Ticketmaster’s deceptive practices - legal?

JZ280705

1) misleading people that tickets are sold when they aren’t.
2) misleading people about prices gouging the most loyal fans.
3) preventing resale of tickets exasperated by Ticketmaster releasing better seats at lower prices making your above market tickets that can’t price competitively worthless.
4) monopolizing the ticket market.
5) not having any live people to talk to address complaints/problems.

hopefully there’s some PJ fans that are attorneys pissed off enough to lead a class action.  It’s not Ticketmaster’s first; they have been sued before but between monopoly and deceptive practices and this being one of the most hated companies on earth, there’s hope.

https://youtu.be/-_Y7uqqEFnY

Zod

lol, the only ones that win in a class action are the lawyers.   The last time TM got class auctioned I think people got credit or access to freebie tickets for a bunch of shows that weren't selling and people didn't want to go to. 

I'm still not sure how TM/LN hasn't been broken up.  It's pretty apparent they have a monopoly, yet crickets.   it's been 25+ years since the last time someone tried to break up the TM monopoly, but it's so much worse now than it was in the 90s (With TM and LN having merged).

Not sure how much better it would be with competitors.   Really TM is maximizing revenue for everyone from themselves, to promoters (often themselves) and the artists. The very off time I encounter a non-TM show they use platinum tickets too.

PB11041

JZ280705 said:

1) misleading people that tickets are sold when they aren’t.
2) misleading people about prices gouging the most loyal fans.
3) preventing resale of tickets exasperated by Ticketmaster releasing better seats at lower prices making your above market tickets that can’t price competitively worthless.
4) monopolizing the ticket market.
5) not having any live people to talk to address complaints/problems.

hopefully there’s some PJ fans that are attorneys pissed off enough to lead a class action.  It’s not Ticketmaster’s first; they have been sued before but between monopoly and deceptive practices and this being one of the most hated companies on earth, there’s hope.

https://youtu.be/-_Y7uqqEFnY

Number 3 doesn't really make your argument very sound.  Just saying.

Lerxst1992

PB11041 said:

JZ280705 said:

1) misleading people that tickets are sold when they aren’t.
2) misleading people about prices gouging the most loyal fans.
3) preventing resale of tickets exasperated by Ticketmaster releasing better seats at lower prices making your above market tickets that can’t price competitively worthless.
4) monopolizing the ticket market.
5) not having any live people to talk to address complaints/problems.

hopefully there’s some PJ fans that are attorneys pissed off enough to lead a class action.  It’s not Ticketmaster’s first; they have been sued before but between monopoly and deceptive practices and this being one of the most hated companies on earth, there’s hope.

https://youtu.be/-_Y7uqqEFnY

Number 3 doesn't really make your argument very sound.  Just saying.

TM is preventing all resellers from lowering  fan to fan resale prices to match current market prices. Seems anti competitive to me.

TH113769

I think his point with #3 is you cant lower your price from what you purchased at but TM can, therefore you have zero chance to sell your ticket.  Look at all the "platinum" tickets out there for resale that have zero chance of being purchased.  The original purchasers should at least be able to compete and drop their price.  I think this is the biggest crime of them all from an anti-competitive standpoint.  

LukinFan

TH113769 said:

I think his point with #3 is you cant lower your price from what you purchased at but TM can, therefore you have zero chance to sell your ticket.  Look at all the "platinum" tickets out there for resale that have zero chance of being purchased.  The original purchasers should at least be able to compete and drop their price.  I think this is the biggest crime of them all from an anti-competitive standpoint.  

Will TM allow you to cancel your platium ticket that you're selling or ar you locked in to selling it?

Lifted

All good points as to how and why ticketmaster is an unethical bloodsucking company. That being said, I doubt most of the practices we are complaining about are illegal. They have the best lawyers writing up fine print to protect them.

What is illegal however, is monopolizing. If they weren't already a monopoly before the pandemic, they certainly are now. Ticketfly and axs were the only companies I was aware of, other than ticketmaster, who sold tickets to events at major venues in the US. Now it's all ticketmaster. I suppose a great team of lawyers could point to the handful of smaller venues who still don't use ticketmaster, and successful make the argument that they are not a monopoly....but we all know what it is. 

