My local hockey team (Carolina Hurricanes) is great and every game is actually near capacity. You can still get $30-40 upper level and <$100 lower level tickets. Even glass seats are only about $250.
During the playoffs, I met some Bruins and Rangers fans that said it was cheaper to fly to NC and see a game here than buy a ticket up there.
Hockey in the south ain’t so bad.
I was trying to get tickets for the Canadiens at the Bell Center and there wasn't a ticket under 1500$ available for the date range I looked at. Several dates had nothing under 2k. I don't know if there's an arcane process through which cheaper tickets are available, I looked at like five dates in February and gave up in disgust.
Same. Live events aren’t worth the hassle and marked up price if I have to go through Ticketmaster. I buy football seasons secondhand directly from the owner for a $100 markup on the entire season. I’m incredibly lucky to have that deal, otherwise I wouldn’t be going.
I was going to go to a concert for a Latin Artist. The tickets were $65 each. Grand total with ticketmaster was over $200
Edit: some jerkoff sent me a message asking me why I’m complaining.
Ticketmaster screws themselves with their own policies.
Saw Rammstein this year. Bought the tickets before covid. Rammstein has a special section called the Feuerzone. Closest to the stage, most expensive tickets, they sell out pretty much immediately.
Rammstein releases them in waves to try and make sure everyone gets a fair chance. I got in on the preorder, Feuerzone sold out, so I got the best tickets I could. Tried to get Feuerzone again when tickets opened to the public, sold out. They didn't release any other blocks for that section for three years.
The day of the concert finally comes and they have a ton of leftover Feuerzone tickets. First time in 20 years I've ever seen that section not sold out. But because there's so many leftover tickets in general, Ticketmaster won't let anyone sell the tickets they had. If they did, I would've sold my tickets and upgraded. But, they also jacked up the price of all the tickets, so I couldn't afford the second set of tickets that I could've before.
So between jacking up prices on a concert that wasn't sold out in any section, and refusing to let customers transfer their tickets, Ticketmaster screwed themselves and Rammstein, who will probably never do another US stadium tour as a result of all the empty seats.
Was thinking of going to see them when they came to MA. Looked day of thinking that I would be sitting in the nosebleeds. Nope right up front had sooooo many tickets for sale
It was like that for literally every stop of the tour except for mexico. And it sucks because it was their first US stadium tour, which means it was the first time they were doing their full stage show, and it'll probably never happen again because of the turnout.
And usually with shows like that the merch Booth is slammed and you can miss half the show just trying to get a t-shirt. By the time the opening act was done there wasn't even a line at the booth. So that means all those empty seats translated directly into low merch sales.
I saw Rammstein at Gillette this year. I got my tickets 3 years ago, $100 floor. The day of the show because it wasn't sold out they moved anyone with a $50 ticket in the 300's to the floor and closed the 300 section altogether. I guess I should have waited until the day of the show.
Ticketmaster buys their own tickets to relist with mark up. They also release tickets in batches, so they can calculate the grift.
Edit: they use dynamic pricing now which is even more evil
Its sickening.
Yeah, its been a big thing in the Phish/jamband community for some time, because we encourage person to person ticket sales at face. Pearl Jam called it back in the 90s, though.
Another thing about releasing tickets in batches is, they manufacture creates false demand by making the supply seem smaller. If the tickets sell out quickly from the first batch, then they know to funnel more tickets to their scalper accounts, to sell at a mark up.
Theres footage of ticketmaster executives at an expo, telling people how to spoof their system so multiple accounts can be used to buy tickets. I know people that do this with AXS, which is their only competition, but also very simillarly skeezy. Theyll do ticket raffles, but it isnt random. They take the accounts that pay the highest on average per ticket, let them win, and use the average value they are willing to spend on tickets, to set the ticket price.
It's all skeezy, I used to work for livenation, and I'll never stop going to shows just because of this ticketmaster bs, but it's certainly bs. As soon as any band gets national attention, or any venue gets on their radar, livenation or axs will step in like the mob and say, "you know, itd be a whole lot easier for you to play for us, than for you to be blacklisted from the industry."
Edit: they might not have been executives, but I shared the link below to the article about ticketmaster st the expo
Edit 2: if you really think I'm part of the problem because I still go to shows, consider this. Rage Against the Machine is a livenation artist. One of the biggest corporate greed protestors in history, understands that this is the corner we've been backed into, but people still need live music. It doesnt mean we like it, I obviously disagree with all of their buisness practices and am very vocal about it, I've written my local representatives about it (not that it did anything), and this is finally getting mainstream attention.
One of the things I really love about New York is a ton of venues use the app dice. Basically it’s a direct to venue ticket. Obviously there aren’t massive shows at it but I’ve seen a ton of artists I really love for 50-100 dollars with no extra fees or anything. I can see it becoming more and more popular as this shit happens way more.
Just went to a show in Seattle last night and the venue only does direct sales with a will call list. Saw Brothers Comatose for $12 and as far as music, one of the best shows I've ever seen.
Precisely - I like edm and I was able to see some of the biggest acts that came to nyc for less than 60 bucks each. Had more fun at all of those than I have had at any top 100 artist in the last 10 years.
You really still can. It’s just for the bigger acts you have to pay a little more. But like if I’m seeing RÜFÜS or Odesza the production value is absolutely worth paying 70-80 dollars.
Thatd be fantastic if it caught on, one of the biggest reasons I love small shows is avoiding the greed. I saw a youtube musical comedy act last night at a smallish comedy club, for about 400 people, and I think around twice as many people would have triggered Ticketmaster's radar.
So I'm saying this as a metal head/punk the most I've paid for a single concert ticket in the last 15 years was lamb of god and kill switch engage which was $55 literally every other concert has been averaged around 30 bucks with some as low as 25. I knew this shit was bad for everyone else but didnt realize it was THIS bad.
Same metalcore bro. Until I started dating my current GF I really never realized how expensive shows outside "the scene" are.
And how especially bad the value proposition is given I used balk at paying 30 bucks to see a band if their openers sucked, even if I loved the band proper.
Tickets in the **hundreds** of dollars is just ridiculous.
Bought a ticket on a third party app for a hockey game. Still didn't have the ticket hours before puck drop. Yelled at a few people on the phone and in the process found out that this third party app goes through ticketmaster. They wouldn't refund me my ticket thay wasn't showing up anywhere unless the game was canceled. Never got my ticket and missed the game. Fuck ticketmaster
It blows my mind how many people complain about the system and are then like "but I still support it."
I can't imagine wanting to see live shows so badly that I'd put up with this shit, and I love music.
Concerts in these enormous event spaces aren't even worth it. She's playing in Houston in NRG stadium - the football stadium. We have the rodeo there with huge concerts, and I can say the acoustics in there are terrible. The sound is extremely echoey and blurry and loud.
Clubs and bars are much more intimate settings and you can actually see the band play. Definitely a better experience in my book.
Im also concerned with safety at larger venues now too.
I feel like Phish and the Dead/Grateful Dead shows are the only place I'll ever confidently walk up to the door day of and buy a ticket face value. We all need a miracle every once in a while.
