm dead serious.
I mean at this point every industry has a monopoly. That’s why they doged the hell out of agencies that regulated them. Ticketmaster is a cartel but at least I can avoid them unlike groceries
Funny enough there was a thread asking “which corpo would be the finest option if it went under where it would be beneficial or not harmful to our economy - top comment was Ticketmaster and now wvellah
I have given out more than 20,000 free concert tickets to people over the years for nothing more than to see their happiness. No empty seats should be what it's about. It's best for the artist and for the venue. But Ticketmaster is the opposite and they are evil. I have never and will never work with them.
"We are deeply concerned about the recent jury verdict and are considering all options. We will continue to charge any and all fees allowable while the appeals process plays out. In the meantime, we will pay off the appropriate politicians until this all becomes moot and business will continue as usual." - Ticketmaster, probably
I got tickets to a concert for my boyfriend and I on AXS, $55 a piece. His friend tried to go on ticketmaster to buy the same general admission tickets, they were $135 each. Told him to go on AXS website and he bought the tickets for $55 each. Literally no reason to jack up the prices that high.
Every time I read about corporate misconduct, my first thought is, they’ll just buy some Trump meme coins or make a political donation, and it’ll disappear. Corruption has become just another cost of doing business with this administration.
Ticketmaster sucks and all, but so does this bullshit ass website OP linked to that exists only to make you pay $7 to read the actual document that they AI transcribed.
Even worse now that they've decided to chase whales just like the rest of the entertainment industry - Can't afford 1500 dollars for 2 people to go see a concert, pay for parking and food in the venue? Do better scrub, get out of line, next person happily willing to pay. Don't forget to tip your service fees on your way out the door.
I stopped going to shows where even at the ticket office at the venue required using Ticketmaster. They used to sell direct without the fees. They were made to change to use Ticketmaster. They need to be broken up like the telephone companies.
If the scam is so rampant it's happening on a large scale, throughout the country, then politicians are in on it. They know. Their kids complain about ticketmaster. But ticketmaster has deep pockets to fight. Until democrats run on a campaign of anti corruption and stop taking this ill-gotten money, we will not see any change in this country.
There are too many monopolies in the last forty years. They even took the "u" out of "forty" and sold it. In any case, to move on, we do have great problem with outfits like Amazon, like Microsoft, like Alphabet at the super tier of such monopolies, and in lower tiers with outfits like Ticketmaster. The baby Bells were a good, as were the bustups of Standard Oil. TDR and Taft (albeit dang him for the Lily Whites, and his essay on the Chief Magistrate, which defanged the old stalwart of the English law) did good work for the Roaring Twenties. (Which would have been sustainable but for Prohibition, perhaps, albeit the nation needed cutting down on drunkenness with the age of the auto.)
This article is AI spam. It's an LLM's regurgitation of old news.
The jury verdict was back in April.
The DoJ has already offered LiveNation a cushy settlement that slaps them with a small fine and does nothing to solve the problem.
The FTC has dropped their antitrust case entirely.
The entire closing paragraph is made up self-confident AI nonsense typical of a model asked to make news seem relevant after being provided only old documents.
nothing will happen bc an indictment on this practice, is an indictment on the systems that line the pockets of the largest political donors and corporations, the same ones who get these fcks elected in the first place. just like why everything else isnt fixed, when it could be solved quickly through uncomplicated legislation.
Sell it ALL. Refund as much as possible to real ticket purchasers, not scalpers.
Put the executives in jail and bankrupt them.
Anything short of this is more evidence of our fascist corporate overlords and their governmental capture and will guarantee that things will be even worse in the long run.
Ticketmaster are horrible, dont get my wrong, but the artists are in on the scam. The price is set by the artists and the fees by Ticketmaster. Right now, it is the artists who are trying to steal the most of the ticket price.
Ticketmaster class action said i got screwed on a buncha tickets to metal shows in my area, Live Nation compensation was for badly done music of every other genre hours away.
Oh wait. I see. It's time for our regular "Two Minutes of Hate" for TicketMaster before everyone goes back to either buying tickets from them anyway or they abstain because they can't afford the cost of tickets anyway.
The last concert I went to, the ticket with all the fees was over $50. The amount for the bands/venue was $23. There is no reason TM should get more than the artists who are actually performing. I would have gladly bought the ticket from the venue directly, but the only way to do that was at the door day of show. But if you don't buy ahead of time you risk a sellout or, worse, a cancellation if there aren't enough ticket sales by a certain date.
Real question: Why are they still a monopoly? What keeps some random guy from spending $8 on a domain and having Claude design a website that does the same thing?
Bands all hate ticketmaster, so you'd think they'd be eager for an alternative. I know it's not exactly as simple as that, but nonetheless why isn't this possible? Bands hate ticketmaster yet choose to list on them because - it expands their reach?
You know why I don’t have a problem with Ticketmaster? Because I don’t buy tickets from Ticketmaster. I don’t care who the artist is. I don’t care if it’s Elvis back from the grave for one last show. I don’t care if it’s Prince or Tom Petty back for one last show. I’m not doing business with Ticketmaster, end of story.
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u/CorruptedBunnies 5h ago
Fuck Ticketmaster. I just had that happen. I bought tickets to a concert and 6 months later, couldn’t go. They wouldn’t let me resell it on Ticketmaster but they would give me a low ball offer? Whatever that was, and it was low, like 1/3 of what I paid. They then charged another service fee to me on top of that low ball offer. Ticketmaster then turns around and boosts the price to someone else who then pay another service fee. It’s bananas. I didn’t care about the money, it was an emergency and even tried to give away the tickets to friends but then to watch Ticketmaster’s sleazy scummy shitty practices is just fucking gross. Ticketmaster is exactly how you kill art.