Ticketmaster Verified Fan is a joke

NB1996

How can it be possible for Ticketmaster to not have a general public sale for Ed's Seattle Benaroya Hall show and yet charge $500 for a single ticket on the third tier?  I don't get how this could possibly happen. I'm 100 percent positive Ed wouldn't go for this bullshit.  How can they sell a ticket for three times face value?  This was not the secondary market.  This was Ticketmaster Verified Fan Platinum tickets.  

Cropduster-80

Have you considered the venue fee/artist fee, and all the costs associated is “x” amount.
Ticket revenue  need to be “y” amount in total 

ten club holds back a lot of tickets and sells them below what the average ticket price needs to be. Platinum seats covers that gap and then some 

platinum seats may very well be subsidising the cost of the 10 club allotment. Giving so many to the fan club no doubt costs them money in lower revenue. Due to how many seats the 10 club wants they may have little control over what TM does with their share 

Poncier

NB1996 said:

  I'm 100 percent positive Ed wouldn't go for this bullshit.    

Ticketmaster doesn't do this without that artist signing off on it.

dmbolp

NB1996 said:

How can it be possible for Ticketmaster to not have a general public sale for Ed's Seattle Benaroya Hall show and yet charge $500 for a single ticket on the third tier?  I don't get how this could possibly happen. I'm 100 percent positive Ed wouldn't go for this bullshit.  How can they sell a ticket for three times face value?  This was not the secondary market.  This was Ticketmaster Verified Fan Platinum tickets.  

Because there's only like 2,500 seats and over 10,000 people willing to pay $500

evenflow82

I get the feeling Ed doesn't have a lot of stipulations with tickets and costs these days. It certainly isn't 1994 anymore.

jh275312

It is very disgusting. If you haven't figured it out yet verified are the worst tickets available, or super expensive ones. just gross. People will still cling to excuses, but it is very sad the changes in values of certain band members.

Eddieredder

Important distinction. Verified fan and Platinum tickets are two different buckets. I could be wrong here, but the Platinum tickets feel like the Live Nation/Venue/Ticketmaster allottment of tickets. Verified fan is basically the new public sale. Its sold as the way to combat scalpers and bots. But at the same time the scalpers are now in house at TM. 

True the artist does have to sign off on this. But do they have a choice when the promoter (Live Nation) and the ticket distributor (Ticketmaster) are the same? Remember between the two they control 80% of venues. Its pretty easy to leverage. 

But in general this article sums it up pretty well. I'd assume there were probably only like 375 tickets available (15%) for verified ticket sale. 

https://www.theringer.com/2016/6/3/16045790/ticket-industry-problem-solution-e4b3b71fdff6#.hh4d9z77a

Loujoe

I just saw Mike Watt is playing a show. $15 a ticket. Sometimes big rockers just get too complicated. nnnnnnn nn naaahhhnaaa nnnnNobody's fault but mine.

Groda03

I feel super fortunate to have won the lottery.   I have missed on past shows.  I'm happy.  Hope everyone has a great night.  

speedskater

evenflow82 said:

I get the feeling Ed doesn't have a lot of stipulations with tickets and costs these days. It certainly isn't 1994 anymore.

I miss the old days.

GS163319

Loujoe said:

I just saw Mike Watt is playing a show. $15 a ticket. Sometimes big rockers just get too complicated. nnnnnnn nn naaahhhnaaa nnnnNobody's fault but mine.

Sure, comparing the demand (or really, anything else) for Mike Watt and one of the bigger rock stars of the last 30 years makes sense.

pawlowski1097

They were off for 3 years, making up for lost time I guess 

OceansJenny

speedskater said:

evenflow82 said:

I get the feeling Ed doesn't have a lot of stipulations with tickets and costs these days. It certainly isn't 1994 anymore.

I miss the old days.

$1.50 parking!

Those tickets were also tough to get.

Ukuleddie Vegger

This ticket cost me a reasonable $60 at the Iconic Troubadour. I wish The Earthlings would have booked this venue.

