I picked up tickets last week for the Thievery Corporation show this week, in a painful process that hits my wits and wallet. Not only is the process cumbersome, rot with bugs so that you could loose your virtual place in line to garner tickets, but the business is corrupt in that they siphon off tickets to their sister company which grossly over charges for the same show, and when you do get tickets on the TM site, there are exorbitant fees for the privilege to do so.
The latest fees now for tickets purchased through TM are $7.05 per ticket for the “convenience” of selling me the ticket AND $2.90 fee to “process” my order. On top of that they now charge just to print out the tickets (about $2 per ticket). We are now talking $12 per ticket on top of the artist or venue charge to watch a charge where tickets are sourced through Ticketmaster. There needs to be a review of this business and alternatives to purchasing from big broker houses.
Here’s some of the latest news on these greedy ass clowns:
TicketMaster is owned by IAC and inn January of 2008, bid to acquire TicketsNow.com for $265 million. This now puts under the same roof, the ability to initially sell all tickets, and have the opportunity to re-sell those tickets though second tier brokerage houses (such as Stubhub and ebay). What became increasingly clear is that TM was directing buyers directly to TicketsNow.com when sales become sold out. What’s not clear and still to be determined under either the $500 Million suit or the $250 Million suit, both against TicketMaster, is if they gave preferential treatment to TicketsNow.com to buy up tickets to resell at a higher profit margin. There’s different laws in Canada so they very well could have violated fair ticket sales laws there and here’s to their loss in these suits!!!
On the 10th of this month Live Nation and Ticketmaster announce a 2.5 Billion dollar merger. This merger agreement between Ticketmaster and Live Nation will produce a stranglehold in the fragile concert business which lost money on ticket sales last year (even as concert prices went up). This is not a merger that will benefit the concert goer and it’s you and me that will be seeing even higher fees on shows through these companies. New bands will find it harder to get audiences and established acts will get smaller crowds if they don’t play into the TM end game. TM has exclusive rights to sell sporting events tickets as well and this hurts not only music but live sports event enthusiasts as well.
Joe Cohen, the founder and CEO of Seatwave, the UK’s biggest fan-to-fan ticket exchange, sent out a press release on Tuesday the 10th, saying: “The combination of Live Nation and Ticketmaster will create a company that controls over 70% of the U.K. ticketing market, the country’s largest music promoter and management of over 200 of the world’s top artists. Neither party has suggested how this tie-up in any way could be in the interests of fans.”
Before TM, it was first come first serve. You went to the venue or camped out at your local Warehouse record shop to get tickets for the local show. You at least had a shot to get great seats at face value if you had the dedication to do so. Now TM sells their prime seats to ticket clubs (their partners TicketsNow.com etc.), gobbles up competitive ticket sites and strong arms the venues to resell their show tickets at their terms.
Rep. Bill Pascrell, D-New Jersey called for a federal probe of Ticketmaster’s practices, said “the deal could put concert-goers nationwide at risk of permanently increased ticket prices and should not gain regulatory approval.” The Dept of Justice is looking into the merger, and I hope they find significant evidence that this would create an unfair market monopoly for this business.
Event venues signed with services like TM and Live Nation to expand their promotional reach, and sell out their events. In the internet age, these shows are primarily artist driven not venue driven, so the need for additional promotion through a national ticket service provides marginal benefit to them and they are loosing the processing fees by giving this up to TM.
Regardless, we all need to be conscious of these events and take personal steps to persuade our favorite artists, sports teams and other event promoters to host events in venues that do not sell their tickets through TM or to create tours without the help of TM services. We need to reach out to our favorite venues and encourage them to set up their own ticketing practices. Lastly, people can take a stand on the issue by not going to shows where artists have signed with Live Nation, or Ticketmaster for exclusive concerts, and avoid venues where TM has the monopoly on selling event tickets. It’s a tough sacrifice to give up the live show but maybe this economy will help cut into that discretionary spending and make it easier to make that decision.