Theft by Ticketmaster

Not if you willingly choose to complete the transaction. There’s a nice big cancel order button there.

(But yeah, agree, the extra costs are getting ridiculous on event tickets)

Yes I noticed that just received my Bob D tickets for the Usher Hall. Service fee and charges were £11.55 per ticket. Cheeky beggars.

Big corporation ripping off fans shocker!! It's one reason I stopped going to gigs.

Service fee? Facility charge? Processing fee?

We all know they're really just a way a way of offshoring tax liability but i'd love to see a breakdown of what they claim to cover, because they all sound like the same thing to me.

Why not just show one fee instead three? It's a bit like calling extra income tax National Insurance and hoping folk don't notice how much is being taken overall, maybe that's the point 😉

Now wait til an event's cancelled...

They are ****s

How ticketmaster owns the uk music scene

Who owns ticketmaster?

There's a reason they're called Ticketbastard.  I realised they'd reached Peak **** when they wanted to charge me two quid for me to print-at-home the tickets.  I hope their balls turn square and fester at the corners.

Lol at square festering balls!

Agree the fees seem utterly unjustified,  as do pretty much any entertainment ticket price.   Why do we pay though?

Why do we pay though?

"We" don''t. A scattering of witless Muppets do, and then whine about it on the internet afterwards.

Which Ticketmaster is presumably perfectly happy with.

As @Houns said.

I was taken aback at the charges. Shame as I was keen to go.

And there's the rub. If you want to see the gig what's the alternative to Ticketmaster?

Who is it that chooses TM as the purchasing conduit? I went to see a gig in Cardiff last night. I made the decision to buy the tickets last May after seeing them advertised on Facebook. The bands Orbital and Leftfield made the decision (probably via their management)to tour, to use the Utilita Arena in Cardiff and obviously to accept my money. Who makes the decision to use Ticketmaster? Could I have purchased directly from Orbital? Leftfield? Utilita?

The additional charges seem to me to be extraordinarily high. It's all on-line payments nowadays so afaik all you are paying for is a bit of simple coding. If it was a bit more transparent about what the fees were for I reckon that I know Yr9 pupils who could step up to the mark and write it. And anyway, once written it only needs an event specific tweak each time.

Thieves they are, but they have us over a barrel until venues and performers do something about it.

another lol @ Cougar 🙂

did you enjoy the gig Ambrose? we thought orbital good, and i didn't recognise some of what they were playing - new album? leftfield were cracking.

the real robbery was going on behind the bar. 2 pints and a large glass of red was 32 flipping quid!!

Utter shite. Biggest yes, best? At what, extracting money from wallets? TicketMaster have a near monopoly, someone tried to take them to task in the 90s but fans just ignored them and here we are today.

@somafunk linked a decent article explaining it all.

The expense is nothing to do with artists making money, dynamic pricing is just profiteering pure and simple. Other shitty practices like charging to print your own tickets is utterly taking the piss. And as we see, folk lap it up and even defend it. Unbelievable.

Well, one of those two statements is true.

At this point it's pretty much a monopoly, it's all Live Nation.  The reason you can't buy tickets if you're not there with your finger on the refresh button across seventeen devices at 7:59:59 for an 8:00 ticket drop isn't because of popularity, it's because the scalpers have botnets which hoover up half of them in bulk.  The ticketing companies pay lip service to caring because as per the OP a twenty quid fee to "process" two gig tickets by actually doing the square root of **** all prints money faster than the Royal Mint.

It's a parasitic industry in dire need of regulation.  Remember when you could turn up to a gig on the day and buy a couple of tickets from the box office?  Halcyon days.  Sacking off Ticketbastard and making people physically go to the venue to purchase tickets would fix most of this problem at a stroke, but there's no appetite for it when the alternative is free money.

IIRC it was The Cure and Pearl Jam who kicked back against ticketmaster, but before then you had the "admin fee" for bookings with the venues direct.

Pearl Jam for sure, I remember it, there was a big fuss made at the time.  I think it was on that same tour they were boasting a different set list at every gig to reward frequent flyers.

The Cure, no idea.

@del, we arived after the start but got most of Orbital. As you say though there was some stuff new to me. By the time Leftfield came on I was properly revved up and loving life. If you were the bloke in the bogs in the yellow barbour jacket I appologise.