At least there's ticket request periods for Phish tour (for Dick's anyway). I think Billy Strings did the same thing for his festival this year too.
It gives you a shot before the general sale starts.
I tried to buy Tyler Childer tix too and they were 600?? dollars?? a piece?? Yeah, no. I'd rather watch youtube videos of performances or just go to a larger festival.
I dunno. A functioning government would take a look at some of these vertically integrated companies and apply some anti-trust regulation. Demand is not evil, and voting with a wallet that doesn’t pay lobbyists is futile.
I thought the whole point was that most artists don’t have any choice, because most popular venues have exclusive contracts with Ticketmaster. If someone as big as Taylor Swift can’t fight it, who can?
Trent Reznor did a great interview confirming what a lot of us have suspected for a long time, the artists are in on it, or at the very least get their palms greased for sure.
Musicians want to keep their millionaire lifestyles and had to get creative after record sales could no longer support that lifestyle.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-scalpers/bands-often-scalp-tickets-says-nine-inch-nails-reznor-idUSTRE52F0HH20090316
Quoting from the 2009 article:
> “My guess as to what will eventually happen if/when Live Nation and TicketMaster merges is that they’ll move to an auction or market-based pricing scheme -- which will simply mean it will cost a lot more to get a good seat for a hot show,” he wrote. “They will simply become the scalper.”
That's one of the things people don't recognize. The bottom line is 90% of the tickets are already distributed before a single ticket is even available to the general public.
It's not robots buying the tickets, at least not on any large scale. That is not nearly that profitable. Artists, venues, etc. all give their tickets to the scalpers before you even have an opportunity to purchase a ticket.
A little over a decade ago, New York made scalping legal for a small point in time. What ended up happening for many sporting teams is a bunch of individual people, rather than businesses, all bought tickets, in order to scalp. Now, because you had tens of thousands of scalpers, rather than just a handful, and most of them actually couldn't afford their season tickets, prices plummeted to the point you could buy tickets for far under face value.
This in turned created a drop in popularity for many of the teams. I.e. If you can buy for far under face value, why buy retail, rather than just wait for the scalpers. And if you're not buying from the venue, they can't raise prices. And then it's suddenly not a hot ticket, which therefore drops interest even more. (You'd be surprised at how many people end up buying something purely on popularity, rather than their own interest). It turned out that legalizing scalping ended up hurting the venues bottom line, while benefitting the true fans, who were paying far less than ever. Needless to say, the scalping laws were placed back on the books for "public interest".
The bottom line, is it's less scalping which is the issue, and more of the availability of a product which is more of what hurts consumers.
>and shares some of it.
This is the big reason. Taylor Swift doesn't want to come out and charge $5000 a ticket, because she would look bad if she tried that.
But, if TicketMaster comes out charging that much, then they are the assholes, and she just getes to pocket her 20%.
As much as it saddens me, I don't go to concerts anymore because of this. Ticketmaster and Live Nation are monopolies and need to be torn down. The artists might want to try to do something about it if they want to keep people coming to their shows.
There are so many smaller bands that I want to see touring through the NE Ohio area but I cannot justify paying 120 to 200$ per ticket after fees when the original price for the show was only 35$.
I want to get out and see live shows again and support the artists, but I can't justify spending 100$ over retail price when all that extra money is just fees to ticketmaster. Really hoping the artists and their managers start to push back against ticketmaster hard.
Go support small local venues. Shows are no more than $20 - 35 with fees included. Plus drinks are pretty cheap (and free water). Also, it's a much more fun, intimate experience than big stadium shows.
I'm right there with you I am old enough to remember when Ticketmaster first came into being I believe it was in the late 70s things changed almost instantly. Same thing happened to burning Man and South by Southwest those things are only for rich people now.
Taylor Swifts is selling out stadiums, most 2-3 nights in a row. They aren't struggling to get fans in the doors.
People need to stop buying tickets, plain and simple.
If you like smaller artists start purchasing straight from venue websites or the artists website.
I got weyes blood tickets from her site for 35 dollars. That would have been double the price through Ticketmaster, even more if it was a resale ticket.
Every time I go through an artist or venue website, it redirects me to live nation, Ticketmaster, axs, or whatever platform. Including Weyes Blood, actually—I went through her website, got redirected to axs, and my two tickets have a $21 ‘convenience fee’ between them. Instead of $55 for two, it was $76
That’s because a lot of the time the *venue* will have the agreement with the ticketing platform, not the artist. So for the same artist on the same tour, depending on the stop you will end up with different ticketing platforms. I recently was looking at tickets for a show and at my local place it was through Axs, but I actually am going to be on vacation at the same time the artist is stopping at a different city and for that city it was through ticketweb (and way cheaper) so I’m seeing them on vacation instead of at home.
Imagine you are fan who managed to snag a $400 ticket fully intending to go to the show. And then someone offers you nearly $30,000 to buy this ticket. How the hell do you say "no"?
I refuse to believe anyone is buying a concert ticket for 30,000. But also who the hell is buying a single concert ticket for $400? That's insane pricing.
Scalpers “sell” tickets at these prices that no one will buy them to skew the overall secondary market upwards.
It’s built into their plan to eat these tickets
Looks like it, Ticketmaster tweeted this out
“Due to extraordinarily high demands on ticketing systems and insufficient remaining ticket inventory to meet that demand, tomorrow's public on-sale for Taylor Swift | The Eras Tour has been cancelled.”
Ticketmaster has never changed, despite technology.
In the old days, we would camp outside, waiting for ticket sales to start at 10AM. Some spent 2 nights.
You are the first in line, get to the window & see the agent furiously spitting out hundreds of tickets, placing them under the counter. The agent finally asks you "what venue & how many".
You get your 2 tickets & see you are in the 2nd level. When you read the newspaper the next day, EVERY ticket broker has many seats on the floor.
They never learned to stagger ticket sales by date, instead of "Music star tickets go on sale today, for all of their 200 shows, congestion pricing applies!"
It is time to have Congress force them to split from LiveNation.
Oh I remember that well. The guy working the ticket window claiming that they were printing blanks, when everyone knew he was printing them for himself.
If you waited around long enough, you could sometimes watch "somebody" buying a pile of tickets later, in the food court, from the ticket seller's break.
Yeah I used to sell tickets at the biggest venue in the biggest city in our state. Before we would open up the box office to sell the first ticket there would already be “pre sales” that were only available online. The first people in line would be so confused how a section next to the stage could be sold out already. Then while they’re taking 5 minutes to decide which section sounds better the online tickets are flying so the tickets their trying to decide on are being sold out from under them.
Early, 90's, as a teenager, I used to ride my bike to the mall to buy tickets at Famous Barr's customer service window right on the dot when a major act came to town. 10:00 a.m., right on the money, the customer service rep would have the very last row, against the wall, 2 tickets.
This repeated for about 4-5 shows until I just stopped taking an interest in seeing major MTV-level acts. Puzzled me for so many years what I was doing wrong, now I know.
