Ticketmaster Colludes with Scalpers (Shocking, I Know)

[I_H8_Crawford]

CBC did a nice piece on it:

https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/a-p...gram-1.4828535

Glad I don't go to many events

[undercoverbrother]

poor Broncos guy, he is just trying to put his kids through school

[Oil Stain]

Ticketmaster is such a scumbag company.

I wish they would break up that monopoly.

[aaronck]

Pearl Jam was right! I've said for years Ticketmaster is the devil-but I don't think this news will change anything.

[Wormius]

I would love to see Ticketmaster get phased out over time with fewer and fewer acts and venues using them.

[gottabekd]

The only shocking thing would be if Ticketmaster wasn't sharing the double-dipping profits with bands/artists, promoters, and venues.

The artist/promoter gets to sell tickets to the public at 'reasonable' prices which are below the market price, Ticketmaster facilitates scalping to let tickets sell at the higher market price and gives the promoter/band/venue their respective cut depending on the arrangement, and the public directs their anger at scalpers and Ticketmaster instead of the other players.

All very shady and definitely not 'transparent and fair to consumers'. But is there a law being broken? I really don't know. There seems to be some deception on Ticketmaster's part, but the net effect is the public pays the market price for tickets.

[Johnny Makarov]

there is no way Ticketmaster should have access or own 'resale' sites.

that said the Bruno Mars impersonator guy made that piece!

[Fuzz]

One change that could be made should be that the primary ticket seller should not be aloud, in any way, to profit from, or own any reselling companies. It wouldn't solve the entire problem, but it would remove any incentive Ticketmaster has to keep the re-seller market stocked.

[Cecil Terwilliger]

The really weird part is why they lie. Why not just list tickets for the real amounts they want to charge? At this point it isn't like the public is gonna have a freak out. We all know how much secondary tickets cost and how there is no primary market and that it is all a scam anyways.

Its like they are being shady for the sake of being shady.

[Flamenspiel]

Originally Posted by Cecil Terwilliger

The really weird part is why they lie. Why not just list tickets for the real amounts they want to charge? At this point it isn't like the public is gonna have a freak out. We all know how much secondary tickets cost and how there is no primary market and that it is all a scam anyways.

Its like they are being shady for the sake of being shady.

No, because they would not sellout then, and they may eventually have to lower prices instead of raising them.

With the secondary market they transfer the risk of low demand to the reseller while still making money if the demand is high.

[Erick Estrada]

Scammers gonna scam.

[GGG]

This report doesn't really uncover anything unethical or unlawful in my opinion.


The only thing close is that the ticketmaster resale division won't share any information with the ticketmaster anti-bot division.

It does show how ticketmaster is incentivised to do as little as possible to fight bots however unless ticketmaster resale is selling or giving info on how to get around ticketmasters anti-bot processes then I don't think ticketmaster is doing anything wrong here.

The people at fault in the entire scalping operation are the Artists. If they wanted to they could make tickets non-transferable. If they wanted to they could sell tickets at market value. Either would eliminate scalping. Artists and sports team choose not to because sellouts at a set price are good for their reputations, revenue and long term demand.

What the middle-men do is really immaterial. This article does not show what people allege. It does not show that ticketmaster gives unfair access to tickets to Scalpers and this thread title is a gross misrepresentation of what the article states.

[Northendzone]

i thoughtt heat the article suggested that TM sent tickets directly to thier reseller.

i seem to recall that the last time taylor swift went thru TO that the tickets were priced at something around $1,000 to prevent resellers from reselling as the theory was that people would really not want to pay more than face. If my recollection is correct, I don't ever recall seeing anything to indicate how that worked out other than TSwift likely making more that night.

i too would like to see TM broken up as they pretty much control the entire north-american ticket marketspace

[Hockey Fan #751]

Originally Posted by Cecil Terwilliger

The really weird part is why they lie. Why not just list tickets for the real amounts they want to charge? At this point it isn't like the public is gonna have a freak out. We all know how much secondary tickets cost and how there is no primary market and that it is all a scam anyways.

Its like they are being shady for the sake of being shady.

The big reason is if tickets were listed for the amount they want to charge, they'd only get their fees once (the time the tickets are purchased) but now they get their fees twice (initial purchase and then again when they're sold on the secondary market).

It also seems to me that the second time around, the percentage in fees that they get is higher.

[Cecil Terwilliger]

Then why not just increase the fees? Or take a larger cut? Make all tickets have demand based pricing. Have auctions. There's a ton of ways to make the money.

[Hockey Fan #751]

Originally Posted by GGG

This report doesn't really uncover anything unethical or unlawful in my opinion.


The only thing close is that the ticketmaster resale division won't share any information with the ticketmaster anti-bot division.

It does show how ticketmaster is incentivised to do as little as possible to fight bots however unless ticketmaster resale is selling or giving info on how to get around ticketmasters anti-bot processes then I don't think ticketmaster is doing anything wrong here.

The people at fault in the entire scalping operation are the Artists. If they wanted to they could make tickets non-transferable. If they wanted to they could sell tickets at market value. Either would eliminate scalping. Artists and sports team choose not to because sellouts at a set price are good for their reputations, revenue and long term demand.

What the middle-men do is really immaterial. This article does not show what people allege. It does not show that ticketmaster gives unfair access to tickets to Scalpers and this thread title is a gross misrepresentation of what the article states.

The worst part about it is the bots. It's why if you go to see an event that's *almost* sold out, you'll see face value tickets appear and disappear all the time. The bots go in and they'll scoop up face value and hold them for 10 minutes before releasing and then rinse and repeat so that you'll instead buy at the scalped prices.

[cam_wmh]

The GoC sued them earlier this year, whatever happened with that?

https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/com...ices-1.4504043

[Hockey Fan #751]

Originally Posted by Cecil Terwilliger

Then why not just increase the fees? Or take a larger cut? Make all tickets have demand based pricing. Have auctions. There's a ton of ways to make the money.

I think raising the fees is something you'd have to negotiate with each promoter and while that's all quite possible, this is easier.

[GGG]

Originally Posted by Hockey Fan #751

The worst part about it is the bots. It's why if you go to see an event that's *almost* sold out, you'll see face value tickets appear and disappear all the time. The bots go in and they'll scoop up face value and hold them for 10 minutes before releasing and then rinse and repeat so that you'll instead buy at the scalped prices.

But this article isn’t about the bots.

They did not investigate what ticketmaster does to fight bots. All we know is that the resale side of the company doesn’t rat out potential abusers of the onsale side.

Would it surprise me to learn that tocketmaster does the minimum possible to catch bots? No of course not. But this article does not address it at all.