Ticketmaster, Tay Tay and chasing phantoms

patkelly12

Get_Right said:

Maybe the politicians will actually do something this time.I am not hopeful. Big money always wins.

This literally made me LOL.

Zod

Lerxst1992 said:

hihobibo said:

Lerxst1992 said:

what’s the alternative? AOC says break up Ticketmaster, so we have five different vendors selling tickets to a show? That sound like it’s more expensive to put on a tour. Biden says the fees are excessive, but a big part of the fees go to venues and promoter, and sometimes back to the artist, so just charge us one price, the full cost of the ticket? Does a supermarket break out their margin from the cost of a steak?

Maybe the artists should front the full cost of the shows and bear the risk of cost overruns?

I think they need to provide what the fees are for, and how they are calculated. It makes no sense that a higher priced ticket has a fee that is disproportionate to a lower priced ticket, for the same event. There is no extra effort done by anyone on the backend to justify a variable fee.

Similarly, break out how same venues charge varying fees based on the concert. Again, the venue should have one flat fee, unless they deem something like additional security is required, then they should spell that out. 

Good ideas, not sure if that brings down ticket prices? I think fans should realize how incredible it is to put on a show for $150 like PJ does. The comparable to concerts are sporting events, and the good seats for sports go for hundreds if not thousands. Concerts do not have a ticket revenue base like that.

Ticketmaster lost a lot of money the last two years and profited about one percent of sales in 2019 pre Covid. Not sure where all this extra savings for fans is going to come from.

Also, most cities have one big arena per city, so how would competition work? Sell every ticket based on an auction? We type in the amount we are willing to pay for each category of ticket and the highest bids win tickets? Every system, including TC, picks winners and losers.    

 

I'm not sure if it means there would be multiple competitors for a single show, or if competition would mean the promoter/venue would be able to choose from multiple providers of who would do the ticketing for a show.

IE you get a few ticketing companies to do a bid for how much they would charge to do your ticketing, rather than being forced to have no choice and only be able to use TM.

mfc2006

While the demand wasn't nearly as high as Taylor, trying to get tickets to Tyler Childers was an absolute fucking nightmare. He had a couple of presales and the bots bought everything.

RS65573

I was lucky to win 10 club tickets for Camden, but other than that, I just don't buy them anymore. If I can get in day of the show for a  reasonable amount, great, if not, I don't go, TM can go eff themselves.

jsk175

I read where TM was slammed by Bots for Taylor.   Do you think if they did it the same as a PJ with the Fan to Fan where you cant scalp there would be less Bots?   I would think so

droptheleash9

jsk175 said:

I read where TM was slammed by Bots for Taylor.   Do you think if they did it the same as a PJ with the Fan to Fan where you cant scalp there would be less Bots?   I would think so

Generally curious on the Bot part given that you needed a verified fan code to get through in order to buy tickets? How would that work?

Taylor Swift fans seem to really just be mad that there weren't enough tickets available to accommodate all of the people that wanted them. Ticketmaster is the worst company on Earth but what Swift's fans are complaining about has nothing to do with TM being monopoly or how poorly run the sale was. Having other outlets to purchase tickets through doesn't make more tickets available....that is determined by stadium capacity and how many shows are on the tour. Is it unfortunate? Absolutely. But that's just the reality of how popular of an artist she is.

patkelly12

According to reports, people who didn't have codes were also attempting to access tickets which slammed the servers. Here is a crazy idea. You could have provided a special link to purchase when you provided the code. That would have surely lessened the number of people on a single page. But TM wasn't interested in doing that. They wanted the frenzy in order to measure the demand. I noticed the press release announcing the onsale cancellation said nearly all inventory was exhausted. How is that possible when you control what was available for a presale? I don't know if the presale had VIP or platinum tickets available but you can be sure any future release will.

sfox1989

I waited in the queue Tuesday for 5 hours to get tickets to her Saturday Tampa show. I was eventually successful, but we paid $530 with fees for two tickets in the 300 level (nosebleeds). I tried to get better tickets for the Friday Tampa show in the Capitol One presale the following day and was hit with error after error and watched all the floor seats disappear in front of me. It was an awful experience.