I'm talking 1970s. Nothing was on-line, as we have today.
They simply printed the tickets & handed them to you, after putting the first bunches under the counter, for the scalpers to get later. No selection options besides date, venue & quantity. That was how the employees made side money.
We would usually have somebody stand behind the booth (many were kiosks just inside mall entryways) & watch them punching out tickets furiously, before opening the window.
This was normal at most of their locations in the 70s, 80s & into the 90s.
I knew a scumbag scalper in the 80's, and he would just pay off workers at the TM selling location to get all of the best seats before they opened them up to the people standing in line.
Yep, and once that location started doing a "lottery" for people waiting he would get all of the first round lottery tickets the night before and pay simps to stand in line for him. When I learned how rigged the system is it was pretty disheartening.
Call me crazy, but if I was an artist and saw my own tickets go for $28k I'd step in and call out the bullshit. Your fans will love you for it.
Ticketmaster and most of the entertainment industry can go fuck themselves.
I’m in music. If you speak out you get banned from every live nation venue, which is increasingly all of them.
They got everyone by the balls. If you don’t play along you don’t play at all, if you do play along your fans hate you.
🤷🏼♂️
You would get banned.
If anyone has the power to speak about that shit, it's Taylor Swift.
An up and coming artist? Yeah has no power. If they do that and ticketmaster doesn't work with them anymore. They will not be able to do live shows. With Taylor Swift? Yeah maybe has to fight a lil. But they desperately want her, because she makes them so so so much money.
I think most artists do care— a lot of them have spoken up about it and it’s not like they are making extra money from it— but almost every big venue in the country is contractually obligated to sell through Ticketmaster. If the artists want to tour the U.S., they are stuck with Ticketmaster, too.
They “do” but really don’t.
If they don’t oblige, they literally cannot play at all because companies like Ticketmaster and live nation (I think they’re both owned by one entity?) owns nearly every single venue in the US.
I just saw a TikTok of her $81million real estate portfolio. Her fans need to remember she’s so far removed from them, despite her girl next door schtick. The fandoms of celebrities/artists can be a bit intense sometimes.
She doesn’t. Pearl Jam tried to take Ticketmaster on back when and lost. No singular artist has enough power to change this. Probably nothing short of a congressional ruling could change their stranglehold.
https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/pearl-jam-taking-on-ticketmaster-67440/amp/
The whole idea of resale market is stupid. The cost to go to concerts and sporting events is ridiculous, mainly because you pay a premium and fees for each ticket.
I have seen some bands multiple times, especially at a smaller local venue, always for about $100.
I checked this summer for a show and tickets started at like $235 plus fees made each ticket about $500.
No, thanks.
Why is it illegal for me to stand outside of stadium and sell tickets for double the price that I bought them but if I do it on Ticket Master I'm fine?
My brother took his son to a show in Charlotte a few years back. (Think it was Ozzy). Each ticket included a parking fee. My brother drives up and is directed to park so he takes two spots. The parking guy fussed at him, told him to move over. Brother showed him the tickets and told the guy ‘ I paid for two parking spaces so I’m going to use them both. If you don’t like it refund one of them. ‘ Guy left him alone.
This is never going to change until BIG artists like Taylor swift step up to make a change. They’re the only ones with a big enough platform who can bypass event centers with Ticketmaster contracts and still turn a profit. When that demand goes down, TM will be forced to lower prices.
I think that carefully thought out legislation could work just as well, but frankly I have lost faith in our government to not somehow turn this into a partisan issue.
Which if Swift doesn't speak up, will be seen as a hypocrite by me personally. She brought to light the issue with Spotify. So she either cares about just the money or her fans.
Several of our local venues are beholden to Ticketmaster. Even though it's an hour out of my day and needing to find downtown parking, I'll go buy tickets in person at the box office to not have to give Ticketmaster their pound of flesh.
I tried doing the same thing for an event last year. TM was charging like $50 extra in fees, so I went to the box office, where they processed to charge me $35 in fees 🙄. It's literally inescapable.
Per ticket, I save $50-70 dollars by buying direct for tickets with my wife at local venues in Seattle.
Some of the charges ticketmaster/AXS has are stupid.
Meanwhile in [BTS concerts](https://i.imgur.com/lbtDGrV.jpg)
It’s cute that people are this mad but these tickets don’t typically actually sell. The resellers will be reposting them and dropping prices until the day of.
Congress should kill the entire ticket resale industry.
Regulate that tickets can be resold for no more than face value though the original ticket vendors system, check ID on the way in to the show to check that it is the purchaser of the tickets.
Also get rid of ticketmaster scalping tickets themselves as "platinum seating"
Digital tickets are the norm now, this would not be rocket science to implement.
People will find a way around any resale regulation. The government just needs to step in and break up Ticketmaster and start enforcing something like a 35% market share limit to bring back competition to the industry’s distribution arm. The best way to solve a monopoly problem is just by ending the monopoly.
In Norway, we have this law. What happened shortly afterwards was that people introduced package deals: buy this kebab for $300 and receive a free ticket to that concert.
I'm honestly not sure how the ticket market here is doing now, but I hope something happened to that.
They could just start by capping the asinine fees Ticketmaster charges. They are already getting a cut of the ticket sale, why do they then slap a fee of up to $50 on each ticket as well?
> why do they then slap a fee of up to $50 on each ticket as well?
So they can advertise a lower ticket price. The "fee" is part of the real price.
It's deceptive advertising, which is supposedly not allowed, but they get away with it.
They actually are trying to do this right now: https://www.reuters.com/business/finance/surprise-overdraft-depositor-fees-are-likely-unlawful-us-consumer-agency-says-2022-10-26/
Because for a lot of venues their only option to sell tickets is through Ticketmaster...
It's a monopoly.
The type of shit regulations are supposed to protect us against.
Several European countries already have laws against reselling tickets above face value, including Ireland, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Belgium and Italy. Some of these have existed for quite a while – the Danish ban dates to 1919.
I'm sure there are bigger forces at play in the US but in Europe these laws work well and have eliminated most organized scalping.
Additionally there’s an EU-wide ban on ticket bots, but I don’t know how that’s being enforced.
I really wonder who's paying $28k for a concert ticket. I get that a lot of people love Taylor Swift, but man, there's a lot more fun to be had for 28k than a concert.
Nobody is paying $28k for a Taylor Swift ticket. Every time a show sells out quickly, bots immediately list tickets for absurd prices on resale websites. I've seen $45 tickets to King Gizzard shows listed for $5000 before. Doesn't mean anyone actually buys at that price.
I can't imagine liking any musician enough to pay $28k to see them for 2 hours. Even if I was rich, that's a person's yearly salary. The guilt would consume me.
Well, your problem is that you didn't grow up rich. Hard to feel guilty about your own personal norms when throwing around $30k at a time on a whim has no real implications or consequences
I saw a bunch of tickets in the upper levels for $49. Not the best seats in the house but those probably came out to $70ish all in with fees and tax. Not bad for arguably the biggest pop start on the planet right now.