KL159781

evenflow82 said:

I get the feeling Ed doesn't have a lot of stipulations with tickets and costs these days. It certainly isn't 1994 anymore.

I pretty much guarantee that he could have stood up to Live Nation in negotiations for the tour and said “I am willing to take X amount less on my tour guarantee if you just don’t do Platinum pricing on my fanbase”.

patkelly12

KL159781 said:

evenflow82 said:

I get the feeling Ed doesn't have a lot of stipulations with tickets and costs these days. It certainly isn't 1994 anymore.

I pretty much guarantee that he could have stood up to Live Nation in negotiations for the tour and said “I am willing to take X amount less on my tour guarantee if you just don’t do Platinum pricing on my fanbase”.

He absolutely could have but the cucks don't want to hear it. I have seen Platinum pricing for years but the prices today were borderline embarrassing. $900+ for a freaking seat. Even those novelty acts that the cucks like to bash would blush at those prices.

Eddieredder

patkelly12 said:

KL159781 said:

evenflow82 said:

I get the feeling Ed doesn't have a lot of stipulations with tickets and costs these days. It certainly isn't 1994 anymore.

I pretty much guarantee that he could have stood up to Live Nation in negotiations for the tour and said “I am willing to take X amount less on my tour guarantee if you just don’t do Platinum pricing on my fanbase”.

He absolutely could have but the cucks don't want to hear it. I have seen Platinum pricing for years but the prices today were borderline embarrassing. $900+ for a freaking seat. Even those novelty acts that the cucks like to bash would blush at those prices.

Would be interesting to know the number? Is it $1 mm a show? $500k? How much does LN/TM need to make? Now divide that by the limited number of seats minus the sunk tickets......minus the no resale profits. Now recalculate based on X number of tickets at below market fan club pricing......

Feels to me like Platinum pricing is the subsidizer. 

Luckytwn1

NB1996 said:

How can it be possible for Ticketmaster to not have a general public sale for Ed's Seattle Benaroya Hall show and yet charge $500 for a single ticket on the third tier?  I don't get how this could possibly happen. I'm 100 percent positive Ed wouldn't go for this bullshit.  How can they sell a ticket for three times face value?  This was not the secondary market.  This was Ticketmaster Verified Fan Platinum tickets.  

Of course, Ed is going along willingly with it. The artist has the final say. Basically, the promoters are all requiring the use of platinum tickets to hedge against high artist guarantees.  

Luckytwn1

patkelly12 said:

KL159781 said:

evenflow82 said:

I get the feeling Ed doesn't have a lot of stipulations with tickets and costs these days. It certainly isn't 1994 anymore.

I pretty much guarantee that he could have stood up to Live Nation in negotiations for the tour and said “I am willing to take X amount less on my tour guarantee if you just don’t do Platinum pricing on my fanbase”.

He absolutely could have but the cucks don't want to hear it. I have seen Platinum pricing for years but the prices today were borderline embarrassing. $900+ for a freaking seat. Even those novelty acts that the cucks like to bash would blush at those prices.

$900 platinum seats is nothing unusual these days for any of the major legacy rock artists. Very often the best seats go for even more. The Stones had platinum tickets $2500 and above everywhere. 

KL159781

Luckytwn1 said:

patkelly12 said:

KL159781 said:

evenflow82 said:

I get the feeling Ed doesn't have a lot of stipulations with tickets and costs these days. It certainly isn't 1994 anymore.

I pretty much guarantee that he could have stood up to Live Nation in negotiations for the tour and said “I am willing to take X amount less on my tour guarantee if you just don’t do Platinum pricing on my fanbase”.

He absolutely could have but the cucks don't want to hear it. I have seen Platinum pricing for years but the prices today were borderline embarrassing. $900+ for a freaking seat. Even those novelty acts that the cucks like to bash would blush at those prices.

$900 platinum seats is nothing unusual these days for any of the major legacy rock artists. Very often the best seats go for even more. The Stones had platinum tickets $2500 and above everywhere. 

