WTF is up with Ticketmaster?
The slow implosion of America’s most despised company.
PART 1 in a series of articles.
Eric S. Fuller
August 16, 2018
Going to a concert, sporting event or the theater used to be fun. Go online, buy a ticket and you were all set. Now, thanks to a power struggle raging between Live Nation — the parent company of Ticketmaster and everyone else in the ticketing eco-system the prices of tickets have gone crazy and the process of buying tickets has gone nuts.
We have a lot to cover in this series. Some of this is covered in the podcast I just did with Dave Wakeman. Here’s a link:
http://davewakeman.libsyn.com/episode-20-eric-fuller-the-business-of-fun
Stay with me through this series of articles. At the end, I’ll post a link to video of a shameful and despicable fraud that Ticketmaster is running to take money away from you — one that you’ve probably never noticed. It’s so evil that it may help you decide to never buy anything from Ticketmaster again. Or, maybe all their executives will just get indicted. The Department of Justice is currently investigating Ticketmaster. By the end of this series you’ll understand why.
Today we’ll start with the basics. Ticketmaster seems to believe that any money to be made from ticketing belongs to them. They are livid there is an $8 billion resale market made up of companies like StubHub, Vivid Seats and SeatGeek. So, to try and get all that money for themselves they are doing a bunch of things which are killing consumer demand for live events.
Are you curious to know why ticket prices nearly tripled this year? Ticketmaster makes a service fee from every ticket sold and the higher the price, the bigger their fee. They believe if they charge the highest amount the market will allow, there won’t be any reason for speculators to buy tickets in hopes of marking them up even higher on other resale markets. But, supply and demand is real. The resale market charged a premium for the small percentage of excellent seats for those few who were willing to pay to get into an otherwise sold out event. When everything is overpriced, consumer demand evaporates.
So, what happens when the company who has a virtual monopoly on ticketing gets greedy? You won’t be surprised when you see the map of the theater below. No one buys tickets. Does this matter? Absolutely! Can you imagine being one of the poor souls in a seating section where every row other than yours is empty? How fun is that? Are you going back? Doubtful — right? And, who loses? The map below is for Wiz Khalifa and his supporting acts tonight in Tampa, FL. If prices were lower Wiz might have sold a lot more tickets and more. Fans who attend shows buy hats or T-shirts. The venue loses out on beer and food sales. The supporting acts lose the ability to gain new fans, because people who would have otherwise been there simply stayed home. And, those fans who did go are probably not having a great experience. A concert is a joyous experience to be shared. A concert in which you are alone is just live radio heard outside in a hard plastic seat.
Here’s what the ticket availability for Wiz Khalifa’s show tonight in Tampa looks like:
Every blue dot is a ticket that didn’t sell. Sorry Wiz — you’re basically rehearsing because almost nobody’s going to there tonight.
Does Ticketmaster care? That’s hard to say. Try buying a ticket to anything on their site now. You may have to sign up for their Verified Fan fake lottery in order to get a code to have a chance to buy a ticket. Or, you might have to navigate four different pre-sales such as Spotify, Citibank, Live Nation and Venue each on a different day before the fifth day of ticket sales for the open general sale. Every day the supply is constrained and tickets appear sold out except for “Platinum” or “VIP” seats which are just the regular seats at double or triple the price.
Is that done on purpose to panic buyers into paying the more expensive price because the show looks full? I certainly think so. Ticketmaster slowly feeds tickets into the market, trying to maintain the illusion the show is about sold out until time runs out and you see a map like the one above. They even show you warnings like this:
They play other games too. Today, Billie Eilish went on sale at 10am PDT for a show in Oakland, California. The promoter Another Planet Entertainment sent out a password for their presale. The password, just below the “buy tickets” button was “creed”.
My daughter lives in Oakland, and likes Billie Eilish. I clicked the buy link exactly at 10am. But, the only choices were the VIP ticket presale and the Artist presale. The APE presale didn’t show as an option until 10:02. By then all the tickets were gone. What does this mean? APE probably would have gotten paid something for any tickets sold through use of their presale password link, but on this hot show Ticketmaster took all the money because they sold the tickets before opening the APE presale. APE’s email list was compromised, because those of us who received the email and password learned not to trust the APE presale. Basically, it looks like Ticketmaster front ran that APE presale so they could keep more money for themselves.
One more thing: because Ticketmaster is paranoid that ticket speculators will buy up tickets and make a profit by being smart about what they buy, they have put in so many software controls that buying a ticket is more complicated than programming a television remote. Check out more than one ticket without buying and you might find you’re blocked from searching Ticketmaster for the day.
We’ll talk more about this and other manipulation techniques later in the series. The next article will be about Michael Rapino, Live Nation’s $70 million Canadian CEO who doesn’t seem to understand the difference between the Canadian Dollar and the US Dollar when paying people who supply Ticketmaster with tickets to be resold. It’s just a little multi-million dollar scam in either currency.
If you experienced or know of any shady or abusive practices used by Ticketmaster or Live Nation, please share them: LiveNationProblems@gmail.com