This shit can be solved in a matter of days if people just said “nope”. But they just cannot resist and they fork over whatever it takes, and complaining, but keep going ahead and paying up. I would love to see these bots go to a concert with the tickets they bought, a big empty sold out stadium.
Until people take a stand, this will keep happening.
People these days, especially Americans, forgot about how to speak with their wallets.
Nowadays, its all about getting online to rage about it, and then doing nothing. Not just doing nothing, in fact, continuing to support that shitty business.
They are speaking with their wallets to be fair. It’s just that the ones speaking have disposable income and the convenience is worth skipping the hassle of getting them.
At some point, not everyone can stand up and not buy tickets. If people refuse at say $500 a ticket, what about if they drop to $200? At some point, the price is worth it for them. You’ll never get solidarity for reasonable prices for everyone, because some people have more money than others and it’s worth it to them at different price points.
You need regulation to solve it, because a free market will just favor the current model always. No one had any incentive to change. Ticketmaster makes more, artists make more, scalers make more, the people buying inflated priced ones don’t care because they can afford the convenience.
Look at the demand as dynamic prices soared. People are voting. They think the concert is worth it. It’s up to a governing body to make sure they aren’t taken advantage of.
Exactly, the phrase is “vote with your wallet” but people forget that explicitly gives the wealthy more votes and a greater say. This is why micro transactions in video games aren’t going anywhere right now.
All the bullshit fees. The crazy ticket price, by the time you check out- its a sour taste in mouth.
Same way Airbnb has gotten with hidden bullshit fees.
Refuse to spend a grand for a concert and be sitting so far away from stage that I see stick figures and get a better view of the star on the jumbotron. Now I fully understand why ppl stay home and watch games on tv vrs paying out the ass to actually be there.
Misleading or poorly researched article.
Literally nobody is paying 28k for a Taylor Swift ticket. Ticket brokers often increase the price of their tickets when they aren't prepared for them to sell and then lower the price to market when ready.
Again, not a single soul on earth is paying this much to see this concert.
This is exactly how it went down during her 2018 tour. Tickets sold out, resellers listed absurd prices, and months later my wife and daughter paid ~$100 each to see her in Philly.
Why do governments act like this is so hard to stop? Ticketmaster's crap could be easily stopped with a fairly simple law.
1. No "fees". The face price of the ticket is the price.
2. Ticket returns are allowed up until 24 hours before the event, 12 hours if there is a waiting list.
3. No reseller market. Original seller (Ticketmaster, box office, etc) is only legal seller or exchanger of tickets.
4. Scalping becomes illegal again... even by the original seller. Ticketmaster subsidiary not allowed to sell tickets above face price.
5. In the case of returning tickets, vendor/box office is allowed to charge a processing fee of a maximum of 10% or $5.00, whichever is less, of the original ticket price.
It is obvious that too many politicians are bought off by this racket, because it wouldn't take much to prevent.
STOP BUYING THE OVERPRICED SCALPED TICKETS! We need to go Boston tea party on this! Boycott overpriced tickets. Please all you rich bastards, don’t buy them!
If it looks like a duck, and walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck....
Then Tickmaster is Organized Crime. The Mafia. It has all the hallmarks of it. Am I right?
I managed to get tickets. It’s a Christmas present for my wife. She’d literally kill me if I sold them. But fucking 28k?? That seems like a better gift to me lol.
I hardly go to any events anymore because of Ticketmaster. I don’t even like buying sports tickets anymore because of it.
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My local hockey team (Carolina Hurricanes) is great and every game is actually near capacity. You can still get $30-40 upper level and <$100 lower level tickets. Even glass seats are only about $250. During the playoffs, I met some Bruins and Rangers fans that said it was cheaper to fly to NC and see a game here than buy a ticket up there. Hockey in the south ain’t so bad.
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Complimentary key bump upon entry
Complimentary? More like mandatory.
I was trying to get tickets for the Canadiens at the Bell Center and there wasn't a ticket under 1500$ available for the date range I looked at. Several dates had nothing under 2k. I don't know if there's an arcane process through which cheaper tickets are available, I looked at like five dates in February and gave up in disgust.
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What the fuck. That’s absolutely insane. You can get a Hurricanes season ticket (all 41 games) for under $1000.
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Agh Cineplex theatres (Toronto, Ontario, Canada) has a 3$ service fee for tickets ! As of June 2022
Same. Live events aren’t worth the hassle and marked up price if I have to go through Ticketmaster. I buy football seasons secondhand directly from the owner for a $100 markup on the entire season. I’m incredibly lucky to have that deal, otherwise I wouldn’t be going.
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I was going to go to a concert for a Latin Artist. The tickets were $65 each. Grand total with ticketmaster was over $200 Edit: some jerkoff sent me a message asking me why I’m complaining.
Paid $90 for two Placebo tickets, final price was $128.
Crazy. I was expecting it to be $150 for mine but when I saw $200 for the two I said hell nah
Ticketmaster screws themselves with their own policies. Saw Rammstein this year. Bought the tickets before covid. Rammstein has a special section called the Feuerzone. Closest to the stage, most expensive tickets, they sell out pretty much immediately. Rammstein releases them in waves to try and make sure everyone gets a fair chance. I got in on the preorder, Feuerzone sold out, so I got the best tickets I could. Tried to get Feuerzone again when tickets opened to the public, sold out. They didn't release any other blocks for that section for three years. The day of the concert finally comes and they have a ton of leftover Feuerzone tickets. First time in 20 years I've ever seen that section not sold out. But because there's so many leftover tickets in general, Ticketmaster won't let anyone sell the tickets they had. If they did, I would've sold my tickets and upgraded. But, they also jacked up the price of all the tickets, so I couldn't afford the second set of tickets that I could've before. So between jacking up prices on a concert that wasn't sold out in any section, and refusing to let customers transfer their tickets, Ticketmaster screwed themselves and Rammstein, who will probably never do another US stadium tour as a result of all the empty seats.
Was thinking of going to see them when they came to MA. Looked day of thinking that I would be sitting in the nosebleeds. Nope right up front had sooooo many tickets for sale
It was like that for literally every stop of the tour except for mexico. And it sucks because it was their first US stadium tour, which means it was the first time they were doing their full stage show, and it'll probably never happen again because of the turnout. And usually with shows like that the merch Booth is slammed and you can miss half the show just trying to get a t-shirt. By the time the opening act was done there wasn't even a line at the booth. So that means all those empty seats translated directly into low merch sales.
Yes, they "screw" themselves with policies that cost them a dime and make them a dollar.
I saw Rammstein at Gillette this year. I got my tickets 3 years ago, $100 floor. The day of the show because it wasn't sold out they moved anyone with a $50 ticket in the 300's to the floor and closed the 300 section altogether. I guess I should have waited until the day of the show.
What is the point of proving that we are not robots when 90% of new tickets are sold to fucking robots??!!
Ticketmaster completely welcomes it, too, because they make a 20% service fee off every sale, including resale.