Leftfield were spectacular, it was good to see some instruments being played although I thought 'Melt' wasn't their best version. Son #1 was there, he's in the industry and reckons there was a technical problem. Needless to say I've been blasting out both bands all day today 🙂

Anyway, my next gig will be in a smaller venue with no ticketmaster involvement.

[Paul] Heaton was trending online recently as an antidote to Oasis. While some Oasis fans ended up paying more than £300 for tickets to their reunion tour because of dynamic pricing, Heaton capped the price for his upcoming arena dates at £35. “If you feel strongly about your fans, go to the meetings where they discuss things like dynamic pricing.”

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2024/sep/27/five-hours-of-pints-with-paul-heaton-weve-got-distracted-lets-get-back-to-the-album

It’s possible to get tickets through See Tickets and Gigantic, as well as Ticketmaster, for quite a few venues. It’s not always possible to print your own now, though - to try to cut out the touts and scalpers, you have to use an app that has a dynamic ticket; the QR Code changes all the time, so a screenshot or printed version won’t be recognised by the scanners at the entrance to the event.

... which by turns is a "screw you, we've got our money" to people who can't attend and want to pass on tickets to a mate.  Oh, wait, you can buy insurance at an extra £5 per ticket you say?  I got stung by this just last week buying tickets as a gift, she'll need my login credentials to both my Co-Op app and my Ticketbastard account in order to validate the e-tickets.

It's difficult and I don't know what the solution is.  I'm not wholly sure that there is a simple one even, otherwise someone would have done it by now.

Now wait til an event’s cancelled…

"But it was cancelled, so I'd like a full refund."

"We still provided our service."

"No you didn't. There was no event, therefore I could not attend. I shouldn't have to pay charges for something that didn't happen."

"But we sold you a ticket even though the ticket was for an event that never happened. So we get paid."

Which is why the fees are separated out like this.

Why not just show one fee instead three? It’s a bit like calling extra income tax National Insurance and hoping folk don’t notice how much is being taken overall, maybe that’s the point 😉

that’s so the pensioners can pay no NI whilst complaining about winter fuel payment cuts and self employed people can have different rules - presumably because that suits lots of politicians!

In which case ticket bastard should be claiming their cut from the band or whoever cancelled the gig, the liability should not rest with the consumer who has zero control.

Last big gig I went to was a couple of years ago to see Bicep at Alexandra Palace. They used a company called Dice, great app, reasonable price and even had the option of transferring the ticket if you couldn't go.

But yeah I hate Ticketmaster. I refuse to use them.

Interesting.  That argument isn’t far away from the bike shop saying “nothing to do with us if Trek / Specialized / etc sell a bike that breaks”.
If it was that easy certain bike shops would separate their “selling fees” from the bike price.

To be fair I do go to some high profile gigs, and just accept that Ticketmaster are raiding my bank account, but in reality I prefer seeing bands in small venues (The Cresent York anyone?) as it’s just a better experience - and that cuts Ticketmaster out a lot of the time.

At this point it’s pretty much a monopoly, it’s all Live Nation. The reason you can’t buy tickets if you’re not there with your finger on the refresh button across seventeen devices at 7:59:59 for an 8:00 ticket drop isn’t because of popularity, it’s because the scalpers have botnets which hoover up half of them in bulk. The ticketing companies pay lip service to caring because as per the OP a twenty quid fee to “process” two gig tickets by actually doing the square root of **** all prints money faster than the Royal Mint.

… which by turns is a “screw you, we’ve got our money” to people who can’t attend and want to pass on tickets to a mate. Oh, wait, you can buy insurance at an extra £5 per ticket you say? I got stung by this just last week buying tickets as a gift, she’ll need my login credentials to both my Co-Op app and my Ticketbastard account in order to validate the e-tickets.

Surely we can’t have it both ways

Come to SevernFest 25 next year.

Headline act to be announced soon 🙂

It's free :-).

We had the The Wurzels this year 🙂

https://www.severnfest.com

I've used DICE to buy tickets - they seem to pretty fair with regards to fees, etc.

I can see that going well...

They need paying. The business has to make a profit to function.