Get_Right

I am an attorney. There is a new lawsuit pending regarding the dynamic pricing.  I have zero expectation that it will be resolved favorably for the consumer.  As Zod mentioned, the last settlement was a joke. $5 vouchers for every show except the one you want to see.

TM will buy its way out of any civil litigation and if there is any federal or state inquiry, they throw lobbyists, campaign donations or other promises at the problem. Capitalism at its finest.  The war was lost when the Department of Justice approved the TM/LN merger. Reality is that concert ticket pricing is not a priority issue for local, state, or federal governments. Between war, terrorism, global pandemic, and economic issues, this issue falls very low on the priority scale.  And this has being going on in one form or another going back to when TM (ticketron?) went after record shop owners for printing the best seats for themselves.    

Cropduster-80

Get_Right said:

I am an attorney. There is a new lawsuit pending regarding the dynamic pricing.  I have zero expectation that it will be resolved favorably for the consumer.  As Zod mentioned, the last settlement was a joke. $5 vouchers for every show except the one you want to see.

TM will buy its way out of any civil litigation and if there is any federal or state inquiry, they throw lobbyists, campaign donations or other promises at the problem. Capitalism at its finest.  The war was lost when the Department of Justice approved the TM/LN merger. Reality is that concert ticket pricing is not a priority issue for local, state, or federal governments. Between war, terrorism, global pandemic, and economic issues, this issue falls very low on the priority scale.  And this has being going on in one form or another going back to when TM (ticketron?) went after record shop owners for printing the best seats for themselves.    

I assume you have to challenge the arbitration clause first which you agree to when buying tickets 

getting into court will be harder than winning on the merits 

ClownofThorns

Cropduster-80 said:

Get_Right said:

I am an attorney. There is a new lawsuit pending regarding the dynamic pricing.  I have zero expectation that it will be resolved favorably for the consumer.  As Zod mentioned, the last settlement was a joke. $5 vouchers for every show except the one you want to see.

TM will buy its way out of any civil litigation and if there is any federal or state inquiry, they throw lobbyists, campaign donations or other promises at the problem. Capitalism at its finest.  The war was lost when the Department of Justice approved the TM/LN merger. Reality is that concert ticket pricing is not a priority issue for local, state, or federal governments. Between war, terrorism, global pandemic, and economic issues, this issue falls very low on the priority scale.  And this has being going on in one form or another going back to when TM (ticketron?) went after record shop owners for printing the best seats for themselves.    

I assume you have to challenge the arbitration clause first which you agree to when buying tickets 

getting into court will be harder than winning on the merits 

I thought I read that's exactly what the (one of the?) current class actions against TM is: a challenge to the forced arbitration nonsense. Read that a while ago, though, so I could be misremembering. 

Get_Right

Cropduster-80 said:

Get_Right said:

I am an attorney. There is a new lawsuit pending regarding the dynamic pricing.  I have zero expectation that it will be resolved favorably for the consumer.  As Zod mentioned, the last settlement was a joke. $5 vouchers for every show except the one you want to see.

TM will buy its way out of any civil litigation and if there is any federal or state inquiry, they throw lobbyists, campaign donations or other promises at the problem. Capitalism at its finest.  The war was lost when the Department of Justice approved the TM/LN merger. Reality is that concert ticket pricing is not a priority issue for local, state, or federal governments. Between war, terrorism, global pandemic, and economic issues, this issue falls very low on the priority scale.  And this has being going on in one form or another going back to when TM (ticketron?) went after record shop owners for printing the best seats for themselves.    

I assume you have to challenge the arbitration clause first which you agree to when buying tickets 

getting into court will be harder than winning on the merits 

Agree. Not hard to get into court, but hard to stay there. It would have to survive a motion to dismiss. That said, I am not sure how enforceable those clauses are, it is not a meeting of the minds in the contractual sense.  My understanding is that tickets are actually revocable licenses under which buyers have very limited rights and that has been the foundation of Ticketmaster's defense in litigation and related disputes. 