How big a factor do you think Platinum tickets will be for Springsteen next year? I know they were only tried out sparingly in 2016.

Eddieredder

I filtered out the Platinum tix. Got in about 5 mins past. How many would you estimate you saw available? Was it 100? 200? 500? Just curious.

teskeinc

Vedders management makes the call on it. Guessing it was to break even tix need to be X $$$. We can keep 10 club under $200/ticket but need to sell X amount dynamic pricing. Verified fan will keep a good portion away. Something to that nature. Small venues it’s gonna be tough to keep prices down.

KL159781

I wasn’t Verified but I looked into the 4 West Coast once it was only Platinums remaining and available to everyone. At one point I saw El Cajon with only a single pair available. I checked back 2 minutes later and they had dropped 20 Platinums into the system.

there are currently a fair amount of Inglewood Platinums available right now, most of them priced from $280-380. It’s kind of what I expected for the LA market, that the demand wouldn’t be so crazy, due to the Ohana shows so recently.

Zod

NB1996 said:

How can it be possible for Ticketmaster to not have a general public sale for Ed's Seattle Benaroya Hall show and yet charge $500 for a single ticket on the third tier?  I don't get how this could possibly happen. I'm 100 percent positive Ed wouldn't go for this bullshit.  How can they sell a ticket for three times face value?  This was not the secondary market.  This was Ticketmaster Verified Fan Platinum tickets.  

Platinum and Verified Fan are two separate things.   They are not the same.  Verified Fan is a vetting process TM uses for public onsales that try to screen out bots/scalpers.  They aren't 100% successful but I guess they help.  Platinum tickets are a different beast.  Rather than artists selling tickets below market value, they attempt to earn the market value.  For decades artists sold tickets below market value and scalpers earned all that sweet cash between the ticket cost and what it was actually worth.  TM developed a system to gauge demand and sell those tickets for what people will pay.

Verified Fan was the public onsale.

Platinum happened to start at the same time and cause some confusion.

KL159781

To me, the Verified Fan program is a disservice to fans and not that successful in what it supposedly designed to do, which is cut down on resale of tickets for profit. 

If you use Stubhub as a gauge, usually around 15-20% of a venue’s capacity end up there. That’s a combination of scalpers, fans who got stuck with tickets they can’t use, and as I have seen, sometimes promoters selling their own tickets there instead of only relying on Ticketmaster.

for these NY and Chicago Vedder shows, when I looked at Stubhub earlier today, each show had 250-300 tickets listed, just hours after the public sale. You’re looking at roughly 8-10% of the total tickets already listed for resale. This is with Verified Fan in place limiting who can buy and with Ten Club taking a large amount of tickets for their use. If there were no fan club tickets, it would be easy to project that probably 15%+ of total tickets would end up for resale. That hardly makes Verified Fan look like any type of success.

We’ve all complained about past ticket sales where servers crashed or we ended up getting nothing, but to me, I at least want to feel I had a chance to try. Verified Fan immediately takes a large amount of fans out of the equation, which in it’s own way fuels the resale market.

I have signed up for over 20 previous Verified Fan presales in the past and have never got past Waitlist. I was even amongst 2,000 U2 fan club members who in 2018 was automatically sent my presale code that was included with membership and had it taken away 3 hours later, due to some Ticketmaster screwup.

I have resold tickets on Ticketmaster a few times in the past for shows I was unable to make it to. If you want to make back what you paid, you have to increase your asking price to cover the original Ticketmaster fees, plus the fees they charge you on reselling through their site. My theory is that has caused me to be blackballed as a scalper, something a friend of a friend that works for Ticketmaster said was true.

Eddieredder

KL159781 said:

To me, the Verified Fan program is a disservice to fans and not that successful in what it supposedly designed to do, which is cut down on resale of tickets for profit. 