Sure, but I reckon that's more of an argument in business to business transactions, not end user. Plenty of costs to setting up and running a restaurant but if there's no food put on the table the punter is not expected to pay.

If you didn’t have a good time, get your money back on the way out

Sounds like Oasis Heaton Park 2009 - anyone asking for a refund got a cheque signed by the brothers. 90% got cashed, the 10% kept are I think worth quite a bit more now.

Looking for tickets for Sheffield City Hall I noticed they sold via Ticketbastard. Looking for alternative purchase options (there aren’t any that don’t involve TB), I stumbled on this which to some degree addresses the smorgasbord of fees being levied

Our Ticket Fees Explained

Seeing your favourite band or show is a great experience.  And we’re here to help you enjoy that must-see act, without any unnecessary confusion.

Our ticket prices are transparent and made up of four elements:

1. The Face Value – this is the price agreed with the promoter or organiser of an event.  We work hard with promoters to ensure that this is a fair price.

2. The Booking Fee – this is a charge made to cover the costs of our ticketing service, for example the costs of the ticketing software, call centre and our colleagues.

3. The Facility Fee – this is a small charge that contributes to the upkeep, safety and security of the building to ensure that you enjoy your visit.

4. The Fulfilment Fee – this is the cost of getting the tickets to you, so includes things like postage costs or organising collection facilities 

The prices shown in our literature and on our website combines the Face Value and Booking Fee.  This means that the price you see is the price you will pay for your ticket.  You can then choose the best method to get hold of your ticket and any costs for this at the time of booking. 

Why do we charge fees? 

Sheffield City Hall is a part of Sheffield City Trust, a not-for-profit charitable organisation. We are proud to run some iconic buildings and regularly invest in their maintenance and upkeep. As a not-for-profit organisation, we don’t have shareholders; instead any surplus from ticketing and hosting events are reinvested into our venues and activities to deliver a quality events programme. We work hard to ensure our pricing is fair and transparent.

Sheffield City Hall holds a special place in the minds of Sheffielders. With a Grade 2 listed status, we ensure that any improvements are of a standard befitting the history of the building; this can come at a cost. The facility fee will ensure that you are able to enjoy an event as much over the next 80 years as today.

The charges we make are there to cover the costs of safety and security improvements, our ticketing service; the ticketing software, call centre, counter service and colleagues. For most events, the face value of your ticket goes directly to the event promoter.

https://www.sheffieldcityhall.co.uk/box-office

If only things like "insurance" existed. They're quick to sell it to the consumer.

Yeah, at ten quid per ticket. Buying a train ticket or a cinema ticket online, the transaction charge is something like 50p.  That's the whole point of this thread, not ticket prices themselves.

In the days of Cloud, it's trivial to spin up extra compute power to cope with bursty loads.  If your ten quid went towards not sitting at position fifty thousand in the queue only to have your connection reset after two hours I'd have more sympathy.

And as everyone knows, they're wildly successful at this.

I’ve not checked this but I expect the booking fee (‘this is a charge made to cover the costs of our ticketing service, for example the costs of the ticketing software, call centre and our colleagues’) fluctuates significantly based on the face value i.e. they charge what they can get away with, not what it costs which would be simple to ‘fix’. No idea what a venue pays to use online ticket services, but you can bet TB are charging the venue and the punters.

I believe TM was the only company to charge the punters, that's how they got market dominance, other companies were charging the venues/promoters, so they switched to TM as that was a better deal for them and the other companies faded into obscurity. Once they had market dominance they started pumping up the additional costs. It wouldn't surprise me if they were charging both sides now.

Meh. You are told up front so you make the choice. How is it different to paying 4 quid for a cake in a cafe as opposed to buying your own from a supermarket?

How is it different to paying 4 quid for a cake in a cafe as opposed to buying your own from a supermarket?

The last time I paid four quid for a cake in a cafe, I wasn't charged a surprise additional two quid to go and get it from the counter myself.

Ticketshafter

Meh. You are told up front so you make the choice. How is it different to paying 4 quid for a cake in a cafe as opposed to buying your own from a supermarket?

WTAF....

Whilst this may be true, selling tickets for train journeys and cinema viewings is exactly as complex as selling tickets for tours and one off events, which is "not very" other than economies of scale.