Zod

I also think there wasn't much foresight into this.  TM is handling platinum like they would for most other bands.   Only PJ demanded and enabled the Fan2Fan portal where tickets are locked to face value.    It probably never occurred to them when they asked TM to adapt their reseller portal to lock the prices, that demand would be so low, people wouldn't be able to ditch their tickets at face value.

I think I mentioned it before but I think it's lack of imagination.   I wonder how they would feel knowing this now, and having to ask TM to adapt this system so their fans can take a loss... lol.  That can't feel good.

Maybe they'll scrap fan 2 fan on the next tour.   Which is a shame, because I like it.  Gives you a shot at getting tickets to shows you missed out on.

Get_Right

Zod said:

I also think there wasn't much foresight into this.  TM is handling platinum like they would for most other bands.   Only PJ demanded and enabled the Fan2Fan portal where tickets are locked to face value.    It probably never occurred to them when they asked TM to adapt their reseller portal to lock the prices, that demand would be so low, people wouldn't be able to ditch their tickets at face value.

I think I mentioned it before but I think it's lack of imagination.   I wonder how they would feel knowing this now, and having to ask TM to adapt this system so their fans can take a loss... lol.  That can't feel good.

Maybe they'll scrap fan 2 fan on the next tour.   Which is a shame, because I like it.  Gives you a shot at getting tickets to shows you missed out on.

Agree. I was wondering if F2F issue is because PJ insisted that tickets only be transferred at the price paid, which should be face value. Could be a side effect of that policy, but just a guess.

pjhawks

let it go back to Stub Hub and let consumer choose price for resale tickets. That is better for consumer but I understand the bands point of view.

Get_Right

pjhawks said:

let it go back to Stub Hub and let consumer choose price for resale tickets. That is better for consumer but I understand the bands point of view.

It is more TM than the band, although they are complicit.  How do you think TM feels about Stub Hub and the other sites making millions off their tickets? This TM dynamic pricing is a strategy to capture the higher prices on the secondary market.  Quite simply, if the market price for a ticket is $500, then why cant TM sell them at that price? It sucks, but that is what is happening.  They squeeze all the revenue they can out of the tickets and then undersell the market when it is saturated or there is low demand. Id guess there is a huge net gain there, even when they take losses on a show or even a tour.

Zod

I'm not sure how I feel about it.  It's pretty rare I buy tickets that I don't use.  There was a Foo Fighters show once where I had bronchitus that was making my life miserable.   I think we missed Judas Priest once because my wife was ill.   Those were very last second cancellations so we ended up eating the tickets.  I had an extra pair to Oakland but only because we kept trying to upgrade via f2f.   I refunded the pair when the new dates got announced so I didn't have to use them.

For the most part though... it's super rare.  So a lot of problems seem to arise from buying tickets they don't need?  I feel like I've been to over 300 concerts in the last 25 years, and we didn't use tickets on 2 of them... 

We could go back to the 2018 way.  you can't sell the fan club tickets, you can only transfer 1 ticket, but non 10c tickets are fair game.  

Not sure if I'd want to see 10c tickets go up on stubhub.... that would be nasty

aisleseats

Zod said:

I also think there wasn't much foresight into this.  TM is handling platinum like they would for most other bands.   Only PJ demanded and enabled the Fan2Fan portal where tickets are locked to face value.    It probably never occurred to them when they asked TM to adapt their reseller portal to lock the prices, that demand would be so low, people wouldn't be able to ditch their tickets at face value.

I think I mentioned it before but I think it's lack of imagination.   I wonder how they would feel knowing this now, and having to ask TM to adapt this system so their fans can take a loss... lol.  That can't feel good.

Maybe they'll scrap fan 2 fan on the next tour.   Which is a shame, because I like it.  Gives you a shot at getting tickets to shows you missed out on.

TM doesn't let you sell below face for any other bands/tours either. So that in and of itself can't really be blamed on F2F. The problem comes from the lack of transfer option. Whereas with other bands, you can just sell below face on StubHub then transfer via TM. But if PJ allowed the transfer option, it would negate all anti-scalping measures to begin with.
The only remedy for this is to get TM to drop their policy, which they're never gonna do.

