Ticketmaster’s deceptive practices - legal?

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.

Lerxst1992

dmbolp said:

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.

Yes they are business partners and electronically share transactions but there is no controllership interest.

Pearl Jam has business relationships with TM/LN and the venues, share transactions electronically (10C membership information for example) but there is no ownership/ controlling interest.

dmbolp

Agreed, but the original question was "how do you think TM feels about what SH is doing with TM tickets?"...TM is enabling what SH does with TM tickets

josevolution

PJ is tied to TM hip that’s it! There’s no other game in town you want to attend PJ show! 

OceansJenny

Get_Right said:

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.

While I agree I don’t think we can talk market forces when TM artificially restricts supply. Squeezing a few $2,000 tickets out of folks by making it look look those are the last tickets is incredibly deceiving. 

dmbolp

OceansJenny said:

Get_Right said:

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.

While I agree I don’t think we can talk market forces when TM artificially restricts supply. Squeezing a few $2,000 tickets out of folks by making it look look those are the last tickets is incredibly deceiving. 

But this deception should only work once, in the past.  We know this now, seeing it with multiple bands.  This is a "fool me once, shame on you.  Fool me twice, shame on me" situation.  Waiting is the best strategy now, and really has been for years, assuming you didn't get face value tickets at the original release.

Zod

josevolution said:

PJ is tied to TM hip that’s it! There’s no other game in town you want to attend PJ show! 

Live music is tied to TM hip that's it! There's no other game in town if you want to attend a live show!

It's not like it's a PJ thing.. lol. We're just seeing what happened to most other bands finally catch up to ours :(

dmbolp

Friend can no longer go to an Eric Church show, looks like he's touring big football stadiums.  Can't resell on TM

PJNB

dmbolp said:

Friend can no longer go to an Eric Church show, looks like he's touring big football stadiums.  Can't resell on TM

Just get him to message Eric and say the NHL or NBA playoffs are on and their favourite team is playing and they want to catch the game with their family and friends. Problem solved! 

OceansJenny

PJNB said:

dmbolp said:

Friend can no longer go to an Eric Church show, looks like he's touring big football stadiums.  Can't resell on TM

Just get him to message Eric and say the NHL or NBA playoffs are on and their favourite team is playing and they want to catch the game with their family and friends. Problem solved! 

my first thought as well!

Habit4me

The fact that you can't sell YOUR tickets for BELOW face value is criminal