It really frustrates me when people say that Taylor has no power over Ticketmaster when clearly PJ got them to stop scalped tickets and only use face value resale. I see many Swifties who panic bought multiple tickets (which I don't even know how, it took me an hour of clicking around to even get our nosebleed seats) and are now trying to sell at a profit on stubhub. All of this to say, thank you Pearl Jam for your lottery!

BRONDO

my boss is not a scalper, but knew her concert tixs would be in high demand, he bought 2 for tampa 4 for pitt and 6 for cincy. It wasnt just the professional scalpers and bots.  

jsk175

Consequence of Sound

“The staggering number of bot attacks as well as fans who didn’t have invite codes drove unprecedented traffic on our site, resulting in 3.5 billion total system requests – 4x our previous peak,” Ticketmaster said earlier this week

Zod

PJ always seems to have some negotiation skills.   The old rule was no more than 10% of a venue could be allocated for a fan club, but in my experience 10c/PJ often seemed to blow through that rule.  Not sure what they give up in the negotiations, or how they pull it off.  Not only would the eclipse the rule, but most of the time they got access to the best seats (where other fan clubs would have tickets scattered throughout the venue).

droptheleash9

jsk175 said:

Consequence of Sound

“The staggering number of bot attacks as well as fans who didn’t have invite codes drove unprecedented traffic on our site, resulting in 3.5 billion total system requests – 4x our previous peak,” Ticketmaster said earlier this week

Thanks for providing. What a shitshow!

Poncier

BRONDO said:

my boss is not a scalper, but knew her concert tixs would be in high demand, he bought 2 for tampa 4 for pitt and 6 for cincy. It wasnt just the professional scalpers and bots.  

The rise of Stubhub and the like has made amateur scalpers out of millions of people.

pawlowski1097

I don’t know how one person could get in and buy 3 sets of tickets to 3 different shows. I could not even get thru the 2000 + people in front of me in queue. Crazy 

hihobibo

pawlowski1097 said:

I don’t know how one person could get in and buy 3 sets of tickets to 3 different shows. I could not even get thru the 2000 + people in front of me in queue. Crazy 

3 emails on 3 devices on different servers (home wifi, phone not on wifi, another phone/or at office using their network). 

rett1448

if we had tay-tay’s fans (hey swiftees hey) plus all of us ….. 
t-master would have been toast 

on2legs

Rollingstone just published an interview with Springsteen and they asked him about his own ticket selling fiasco:

It caused a bit of an uproar in the fan community because some of the tickets used dynamic prices, and some tickets hit $5,000. Did you know in advance about those price points and dynamic pricing, and do you have any regrets about that?
What I do is a very simple thing. I tell my guys, “Go out and see what everybody else is doing. Let’s charge a little less.” That’s generally the directions. They go out and set it up. For the past 49 years or however long we’ve been playing, we’ve pretty much been out there under market value. I’ve enjoyed that. It’s been great for the fans.

This time I told them, “Hey, we’re 73 years old. The guys are there. I want to do what everybody else is doing, my peers.” So that’s what happened. That’s what they did [laughs].

But ticket buying has gotten very confusing, not just for the fans, but for the artists also. And the bottom line is that most of our tickets are totally affordable. They’re in that affordable range. We have those tickets that are going to go for that [higher] price somewhere anyway. The ticket broker or someone is going to be taking that money. I’m going, “Hey, why shouldn’t that money go to the guys that are going to be up there sweating three hours a night for it?”

It created an opportunity for that to occur. And so at that point, we went for it. I know it was unpopular with some fans. But if there’s any complaints on the way out, you can have your money back.