SHZA

 10 club and Pearl Jam are complicit in the illegal practices. I offered an unused ticket that I can't sell for BELOW face value and the admin deleted the post. So they want to prevent consumers from recouping any part of their losses and allowing fans who might not be able to afford the full price ticket from seeing the show, just to make sure TM and PJ don't miss out on any sales. 

on2legs

What are the illegal practices?  The policy restricting transfers was pretty clearly stated prior to anyone purchasing tickets as were the terms of the F2F.  No where did it say sales could be made on these forums.  

SHZA

Price fixing, anti competitive conduct. Placing artificial restraints on the market price. Clearly stating that you're doing something illegal doesn't make it less illegal 

on2legs

SHZA said:

Price fixing, anti competitive conduct. Placing artificial restraints on the market price. Clearly stating that you're doing something illegal doesn't make it less illegal 

Sounds pretty serious.  I don’t know about you, but the second my opinion of a rock band stopped being about music and started sounding like a law school lecture I’d be out the door.  

patkelly12

If you don't like it, build your own Ticketmaster. That seems to be a popular one.

SHZA

on2legs said:

SHZA said:

Price fixing, anti competitive conduct. Placing artificial restraints on the market price. Clearly stating that you're doing something illegal doesn't make it less illegal 

Sounds pretty serious.  I don’t know about you, but the second my opinion of a rock band stopped being about music and started sounding like a law school lecture I’d be out the door.  

I guess that logic would apply to most of the discussions on this forum. The second my favorite rock band stopped being about music and started being about zombie funko collections, I'm out the door 

JZ280705

TH113769 said:

I think his point with #3 is you cant lower your price from what you purchased at but TM can, therefore you have zero chance to sell your ticket.  Look at all the "platinum" tickets out there for resale that have zero chance of being purchased.  The original purchasers should at least be able to compete and drop their price.  I think this is the biggest crime of them all from an anti-competitive standpoint.  

Exactly!  I have no problem with pricing tickets to make them unprofitable for scalpers, but this bullshit of dynamic pricing and showing seats as sold is another story.  

Right before the pandemic, there was an Allman Brothers reunion show at MSG.  It was shown as basically sold out with only platinum tickets available at ridiculous prices.  I had planned on going, booked flight, hotel.  When I saw the prices, I cancelled.  Then a few days before the show, the whole arena showed seats at standard prices 80% cheaper.   This doesn’t even make good business sense.

How about just making fan club tickets non transferable; if can’t use, put them back in the lottery pool.  For other seats, put them up for bid and allow resale.  Full transparency, true market pricing.

PB11041

Logically speaking, the bigger problem seems to be that people want to be able to hedge their bets on concert tickets and take on zero risk with that hedge.

The learning curve on this and a couple of other tours I have bought tickets for recently.  Do not buy tickets you do not intend to use. tickets will almost assuredly become availale at face of below leading up to the event.

jnine

"How do you think TM feels about Stub Hub and the other sites making millions off their tickets?"  Ticketmaster, Live Nation and Stubhub are all owned by the same entity, so they probably fell pretty good about it.

Get_Right

jnine said:

"How do you think TM feels about Stub Hub and the other sites making millions off their tickets?"  Ticketmaster, Live Nation and Stubhub are all owned by the same entity, so they probably fell pretty good about it.

Incorrect. Live nation and Ticketmaster are related entities, while Stubhub is owned by Viagogo, an entity that is unrelated to TM or LN. And they have faced the same scrutiny and lawsuits as TM for the same nonsense. 

on2legs

PB11041 said:

Logically speaking, the bigger problem seems to be that people want to be able to hedge their bets on concert tickets and take on zero risk with that hedge.

The learning curve on this and a couple of other tours I have bought tickets for recently.  Do not buy tickets you do not intend to use. tickets will almost assuredly become availale at face of below leading up to the event.