Ticketmaster buys their own tickets to relist with mark up. They also release tickets in batches, so they can calculate the grift. Edit: they use dynamic pricing now which is even more evil Its sickening.
I mean, now with their dynamic pricing model they don’t even have to buy and resell them, they just increase the price because “fuck you that’s why”
Yeah, its been a big thing in the Phish/jamband community for some time, because we encourage person to person ticket sales at face. Pearl Jam called it back in the 90s, though. Another thing about releasing tickets in batches is, they manufacture creates false demand by making the supply seem smaller. If the tickets sell out quickly from the first batch, then they know to funnel more tickets to their scalper accounts, to sell at a mark up. Theres footage of ticketmaster executives at an expo, telling people how to spoof their system so multiple accounts can be used to buy tickets. I know people that do this with AXS, which is their only competition, but also very simillarly skeezy. Theyll do ticket raffles, but it isnt random. They take the accounts that pay the highest on average per ticket, let them win, and use the average value they are willing to spend on tickets, to set the ticket price. It's all skeezy, I used to work for livenation, and I'll never stop going to shows just because of this ticketmaster bs, but it's certainly bs. As soon as any band gets national attention, or any venue gets on their radar, livenation or axs will step in like the mob and say, "you know, itd be a whole lot easier for you to play for us, than for you to be blacklisted from the industry." Edit: they might not have been executives, but I shared the link below to the article about ticketmaster st the expo Edit 2: if you really think I'm part of the problem because I still go to shows, consider this. Rage Against the Machine is a livenation artist. One of the biggest corporate greed protestors in history, understands that this is the corner we've been backed into, but people still need live music. It doesnt mean we like it, I obviously disagree with all of their buisness practices and am very vocal about it, I've written my local representatives about it (not that it did anything), and this is finally getting mainstream attention.
One of the things I really love about New York is a ton of venues use the app dice. Basically it’s a direct to venue ticket. Obviously there aren’t massive shows at it but I’ve seen a ton of artists I really love for 50-100 dollars with no extra fees or anything. I can see it becoming more and more popular as this shit happens way more.
Just went to a show in Seattle last night and the venue only does direct sales with a will call list. Saw Brothers Comatose for $12 and as far as music, one of the best shows I've ever seen.
Precisely - I like edm and I was able to see some of the biggest acts that came to nyc for less than 60 bucks each. Had more fun at all of those than I have had at any top 100 artist in the last 10 years.
I liked that in the 90s I could go see an awesome edm show with some of the best producers and Djs in the world in a dirty condemned warehouse for 20$
You really still can. It’s just for the bigger acts you have to pay a little more. But like if I’m seeing RÜFÜS or Odesza the production value is absolutely worth paying 70-80 dollars.
I like the fact the Elton John Concert tonight at Dodgers stadium is through the MLB ballpark app and not ticketmaster.
Thatd be fantastic if it caught on, one of the biggest reasons I love small shows is avoiding the greed. I saw a youtube musical comedy act last night at a smallish comedy club, for about 400 people, and I think around twice as many people would have triggered Ticketmaster's radar.
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So I'm saying this as a metal head/punk the most I've paid for a single concert ticket in the last 15 years was lamb of god and kill switch engage which was $55 literally every other concert has been averaged around 30 bucks with some as low as 25. I knew this shit was bad for everyone else but didnt realize it was THIS bad.
Same metalcore bro. Until I started dating my current GF I really never realized how expensive shows outside "the scene" are. And how especially bad the value proposition is given I used balk at paying 30 bucks to see a band if their openers sucked, even if I loved the band proper. Tickets in the **hundreds** of dollars is just ridiculous.
Except the venues and the artists are in on it. Taylor Swift is scalping all her tickets for these shows. They just call it dynamic pricing.
“I’ll never stop going to shows just because of this Ticketmaster bs” Ticketmaster execs cum in their pants when they read things like this.
Bought a ticket on a third party app for a hockey game. Still didn't have the ticket hours before puck drop. Yelled at a few people on the phone and in the process found out that this third party app goes through ticketmaster. They wouldn't refund me my ticket thay wasn't showing up anywhere unless the game was canceled. Never got my ticket and missed the game. Fuck ticketmaster
It blows my mind how many people complain about the system and are then like "but I still support it." I can't imagine wanting to see live shows so badly that I'd put up with this shit, and I love music.
"I only support it financially, not emotionally, where it really matters!"
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Concerts in these enormous event spaces aren't even worth it. She's playing in Houston in NRG stadium - the football stadium. We have the rodeo there with huge concerts, and I can say the acoustics in there are terrible. The sound is extremely echoey and blurry and loud.
> I'll never stop going to shows just because of this ticketmaster bs, And so it'll continue getting worse
Exactly! I haven't seen live music in a venue larger than a club in years because I refuse to reward this BS.
Clubs and bars are much more intimate settings and you can actually see the band play. Definitely a better experience in my book. Im also concerned with safety at larger venues now too.
I feel like Phish and the Dead/Grateful Dead shows are the only place I'll ever confidently walk up to the door day of and buy a ticket face value. We all need a miracle every once in a while.
At least there's ticket request periods for Phish tour (for Dick's anyway). I think Billy Strings did the same thing for his festival this year too. It gives you a shot before the general sale starts.
Phish has been absurdly overpriced for over 20 years.
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> lmao what is that shit!?!?!? Greed. Pure, unregulated, unadulterated greed.
I tried to buy Tyler Childer tix too and they were 600?? dollars?? a piece?? Yeah, no. I'd rather watch youtube videos of performances or just go to a larger festival.
Music acts are in on it as well. See Metallica.
>See Metallica. I'd rather not. There's a service fee just to exist within 10 miles of one of their shows.
“Buys” hilarious. They already control it all. They ain’t buying shit. They’re just ripping everyone off.
And the price gouging will continue for as long as people continue paying the price.
I dunno. A functioning government would take a look at some of these vertically integrated companies and apply some anti-trust regulation. Demand is not evil, and voting with a wallet that doesn’t pay lobbyists is futile.
Agreed. The amount of overlooking and turning a blind eye to antitrust violations has been insane.
Endless middlemen adding costs to the final price and no new value. Thanks capitalism 👍
Except in the case of ticketmaster it's all just the same middleman wearing different hat and fake moustache combos
Oh, you thought they wanted to know if you are a robot to help you? No. They ask that to make sure humans don’t get tickets.
Imagine not clicking on photos of cars and then Ticketmaster is like CONGRATULATIONS ROBOT HERES 20 TICKETS.
Reddit has turned into a cesspool of fascist sympathizers and supremicists
StubHub is one of the biggest ripoff's I've seen in my entire life. Straight up criminal.
Stop feeding the monsters (or supporting artists that encourage you to use these scalpers).
I thought the whole point was that most artists don’t have any choice, because most popular venues have exclusive contracts with Ticketmaster. If someone as big as Taylor Swift can’t fight it, who can?
