Theft by Ticketmaster

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 Google it

They are mainly responsible for the **** 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.

I get my Wrexham AFC tickets via Ticketmaster without paying any fees.  I assume the club covers the costs but it must only be a nominal amount so it can be done e.g.  £5 for Wrexham AFC Women tickets.

Likewise. I am trying hard to spend no more than £20 face value on a ticket – prefer to go to unknowns and support local venues, and when you’re paying £12 and £14 type tickets then any more than a couple of a quid for fees really stands out (ie – I’m not paying more than that, and not enough to really get annoyed about)

I’d have thought with the economies of scale, if anything the big gigs have less admin per ticket.

So for sure (and in defence, I guess) the fees being charged are at a level that people will just about pay, counter is that you don’t have a choice, there’s no competition really, they have the monopoly on that event/tour so you can’t use a cheaper vendor so the choice is just don’t go (or as above go to see someone else)

Yeah, they’ve sold me a ticket. And that sale includes all the pricing, admin fees and whatever. They want to make money selling tickets, they should also take on that risk. If the venue burns down / the singer’s drunk / whatever that’s not my problem. I bought a ticket from them to see Oasis, if the show doesn’t happen that’s their problem, not mine. They need to take it up with the Gallaghers, not me.

the issue is that if the gig doesn’t go ahead the additional fees are forfeit. i’m curious as to why the sale of goods act doesn’t apply?

TBF they’ve got a fantastic business model. /s

the issue is that if the gig doesn’t go ahead the additional fees are forfeit.

And as a punter that’s exactly the problem. I don’t care about how the fees add up – if I’m happy to pay 300€ to see a band that’s my problem. I don’t care if 15€ is the ticket price and 285€ “admin fees”. I paid 300€, and I want to see my band. If it doesn’t happen, I want my 300€ back.

Yeah, I’m not saying it’s illegal. It’s immoral, and I think the law needs to change to fix this.

^ I’m pretty confident the law will change, and we’ll look back on this indefensible practice in years to come and wonder why we allowed it to happen for so long.

 I am trying hard to spend no more than £20 face value on a ticket – prefer to go to unknowns and support local venues, and when you’re paying £12 and £14 type tickets then any more than a couple of a quid for fees really stands out (ie – I’m not paying more than that, and not enough to really get annoyed about)

That’s what I try and do also.  One of my recent gigs the ticket cost £17.60.  £16 ticket + £1.60 fees so 10% (See Tickets)

£10 fees on a £45 ticket is double for exactly the same service.

Just greed.

Yeah, I know. That’s the problem. I’m happy with TM selling me tickets. I work in IT, and I realise that implies a cost, and I’m happy to see that reflected in ticket prices. What I’m not happy with is TM offloading all risk and just taking the profit.

Sorry. Cross posting.

🙂

^ that is definitely greedy – but my point is more that if a small gig can sort tickets (yes, via a smaller agency like Dice or SEE) for £1.60, then even if it is 10%, on £100 tickets even if they stick to 10% that’s £10. I don’t know why it costs any more than £1.60 full stop, maybe even less given economy of scale.

Example again

My local small venue is 275 capacity (and I’ve seen some great bands and gigs there)

If a decent sized band play there (Personal Trainer) it was about £15, so I reckon I paid maybe £1.50 a ticket, perhaps £2 booking fee. Per ticket, despite my argument above.

To load onto a ticketing site and input that there’s 275 tickets available can’t be that hard once a site is up and running. So they’ll make between £400 and £500 say for ticketing

Now a big band play a big venue – not a stadium gig but say Hammersmith (Eventim) Apollo. 3600 capacity and according to this report £11.30 or so.

https://www.theguardian.com/money/2024/mar/19/fees-uk-music-ticket-prices-which-ticketing-sites

That’s £40k for as far as I can see doing little more than you do for the 275 capacity venue. Even if you go by # tickets, it’s still 7x the cost for doing the same thing, loading up details and telling the computer how many it can sell.

I’m not on the inside, but my daughter recently was involved in organising a theatre press night and it sisn’t seem that hard liaising with the box office who arranged the sames and reduced the public numbers to allow for the freebies. So maybe RR can explain why it costs so much more in total for doing ‘the same thing’

Well, that’s a surprise, I never thought I could turn up for a cancelled gig and they’d let me in to sit in the warm and dry for a couple of hours. I must give that a go next time, I’m sure it’ll turn out just as you say.

And yet many venues are rebooked after an event cancellation, meaning that any such ticket would not get you into the venue.

So maybe RR can explain why it costs so much more in total for doing ‘the same thing’

I’ll have a go for you.

It’s because they can.

Some artists try to make a stand but if you want to plan a tour and play some arenas then you’ll have to do business with live nation. Live nation will insist on Ticketmaster. If you want to avoid the hegemony then a tour is suddenly much more difficult to organise.
I bet live nation charge artists a shit load for towels and riders etc etc

its time for change.

@theotherjonv

Just to make it clear I was happy to pay £1.60 on a £16 ticket.