It's gouging, and if I've made a purchase of an item I expect the vendor to supply the item described or refund my money. All of it. I don't have a problem with them making a living, but them expecting me to underwrite the cost of them doing business is pretty ripe. In what world is the vagaries of their business the responsibility of their customers? Touts and bots? The Glastonbury festival appears to have been able to navigate those problems.

The additional charges seem to me to be extraordinarily high. It’s all on-line payments nowadays so afaik all you are paying for is a bit of simple coding. If it was a bit more transparent about what the fees were for I reckon that I know Yr9 pupils who could step up to the mark and write it. And anyway, once written it only needs an event specific tweak each time.

My job would be a lot simpler if even half of that was true. But hey! It's all just ones and zeroes, how hard can it be???

Still struggling to understand the issue. Artist wants to make as much money as possible, manager does a deal with Ticketmaster who also want to make lots of money. People still queue electronically to be pay the prices quoted and tickets sell out in minutes. Next tour everyone goes ummm we can charge even more this time.

Still struggling to understand the issue.

Main issue with Ticktmaster/Live Nation is that it's close to a monopoly, and can use its weight to force bands to work with them rather than any alternative.

The cake analogy. You choose your cake and go to pay and the price is £2 more than previously advised.

I can live with that (£2 for a £4 cake is excessive, but I get the point)

My issue is that if I want 2 cakes, it's still one transaction - hold out the machine, tap the card. Ten cakes - one transaction. With tickets you aren't even handling them really, it's like a self service cake shop. Yet with ticket sites it's a per ticket fee, and that feels like a rip off.

Or, if I want a £5 cake - mysteriously for doing exactly the same thing (hold card machine out, etc.) it's now a £2.50 fee.

Sorry not read whole thread (internet experts eh), but read up on Ticketmaster previously - means I'll never buy a ticket through them. You only have to [url= https://www.google.com/search?q=ticketmaster+monopoly+explained&oq=ticketmaster+mono&gs_lcrp=EgZjaHJvbWUqBwgEEAAYgAQyBwgAEAAYgAQyBwgBEAAYgAQyBggCEEUYOTIHCAMQABiABDIHCAQQABiABDIHCAUQABiABDIHCAYQABiABDIHCAcQABiABDINCAgQABiGAxiABBiKBTINCAkQABiGAxiABBiKBdIBCjExMjg2ajFqMTWoAgiwAgE&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8 ]Google it[/url]

They are mainly responsible for the ****ing ridiculous ticket prices people are paying. Obviously, the people paying for the tickets are partly responsible, but yeah Ticketmaster should be avoided.

And if the cake is in some way inedible, I get all my money back, not just the wholesale cost and the cafe still charges me for going to the cafe instead of eating the supermarket cake at home.

I know, I don’t know exactly Ticketmaster’s business model, but here’s the rub - I’m the customer, I don’t care.
if I buy something from a shop (worse that shop is an effective monopoly) and I don’t get what I ordered, I want my money back. I don’t mind the dip making a margin when they deliver, but they should take the risk for that margin.
Taking my money (and I pay the money to Ticketmaster or the bike shop, not AC/DC or Trek) and taking the risk/ hit if the gig falls through - that’s what I would find annoying.
Can I just check, is that what Ticketmaster do, or do the refund all the money I paid to see the show, including any sundry adds-ons?

PS - I note the CMA, the US federal government and a number of US states are investigating a number of aspects of Live Nation / Ticketmaster behaviour.
Maybe it will come to nothing. Maybe they will be found to be abusing a monopoly position.

Dancing on the head of a pin.  If the gig is cancelled, then Ticketmaster did not furnish a ticket to get into a gig, because there was no gig.

if the gig starts and was rubbish I have some sympathy with you, though even then that’s like the bike shop saying they only sold an order being sent to Trek.  If the bike breaks it was because Trek employed Shane McGowan - nothing to do with the bike shop.

I think you are claiming to be like a pools agent but, you are correct, I am not a CMA (or American equivalent) lawyer - why don’t we just wait for them to have their say?

But me, I think you are sailing close to the wind on abuse of monopoly position given how many gigs you have pretty much exclusive rights to sell.  But I don’t know.

PS - I’m bored on a train, so please don’t take any of this too much to heart.