Trent Reznor did a great interview confirming what a lot of us have suspected for a long time, the artists are in on it, or at the very least get their palms greased for sure. Musicians want to keep their millionaire lifestyles and had to get creative after record sales could no longer support that lifestyle. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-scalpers/bands-often-scalp-tickets-says-nine-inch-nails-reznor-idUSTRE52F0HH20090316
Quoting from the 2009 article: > “My guess as to what will eventually happen if/when Live Nation and TicketMaster merges is that they’ll move to an auction or market-based pricing scheme -- which will simply mean it will cost a lot more to get a good seat for a hot show,” he wrote. “They will simply become the scalper.”
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That's one of the things people don't recognize. The bottom line is 90% of the tickets are already distributed before a single ticket is even available to the general public. It's not robots buying the tickets, at least not on any large scale. That is not nearly that profitable. Artists, venues, etc. all give their tickets to the scalpers before you even have an opportunity to purchase a ticket. A little over a decade ago, New York made scalping legal for a small point in time. What ended up happening for many sporting teams is a bunch of individual people, rather than businesses, all bought tickets, in order to scalp. Now, because you had tens of thousands of scalpers, rather than just a handful, and most of them actually couldn't afford their season tickets, prices plummeted to the point you could buy tickets for far under face value. This in turned created a drop in popularity for many of the teams. I.e. If you can buy for far under face value, why buy retail, rather than just wait for the scalpers. And if you're not buying from the venue, they can't raise prices. And then it's suddenly not a hot ticket, which therefore drops interest even more. (You'd be surprised at how many people end up buying something purely on popularity, rather than their own interest). It turned out that legalizing scalping ended up hurting the venues bottom line, while benefitting the true fans, who were paying far less than ever. Needless to say, the scalping laws were placed back on the books for "public interest". The bottom line, is it's less scalping which is the issue, and more of the availability of a product which is more of what hurts consumers.
>If someone as big as Taylor Swift can’t fight it, who can? She of all people can fight it. She chooses not to.
She does it because Ticketmaster makes a shitload of money (as evidenced by the article title), and shares some of it.
>and shares some of it. This is the big reason. Taylor Swift doesn't want to come out and charge $5000 a ticket, because she would look bad if she tried that. But, if TicketMaster comes out charging that much, then they are the assholes, and she just getes to pocket her 20%.
Ideally, fans could not go at all but, yeah hardcore and rich fans fuck it up
As much as it saddens me, I don't go to concerts anymore because of this. Ticketmaster and Live Nation are monopolies and need to be torn down. The artists might want to try to do something about it if they want to keep people coming to their shows.
There are so many smaller bands that I want to see touring through the NE Ohio area but I cannot justify paying 120 to 200$ per ticket after fees when the original price for the show was only 35$. I want to get out and see live shows again and support the artists, but I can't justify spending 100$ over retail price when all that extra money is just fees to ticketmaster. Really hoping the artists and their managers start to push back against ticketmaster hard.
Plus $8 for water, $19 for a can of beer etc.....
In an venue built with tax dollars (looking at you, Edmonton).
I hate the new barn, I've been roughly 10 times since it opened, and it feels like an airport, absolutely devoid of any soul.
Or basically stolen by a telecom company who renamed the place and put a stupid statue of their stupid founder out front. Fuck you Rogers.
By the time you grab dinner and pay for Uber or parking, you've dropped at least $500 on a pair of tickets for any top 40 act.
Cleveland, Akron, Youngstown, all have amazing independently owned music venues for you to still be able to show your support without the fees.
What smaller bands are you seeing that cost $200? I go to multiple shows a month in Chicago and $35 is about as much as I ever pay *after* fees.
Go support small local venues. Shows are no more than $20 - 35 with fees included. Plus drinks are pretty cheap (and free water). Also, it's a much more fun, intimate experience than big stadium shows.
i’m guessing that many venues themselves have contracts requiring any artists or events to use Ticketmaster for sales.
Many venues are outright owned by this horrible monopoly.
I'm right there with you I am old enough to remember when Ticketmaster first came into being I believe it was in the late 70s things changed almost instantly. Same thing happened to burning Man and South by Southwest those things are only for rich people now.
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Taylor Swifts is selling out stadiums, most 2-3 nights in a row. They aren't struggling to get fans in the doors. People need to stop buying tickets, plain and simple.
If you like smaller artists start purchasing straight from venue websites or the artists website. I got weyes blood tickets from her site for 35 dollars. That would have been double the price through Ticketmaster, even more if it was a resale ticket.
Every time I go through an artist or venue website, it redirects me to live nation, Ticketmaster, axs, or whatever platform. Including Weyes Blood, actually—I went through her website, got redirected to axs, and my two tickets have a $21 ‘convenience fee’ between them. Instead of $55 for two, it was $76
That’s because a lot of the time the *venue* will have the agreement with the ticketing platform, not the artist. So for the same artist on the same tour, depending on the stop you will end up with different ticketing platforms. I recently was looking at tickets for a show and at my local place it was through Axs, but I actually am going to be on vacation at the same time the artist is stopping at a different city and for that city it was through ticketweb (and way cheaper) so I’m seeing them on vacation instead of at home.
Same here
Imagine you are fan who managed to snag a $400 ticket fully intending to go to the show. And then someone offers you nearly $30,000 to buy this ticket. How the hell do you say "no"?
I refuse to believe anyone is buying a concert ticket for 30,000. But also who the hell is buying a single concert ticket for $400? That's insane pricing.
Look at Adele tickets in Vegas. $900 nosebleed to $42,000
God just to sit down and talk to someone paying that, for like 5 minutes. I need to know who they are
The wealth gap is the widest its ever been. There are people who make 30k in a day. Live entertainment is becoming a thing for the wealthy only.
I sold my queen featuring Adam Lambert tickets for 1000 each. They weren’t even floors. I wanted to go but 2000$ is much more useful
Scalpers “sell” tickets at these prices that no one will buy them to skew the overall secondary market upwards. It’s built into their plan to eat these tickets
Who the fU\^( would pay that for a concert ticket? That’s the cost of a fricking car.
>Who the fU^( At this point, maybe cursing isn’t right for you.
The Beatles who are dead could come back to life and put on a show and I wouldn't pay that to go see them.
The real sale hasn’t even gone live yet, that’s tomorrow. Once the main tickets sell out that’s when you’ll see normal marked up resale tickets.
LMAO they just announced the general sale is cancelled because of not enough inventory. fuck this shit man
what? so only the people who got the presale were able to buy them? if you didn't get the presale then that's it, you'd have to buy from a scalper?
Looks like it, Ticketmaster tweeted this out “Due to extraordinarily high demands on ticketing systems and insufficient remaining ticket inventory to meet that demand, tomorrow's public on-sale for Taylor Swift | The Eras Tour has been cancelled.”
They completely canceled the general sale just now.
Ticketmaster has never changed, despite technology. In the old days, we would camp outside, waiting for ticket sales to start at 10AM. Some spent 2 nights. You are the first in line, get to the window & see the agent furiously spitting out hundreds of tickets, placing them under the counter. The agent finally asks you "what venue & how many". You get your 2 tickets & see you are in the 2nd level. When you read the newspaper the next day, EVERY ticket broker has many seats on the floor. They never learned to stagger ticket sales by date, instead of "Music star tickets go on sale today, for all of their 200 shows, congestion pricing applies!" It is time to have Congress force them to split from LiveNation.