The greedy bit was directed at the £10 fees on a £45 ticket via TicketMaster.

But I agree – if it’s £1.60 for a smaller band then why shouldn’t it be the same fee for more expensive ticket.  It shouldn’t be more expensive to administer ticket sales just because the ticket price is higher.

agreed – I was meaning the agency is greedy, I think exactly the same as you, I can’t understand why it isn’t cheaper if anything because of economies of scale.

Why’s that again? <chinscratchyemoji>

But surely the promoters have a say in all this. Hahahahaha

I wonder what happens if next time a gig gets cancelled each paying customer separately takes Ticketmaster to the small claims.
Firstly I bet the legalities of the imposed contract  agreed to under the timer Ticketmaster impose (signed under pressure?) start to look a little unfair and paying private customers have some level of protection there.
Secondly the nuisance value of that very reasonable action might well encourage Ticketmaster to consider that fees position going forward.
Just wondering.

Again, you’re conflating ticket pricing with additional booking fees. Though if you think the rail networks don’t operate a demand-based pricing structure then either you haven’t used a cross-country train in years or you’re deluded. Jump onto thetrainline, cost up a Glasgow > London return six weeks from now, then do the same for a trip tomorrow.

Demand may be orders of magnitude higher and require scaled-up compute power to process, but it’s not more difficult.

Bullshit it does. Either it’s a wholly automated process or you’re paying through the nose because you’re dealing with imbeciles.  No-one is “sat” doing anything when a high-profile ticket drops, maybe aside from the IT wonks rebooting woefully under-provisioned servers.

The individual? 100% agree, I’ve worked in Support. Their employer? Bastards.

Bingo.  This is surely the one justifiable reason why we get reamed for booking fees, because they take the hit in the wildly unlikely event that it goes sideways.  I’ve been going to gigs for 35 years and I can count the number of outright cancelled events on one hand with change for the bus fare home.

Don’t lots of organisations occasionally have both foreseeable and unforeseeable circumstances that mean a whole stack of execs, managers and ops people need to get together to work through a problem? Isn’t that the cost of doing business? How is TB special other than being part of a cartel that can pull any and all of the levers? On that crazy Oasis day, what were the fees levied by TB on the surge tickets? Were they flat regardless of surge or did they surge too?

There were I think 14 dates sold on that first Saturday, the BBC is reporting 1.4 million tickets across 17 dates so conservative says what, 1.1m tickets sold that day?

If the total TM levy per ticket was £1 (and it wasn’t – MEN report says between £8 and £20 and that was before dynamic came in) that would be over a million in fees – reality is likely more like 10x that. How much were these over 40 people being paid?

Had to deal with live nation & Ticketmaster for a ticket to manchester Ritz a few weeks back.

Gig good. Buying experience terrible. Won’t be doing it again.

Fees for my trip to Wembley to watch the NFL in October.  3x£130 tickets for context.
Name: Ticket Booking Fee Amount: £46.80
 
 
Name: Digital Tickets Delayed Amount: £2.00 
 
 
Name: No Donation Amount: £.00
 
 
Name: Wembley Sustainability Fee Amount: £8.25
 

Name: NO Collector Ticket Amount: £.00

A ticket should be a ticket. If the event don’t happen= money back.

End of.

PS I don’t know why you guys torture yourselves with people like Ticketmaster etc.

Boycott them, if it’s upsets you that much.

Ps Don’t forget SevernFest 25 next year 😉

https://www.severnfest.com/

Couple of specific things…

Ticketmaster have enough industry share to be while not a monopoly, often an effective one, they have exclusivity with venues and they often have exclusivity with tours/artists. And don’t take it from me that this is problematic, take it from ticketmaster themselves, this is why they have their “totally not ticketmaster” sites like “Gigsinscotland” in order to create the superficial illusion of choice.

As for how great they are at it- let’s be honest, they are straight up bad at it and the reason they are bad at it is that they do not need to be good at it, for the same reason. Big events routinely crash their site- not just that one event but the whole site. There’s absolutely no meaningful queueing or attempt to mitigate that. There’s no sense of protection or fairness, you can be in at 10am, have tickets in your basket and reserved to you then the website crashes and you lose it all. That can happen to you 4 or 5 times. And of course touts miraculously manage to get around it all. It doesn’t even need to be a massive event to be a complete disaster, their handling of the 6 Biffy Clyro shows next month was a total farce, that was only midsized venues but it was constant failures and loops, I finally got my tickets about an hour after they went live just because that was when they finally went through and reset a ton of failed transactions but it was officially “sold out” before that. Just a fiasco. Failure is standard for ticketmaster and like I say they are not motivated to fix that because they’ve rigged the game well enough that they don’t have to be any good.

And the fees, oh yeah, of course an e-ticket is as expensive as posting the ticket was. Oh and also stops you from reselling except through their own service.

Oasis stuck a thing on Insta earlier stating the TM systems couldn’t cope with demand. Good to see those 40 hard working poor souls earned their keep that day.