If you use Stubhub as a gauge, usually around 15-20% of a venue’s capacity end up there. That’s a combination of scalpers, fans who got stuck with tickets they can’t use, and as I have seen, sometimes promoters selling their own tickets there instead of only relying on Ticketmaster.

for these NY and Chicago Vedder shows, when I looked at Stubhub earlier today, each show had 250-300 tickets listed, just hours after the public sale. You’re looking at roughly 8-10% of the total tickets already listed for resale. This is with Verified Fan in place limiting who can buy and with Ten Club taking a large amount of tickets for their use. If there were no fan club tickets, it would be easy to project that probably 15%+ of total tickets would end up for resale. That hardly makes Verified Fan look like any type of success.

We’ve all complained about past ticket sales where servers crashed or we ended up getting nothing, but to me, I at least want to feel I had a chance to try. Verified Fan immediately takes a large amount of fans out of the equation, which in it’s own way fuels the resale market.

I have signed up for over 20 previous Verified Fan presales in the past and have never got past Waitlist. I was even amongst 2,000 U2 fan club members who in 2018 was automatically sent my presale code that was included with membership and had it taken away 3 hours later, due to some Ticketmaster screwup.

I have resold tickets on Ticketmaster a few times in the past for shows I was unable to make it to. If you want to make back what you paid, you have to increase your asking price to cover the original Ticketmaster fees, plus the fees they charge you on reselling through their site. My theory is that has caused me to be blackballed as a scalper, something a friend of a friend that works for Ticketmaster said was true.

Verified Fan's #1 goal is to stop the bots by adding extra steps/PWs. Its not necessarily to limit resale.

They could shutdown resale whenever they want. But they don't want that at all for obvious reasons. NY and Chi are the only shows being resold due to their state laws on transfers. 

I've had a very different experience than you. I've never not been given Verified Fan access. I've never resold concert tickets. I sell my sports season tickets all the time. 

Today I got in to the sale about 5 after for Benaroya today. I was able to see tickets and try to acquire them albeit unsuccessfully. 

Back in the day if you wouldn't have even seen tickets that late. Everything would have been sold to people/bots within minutes. That feels like progress to me, but I completely understand the frustrations of others.  

quasi

jh275312 said:

It is very disgusting. If you haven't figured it out yet verified are the worst tickets available, or super expensive ones. just gross. People will still cling to excuses, but it is very sad the changes in values of certain band members.

I was selected as a verified fan, logged in a few minutes before ten, waited one minute for the queue and got a second row ticket in the first balcony for $179. That is a pretty good seat and definitely not a "worst ticket available".

Get_Right

"Ed, we can give you an allotment for a 10c sale, and we can sell at face value to 10c only in a verified fan sale. That accounts for 15% of the tickets and that is more than than we give to any other artist.  We get to sell the remaining tickets any way we like."

Pretty sure that is how it goes down.  Compromises to ensure that the 10C gets an allotment of the best seats.  It's not complicated, and yes, not great for the consumer if you can't get a 10c ticket.  TM/LN have a monopoly and its been rigged for some time, I am still amazed that the DOJ allowed that merger to happen.

Loujoe

GS163319 said:

Loujoe said:

I just saw Mike Watt is playing a show. $15 a ticket. Sometimes big rockers just get too complicated. nnnnnnn nn naaahhhnaaa nnnnNobody's fault but mine.

Sure, comparing the demand (or really, anything else) for Mike Watt and one of the bigger rock stars of the last 30 years makes sense.

yep. I rarely make sense.
Hope ev continues to make a good living off his talent and people who go will have a blast. 

JimmyV

Loujoe said:

GS163319 said:

Loujoe said:

I just saw Mike Watt is playing a show. $15 a ticket. Sometimes big rockers just get too complicated. nnnnnnn nn naaahhhnaaa nnnnNobody's fault but mine.

Sure, comparing the demand (or really, anything else) for Mike Watt and one of the bigger rock stars of the last 30 years makes sense.

yep. I rarely make sense.
Hope ev continues to make a good living off his talent and people who go will have a blast. 

I made the comparison of Ed to Trey Anastasio a few days ago. Apples to apples and Ed doesn't come off looking good, price wise. 

OceansJenny

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