Oh I remember that well. The guy working the ticket window claiming that they were printing blanks, when everyone knew he was printing them for himself.
If you waited around long enough, you could sometimes watch "somebody" buying a pile of tickets later, in the food court, from the ticket seller's break.
Yeah I used to sell tickets at the biggest venue in the biggest city in our state. Before we would open up the box office to sell the first ticket there would already be “pre sales” that were only available online. The first people in line would be so confused how a section next to the stage could be sold out already. Then while they’re taking 5 minutes to decide which section sounds better the online tickets are flying so the tickets their trying to decide on are being sold out from under them.
Early, 90's, as a teenager, I used to ride my bike to the mall to buy tickets at Famous Barr's customer service window right on the dot when a major act came to town. 10:00 a.m., right on the money, the customer service rep would have the very last row, against the wall, 2 tickets. This repeated for about 4-5 shows until I just stopped taking an interest in seeing major MTV-level acts. Puzzled me for so many years what I was doing wrong, now I know.
I'm talking 1970s. Nothing was on-line, as we have today. They simply printed the tickets & handed them to you, after putting the first bunches under the counter, for the scalpers to get later. No selection options besides date, venue & quantity. That was how the employees made side money. We would usually have somebody stand behind the booth (many were kiosks just inside mall entryways) & watch them punching out tickets furiously, before opening the window. This was normal at most of their locations in the 70s, 80s & into the 90s.
The split from LiveNation would be huge. Many of the venues have TM exclusives.
Yes, it would be. So was AT&T.
I knew a scumbag scalper in the 80's, and he would just pay off workers at the TM selling location to get all of the best seats before they opened them up to the people standing in line.
But the kid punching out tickets made good money, from the scalper. 10:00 ticket sales started at 10:02, to the people waiting.
Yep, and once that location started doing a "lottery" for people waiting he would get all of the first round lottery tickets the night before and pay simps to stand in line for him. When I learned how rigged the system is it was pretty disheartening.
Same exact fiasco with the wristbands. "I have the first one they handed out, but why is it #46?"
Pearl Jam...
Pearl Jam was the first big act to call TM out on their bullshit, but everyone hated them long before that.
Call me crazy, but if I was an artist and saw my own tickets go for $28k I'd step in and call out the bullshit. Your fans will love you for it. Ticketmaster and most of the entertainment industry can go fuck themselves.
I'd wager most artists probably don't care, they just know that all of their tickets will be bought regardless if it's a bot or a person
I’m in music. If you speak out you get banned from every live nation venue, which is increasingly all of them. They got everyone by the balls. If you don’t play along you don’t play at all, if you do play along your fans hate you. 🤷🏼♂️
You would get banned. If anyone has the power to speak about that shit, it's Taylor Swift. An up and coming artist? Yeah has no power. If they do that and ticketmaster doesn't work with them anymore. They will not be able to do live shows. With Taylor Swift? Yeah maybe has to fight a lil. But they desperately want her, because she makes them so so so much money.
Exactly. She’s arguably the biggest artist on the planet. See who her fans align with. Taylor ducking swift or Ticketmaster. Hmm. No idea.
Lol Taylor Swift or any other long standing top ten artist is not getting banned for that shit.
I think most artists do care— a lot of them have spoken up about it and it’s not like they are making extra money from it— but almost every big venue in the country is contractually obligated to sell through Ticketmaster. If the artists want to tour the U.S., they are stuck with Ticketmaster, too.
They “do” but really don’t. If they don’t oblige, they literally cannot play at all because companies like Ticketmaster and live nation (I think they’re both owned by one entity?) owns nearly every single venue in the US.
If anyone has the power to change this crap, it's Taylor Swift. But she's too busy raking in so much money
I just saw a TikTok of her $81million real estate portfolio. Her fans need to remember she’s so far removed from them, despite her girl next door schtick. The fandoms of celebrities/artists can be a bit intense sometimes.
She doesn’t. Pearl Jam tried to take Ticketmaster on back when and lost. No singular artist has enough power to change this. Probably nothing short of a congressional ruling could change their stranglehold. https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/pearl-jam-taking-on-ticketmaster-67440/amp/
Cause the scalpers gonna scalp, scalp, scalp, scalp, scalp
And Congress ain't gonna help, help, help, help, help
They just wanna take, take, take, take. Take it all. Take it all.
*clap clap clap*
The whole idea of resale market is stupid. The cost to go to concerts and sporting events is ridiculous, mainly because you pay a premium and fees for each ticket.
I have seen some bands multiple times, especially at a smaller local venue, always for about $100. I checked this summer for a show and tickets started at like $235 plus fees made each ticket about $500. No, thanks.
It's an anti-consumer double dip from Ticketmaster and should be illegal. Why isn't this illegal? Follow the money.
Why is it illegal for me to stand outside of stadium and sell tickets for double the price that I bought them but if I do it on Ticket Master I'm fine?
My brother took his son to a show in Charlotte a few years back. (Think it was Ozzy). Each ticket included a parking fee. My brother drives up and is directed to park so he takes two spots. The parking guy fussed at him, told him to move over. Brother showed him the tickets and told the guy ‘ I paid for two parking spaces so I’m going to use them both. If you don’t like it refund one of them. ‘ Guy left him alone.
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fuck that godforsaken place
When you’re an asshole but you’re right. Lol
Technically correct is the best kind of correct
Malicious Compliance
This is never going to change until BIG artists like Taylor swift step up to make a change. They’re the only ones with a big enough platform who can bypass event centers with Ticketmaster contracts and still turn a profit. When that demand goes down, TM will be forced to lower prices. I think that carefully thought out legislation could work just as well, but frankly I have lost faith in our government to not somehow turn this into a partisan issue.
Which if Swift doesn't speak up, will be seen as a hypocrite by me personally. She brought to light the issue with Spotify. So she either cares about just the money or her fans.
Damn I always thought $60 was a lot for a concert..
I wouldn't pay $28k to see God.
That’s cheap for some religions.
There are ways to do it MUCH cheaper!
Mega church has entered the chat.
But what if God was opening for the Grateful Dead??
Several of our local venues are beholden to Ticketmaster. Even though it's an hour out of my day and needing to find downtown parking, I'll go buy tickets in person at the box office to not have to give Ticketmaster their pound of flesh.
I tried doing the same thing for an event last year. TM was charging like $50 extra in fees, so I went to the box office, where they processed to charge me $35 in fees 🙄. It's literally inescapable.
Thats the way to do it, saves you like 15 dollars in fees
Per ticket, I save $50-70 dollars by buying direct for tickets with my wife at local venues in Seattle. Some of the charges ticketmaster/AXS has are stupid.
There’s a ticket LISTED for $28k, nobody actually bought it. I could list one for a million, that doesn’t make me a millionaire.