As you said, the fans were pretty upset. Backstreets said it caused them to suffer a “crisis of faith.” They wrote an op-ed where they said that dynamic pricing “violates an implicit contract between Bruce Springsteen and his fans.” How did you feel about all that blowback against you?
Well, I’m old. I take a lot of things in stride [laughs]. You don’t like to be criticized. You certainly don’t like to be the poster boy for high ticket prices. It’s the last thing you prefer to be. But that’s how it went. You have to own the decisions you have made and go out and just continue to do your best. And that was my take on it. I think if folks come to the show, they’re going to have a good time.

Do you think in the future you’ll avoid using dynamic pricing, where the prices change in front of your eyes during the initial on-sale?
I don’t know. I think in the future, we’ll be talking about it, of course [laughs]. It changes from tour to tour. We will be coming back. I’m sure we’ll be playing outside somewhat. That’ll be a whole other discussion when that comes around. I don’t want to say anything now, but we’ll see what happens.

pjhawks

on2legs said:

Rollingstone just published an interview with Springsteen and they asked him about his own ticket selling fiasco:

It caused a bit of an uproar in the fan community because some of the tickets used dynamic prices, and some tickets hit $5,000. Did you know in advance about those price points and dynamic pricing, and do you have any regrets about that?
What I do is a very simple thing. I tell my guys, “Go out and see what everybody else is doing. Let’s charge a little less.” That’s generally the directions. They go out and set it up. For the past 49 years or however long we’ve been playing, we’ve pretty much been out there under market value. I’ve enjoyed that. It’s been great for the fans.

This time I told them, “Hey, we’re 73 years old. The guys are there. I want to do what everybody else is doing, my peers.” So that’s what happened. That’s what they did [laughs].

But ticket buying has gotten very confusing, not just for the fans, but for the artists also. And the bottom line is that most of our tickets are totally affordable. They’re in that affordable range. We have those tickets that are going to go for that [higher] price somewhere anyway. The ticket broker or someone is going to be taking that money. I’m going, “Hey, why shouldn’t that money go to the guys that are going to be up there sweating three hours a night for it?”

It created an opportunity for that to occur. And so at that point, we went for it. I know it was unpopular with some fans. But if there’s any complaints on the way out, you can have your money back.

As you said, the fans were pretty upset. Backstreets said it caused them to suffer a “crisis of faith.” They wrote an op-ed where they said that dynamic pricing “violates an implicit contract between Bruce Springsteen and his fans.” How did you feel about all that blowback against you?
Well, I’m old. I take a lot of things in stride [laughs]. You don’t like to be criticized. You certainly don’t like to be the poster boy for high ticket prices. It’s the last thing you prefer to be. But that’s how it went. You have to own the decisions you have made and go out and just continue to do your best. And that was my take on it. I think if folks come to the show, they’re going to have a good time.

Do you think in the future you’ll avoid using dynamic pricing, where the prices change in front of your eyes during the initial on-sale?
I don’t know. I think in the future, we’ll be talking about it, of course [laughs]. It changes from tour to tour. We will be coming back. I’m sure we’ll be playing outside somewhat. That’ll be a whole other discussion when that comes around. I don’t want to say anything now, but we’ll see what happens.

At least Bruce is owning up to it.  Respect him for that even if I think dynamic pricing sucks.

pjhawks

Zod said:

PJ always seems to have some negotiation skills.   The old rule was no more than 10% of a venue could be allocated for a fan club, but in my experience 10c/PJ often seemed to blow through that rule.  Not sure what they give up in the negotiations, or how they pull it off.  Not only would the eclipse the rule, but most of the time they got access to the best seats (where other fan clubs would have tickets scattered throughout the venue).

My best guess is they take a lower cut of the money...for us to get more tickets.  Only thing corporations like ticketmaster are going to understand is money. give them more they will bend more.

Get_Right

patkelly12 said:

Get_Right said:

Maybe the politicians will actually do something this time.I am not hopeful. Big money always wins.

This literally made me LOL.

Comedy has to be based on truth.