Good points.  Also people want to keep trading up to better seats without the risk of not being able to sell the tickets they’re trying to upgrade.   We all want better seats but you should be prepared to possibly eat a pair of tickets.  

JH6056

Get_Right said:

I am an attorney. There is a new lawsuit pending regarding the dynamic pricing.  I have zero expectation that it will be resolved favorably for the consumer.  As Zod mentioned, the last settlement was a joke. $5 vouchers for every show except the one you want to see.

TM will buy its way out of any civil litigation and if there is any federal or state inquiry, they throw lobbyists, campaign donations or other promises at the problem. Capitalism at its finest.  The war was lost when the Department of Justice approved the TM/LN merger. Reality is that concert ticket pricing is not a priority issue for local, state, or federal governments. Between war, terrorism, global pandemic, and economic issues, this issue falls very low on the priority scale.  And this has being going on in one form or another going back to when TM (ticketron?) went after record shop owners for printing the best seats for themselves.    

One question I have about dynamic pricing is, because it only works when the artist whose tix are going onsale is incredibly popular, does the artist get a % of whatever that increase above base price originally was, that TM sells their tix at?  So if all the tix at the show were supposed to be $50/each (assume an all GA club show) and then dynamic pricing goes up to $90/each (this happened to me a couple months ago), whatever the % of ticket sales that was contractually supposed to go to artist based on original price, does artist get a % of the increased price too?  Or TM keeps all those extra profits?

I have many other questions but that's my main one.

Get_Right

JH6056 said:

Get_Right said:

I am an attorney. There is a new lawsuit pending regarding the dynamic pricing.  I have zero expectation that it will be resolved favorably for the consumer.  As Zod mentioned, the last settlement was a joke. $5 vouchers for every show except the one you want to see.

TM will buy its way out of any civil litigation and if there is any federal or state inquiry, they throw lobbyists, campaign donations or other promises at the problem. Capitalism at its finest.  The war was lost when the Department of Justice approved the TM/LN merger. Reality is that concert ticket pricing is not a priority issue for local, state, or federal governments. Between war, terrorism, global pandemic, and economic issues, this issue falls very low on the priority scale.  And this has being going on in one form or another going back to when TM (ticketron?) went after record shop owners for printing the best seats for themselves.    

One question I have about dynamic pricing is, because it only works when the artist whose tix are going onsale is incredibly popular, does the artist get a % of whatever that increase above base price originally was, that TM sells their tix at?  So if all the tix at the show were supposed to be $50/each (assume an all GA club show) and then dynamic pricing goes up to $90/each (this happened to me a couple months ago), whatever the % of ticket sales that was contractually supposed to go to artist based on original price, does artist get a % of the increased price too?  Or TM keeps all those extra profits?

I have many other questions but that's my main one.

Yes, TM shares the proceeds with the artist.  The percentage may vary by artist and is likely considered a trade secret. That is the value proposition for the artist. It is all designed to capture the secondary market profits for TM and the artist. "We will put the money in your pocket instead of Stub Hub."
EDIT: That said, it would not surprise me if TM kept the profits for some of the smaller bands in the club scenario you mentioned.

dmbolp

Get_Right said:

jnine said:

"How do you think TM feels about Stub Hub and the other sites making millions off their tickets?"  Ticketmaster, Live Nation and Stubhub are all owned by the same entity, so they probably fell pretty good about it.

Incorrect. Live nation and Ticketmaster are related entities, while Stubhub is owned by Viagogo, an entity that is unrelated to TM or LN. And they have faced the same scrutiny and lawsuits as TM for the same nonsense. 

Yet TM/LN and Stubhub are obviously business partners.  Major League Baseball, and other sport bodies, use Stubhub as their official reseller of tickets originally purchased on TM.  You key a TM ticket barcode into Stubhub and Stubhub knows the event/section/row/seat #s, so they are working together and sharing info.  I sold a TM ticket on Stubhub recently without using this barcode method, I keyed in the section/row/seat # into Stubhub, yet when the ticket sold on Stubhub I received an e-mail from Ticketmaster that it had sold, and in the TM app it showed as sold.