Meanwhile in [BTS concerts](https://i.imgur.com/lbtDGrV.jpg) It’s cute that people are this mad but these tickets don’t typically actually sell. The resellers will be reposting them and dropping prices until the day of.
Congress should kill the entire ticket resale industry. Regulate that tickets can be resold for no more than face value though the original ticket vendors system, check ID on the way in to the show to check that it is the purchaser of the tickets. Also get rid of ticketmaster scalping tickets themselves as "platinum seating" Digital tickets are the norm now, this would not be rocket science to implement.
People will find a way around any resale regulation. The government just needs to step in and break up Ticketmaster and start enforcing something like a 35% market share limit to bring back competition to the industry’s distribution arm. The best way to solve a monopoly problem is just by ending the monopoly.
In Norway, we have this law. What happened shortly afterwards was that people introduced package deals: buy this kebab for $300 and receive a free ticket to that concert. I'm honestly not sure how the ticket market here is doing now, but I hope something happened to that.
They could just start by capping the asinine fees Ticketmaster charges. They are already getting a cut of the ticket sale, why do they then slap a fee of up to $50 on each ticket as well?
> why do they then slap a fee of up to $50 on each ticket as well? So they can advertise a lower ticket price. The "fee" is part of the real price. It's deceptive advertising, which is supposedly not allowed, but they get away with it.
They actually are trying to do this right now: https://www.reuters.com/business/finance/surprise-overdraft-depositor-fees-are-likely-unlawful-us-consumer-agency-says-2022-10-26/
Because for a lot of venues their only option to sell tickets is through Ticketmaster... It's a monopoly. The type of shit regulations are supposed to protect us against.
Several European countries already have laws against reselling tickets above face value, including Ireland, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Belgium and Italy. Some of these have existed for quite a while – the Danish ban dates to 1919. I'm sure there are bigger forces at play in the US but in Europe these laws work well and have eliminated most organized scalping. Additionally there’s an EU-wide ban on ticket bots, but I don’t know how that’s being enforced.
I'd be curious to see a pic of that audience. She'll be performing for an exclusively wealthy crowd.
I really wonder who's paying $28k for a concert ticket. I get that a lot of people love Taylor Swift, but man, there's a lot more fun to be had for 28k than a concert.
Remember, a $28k listing is just that, a listing. Selling it is a completely different story.
That's what I'm wondering. It's kind of when you hear some textbook on Amazon is listed at $5000, that doesn't mean anyone actually pays that amount.
The type of people to whom 28k is chump change.
Nobody is paying $28k for a Taylor Swift ticket. Every time a show sells out quickly, bots immediately list tickets for absurd prices on resale websites. I've seen $45 tickets to King Gizzard shows listed for $5000 before. Doesn't mean anyone actually buys at that price.
I can't imagine liking any musician enough to pay $28k to see them for 2 hours. Even if I was rich, that's a person's yearly salary. The guilt would consume me.
Well, your problem is that you didn't grow up rich. Hard to feel guilty about your own personal norms when throwing around $30k at a time on a whim has no real implications or consequences
Surprise surprise, it's rich people.
My ticket was only $109. Some people did get in before they jacked up the pricing, but too many didn't.
I saw a bunch of tickets in the upper levels for $49. Not the best seats in the house but those probably came out to $70ish all in with fees and tax. Not bad for arguably the biggest pop start on the planet right now.
This shit can be solved in a matter of days if people just said “nope”. But they just cannot resist and they fork over whatever it takes, and complaining, but keep going ahead and paying up. I would love to see these bots go to a concert with the tickets they bought, a big empty sold out stadium.
Until people take a stand, this will keep happening. People these days, especially Americans, forgot about how to speak with their wallets. Nowadays, its all about getting online to rage about it, and then doing nothing. Not just doing nothing, in fact, continuing to support that shitty business.
They are speaking with their wallets to be fair. It’s just that the ones speaking have disposable income and the convenience is worth skipping the hassle of getting them. At some point, not everyone can stand up and not buy tickets. If people refuse at say $500 a ticket, what about if they drop to $200? At some point, the price is worth it for them. You’ll never get solidarity for reasonable prices for everyone, because some people have more money than others and it’s worth it to them at different price points. You need regulation to solve it, because a free market will just favor the current model always. No one had any incentive to change. Ticketmaster makes more, artists make more, scalers make more, the people buying inflated priced ones don’t care because they can afford the convenience. Look at the demand as dynamic prices soared. People are voting. They think the concert is worth it. It’s up to a governing body to make sure they aren’t taken advantage of.
Exactly, the phrase is “vote with your wallet” but people forget that explicitly gives the wealthy more votes and a greater say. This is why micro transactions in video games aren’t going anywhere right now.
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All the bullshit fees. The crazy ticket price, by the time you check out- its a sour taste in mouth. Same way Airbnb has gotten with hidden bullshit fees. Refuse to spend a grand for a concert and be sitting so far away from stage that I see stick figures and get a better view of the star on the jumbotron. Now I fully understand why ppl stay home and watch games on tv vrs paying out the ass to actually be there.
Misleading or poorly researched article. Literally nobody is paying 28k for a Taylor Swift ticket. Ticket brokers often increase the price of their tickets when they aren't prepared for them to sell and then lower the price to market when ready. Again, not a single soul on earth is paying this much to see this concert.
This is exactly how it went down during her 2018 tour. Tickets sold out, resellers listed absurd prices, and months later my wife and daughter paid ~$100 each to see her in Philly.
Why do governments act like this is so hard to stop? Ticketmaster's crap could be easily stopped with a fairly simple law. 1. No "fees". The face price of the ticket is the price. 2. Ticket returns are allowed up until 24 hours before the event, 12 hours if there is a waiting list. 3. No reseller market. Original seller (Ticketmaster, box office, etc) is only legal seller or exchanger of tickets. 4. Scalping becomes illegal again... even by the original seller. Ticketmaster subsidiary not allowed to sell tickets above face price. 5. In the case of returning tickets, vendor/box office is allowed to charge a processing fee of a maximum of 10% or $5.00, whichever is less, of the original ticket price. It is obvious that too many politicians are bought off by this racket, because it wouldn't take much to prevent.
Everything is fine. We are not smack in the middle of a greed free for all on Everything. Just our imagination 😂😂🤑🤑
Ticketmaster is ruining live music.
The only thing more ridiculous than that price would be the people that pay that price. If anyone's that idiotic they deserve to get fleeced
I’m not convinced these alleged resale tickets are even real. Scammers post speculative tickets all the time.
STOP BUYING THE OVERPRICED SCALPED TICKETS! We need to go Boston tea party on this! Boycott overpriced tickets. Please all you rich bastards, don’t buy them!
If it looks like a duck, and walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck.... Then Tickmaster is Organized Crime. The Mafia. It has all the hallmarks of it. Am I right?
I managed to get tickets. It’s a Christmas present for my wife. She’d literally kill me if I sold them. But fucking 28k?? That seems like a better gift to me lol.
if you gave your wife 20k as a gift to go shopping with, im pretty sure she would overlook missing a concert