Why Does Everyone Hate Ticketmaster?
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 22 พ.ย. 2022
- Last week Taylor Swift fans, spurned by a botched ticket sale, launched a vendetta against Ticketmaster. They're not the first to hate the platform though, with politicians and artist accusing them of being a monopoly and working against fans... but why does everyone hate Ticketmaster?
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What pisses me off is when I get charged for the delivery of an e-ticket. Literally charged for an EMAIL.
WTF
They don't even send tickets anymore post COVID. I actually used to call and spend another 2 dollars to get a physical 'keepsake ticket.' Gone. The last few shows I've gone to didn't even have printable tickets, just a digital ticket through the TM app.
An email automatically sent by a machine!
Yep, they do it on purpose because by locking it into an app, they can maintain complete control over it. Have something come up or decide you don't want to go, and want give the ticket to a friend? Not unless they specifically allow it, or let your friend take your phone with them! Oh, and they get to show you ads and collect data from your phone as a value-added bonus; horray!
I was going to ask who even does paper tickets anymore that would warrant a delivery fee. Oh well.
Artists started sounding the alarm about Ticketmaster back in the 90's. I remember Eddie Vedder of Pearl Jam specifically warning about the danger they presented in terms of controlling the market and that once they had the monopoly, they wouldn't provide good service because they don't have to.
It's the problem with all monopolies. It's why we need to pressure the government to crack down and dissolve these companies into smaller, competitive ones.
Back in the 90s you could still walk up to the box office of the venue and avoid paying ticketmaster fees, proving that almost all of their rationalizations are complete bs. But yeah, their fees on $15 concert tickets back then were still like $5 and now it's worse.
Ticketmaster might be the worst thing that happened to music. A monopoly that controls all the ticket sales (and resales!) all the live events. Plus after the merge with Livenation they pretty much own the world live music business completely
not only do they control the resales, they actually actively work with the scalpers.
cause that is just another income stream for them.
they had an official booth at a recent scalper (although they call themselves brokers, lol) convention, think it was in vegas.
It is just insane that this is actually allowed to continue, but then I guess with enough money every problem goes away
No that's soulja boy
tldr news and taylor swift in one video never expected this
I like how ticket master have been an issue for so long but now once a politician gets affected by it they are actually trying to do something about it
This isn't Taylor Swift first brush with Ticketmadter. She tried to break them once before. They were just to big, even for Taylor.
Also there was no mention of Live Nstion buying up all the tickets themselves and then offering those tickets on the secondary market at a even higher price than mentioned.
Now it seems the tables have turned 🤣 Ticket master seems to struggle considering how big she is ... Cuz this shit just became so politically blown up like never before out of all the past artists that they had issues with....all because of Taylor's celebrity status ryt now.
@@Azarath_Metrion_Zinthos She's in many respects right now the biggest artist in the world. She has a lot of leverage that Pearl Jam didn't have. I hope she can do it, but it'll take a miracle.
@@Azarath_Metrion_Zinthos Hello ticketmaster, this is Bill Gates can I help you. 😜
Live Nation is their parent, no? So ticket master had execs buying g the tickets for resale? Shady
Isn't the model of ticketmaster to monopolize concerts by buying all the tickets & reselling them at a higher price by injecting themselves as a middleman? People & artists have been criticizing ticketmaster for decades, the Taylor swift incident is just the most recent issue.
Yup... They "protect against scalpers" by being the world's largest scalper.
If a company violates requirements for merger approval, they should not just get more requirements, the need to be forced to unmerge and get new consent agreements.
So I worked for TM from 2016-2021, and you're about 60% of the way there. You should be proud since most other places don't make it past 30%. Also props for pointing out the Liberty Media/Iheartmedia/clearchannel connection, although unless Rapino sold more of his controlling portion, he is still majority owner.
Things that should really be mentioned though:
1) TM operates around the world, and with much less controversy in other countries (like the U.K.) this has to do with the fact that exclusivity contracts with the venues are outlawed in these places.
2) Taylor Swift specifically choose ticketmaster for SOOOOOOOOO many reasons. The big portion is that TM (last I checked) was the only company that had the resources to work with a lot of the technology integration that Tay's team demanded. Like facial recognition kiosks thatcheck any attending faces against sexual predator DB's. And their ticket. (this was thing during the 2018 tour which I worked on)
The verified fan system was built, in-part, because of Taylor's (teams) request.
3) while there are exclusivity contracts, these get changed for single events all the time. A large part of my job was doing the physical labor nessecary for this to happen in non-client venues. For example, no matter where it's played, AXS will always ticket the Final Four and Ticketmaster will always ticket the Superbowl. Point being, of T-swift REALLY wanted to use AXS, she could have. But like I said, there's just so, so much more the story here.
4) Ticketmaster is the subsidiary. And live nation makes sure you're aware of it when you work there. TM also doesn't own/operate venues, that's entirely done through live nation/house of blues. Ticketmaster (from the corporate perspective) is really just your point of sale and technology arm.
5) Ticketmaster is even bigger than you realize. They're like the AWS for ticketing companies, most back end things either run on or use snippets of TM code. (They were required to license it as apart of the merger agreement)
6)Live Nation has been preparing to loose TM for a while, so they're going to be milking the company for all its worth, including talent and ticket prices.
Anyway, I could go on for hours about this, but I'd recommend a deep dive into the American Media conglomeration during the 80's and 90's if you want to do more content on the topic .
PS, Irving Azov is not a good person, and had multiple songs written about how bad he was during his promoter days.
TicketMaster still gets a tonne of hate here in the UK. Whenever an event goes on sale you always see scalpers selling tickets with minutes on TMs own resale sites.
@@Wozza365 Agreed, that resale system is a scam for scalpers and for TM to make even more money on the 'fees'.
Just to add nuance to this and add some talking points as someone that has worked in ticketing companies as well but from the other side (AEG):
2) AEG were the tour promoters, and do in fact have the resources to work with a lot of the technology integration as part of their ticketing platforms and do so in other countries. For example, Taylor demands those integrations in other countries as well, and Ticketmaster do operate in the venues she usually plays in Australia, with those integrations existing in Australia and New Zealand using the Ticketek back-end systems owned by AEG.
3) As mentioned in this video, AEG was very open in the aftermath that they tried to get around those venue contracts, and LN/TM would not budge to allow them to use AXS because of the amount of money that was on the line. The events you mention have historical clauses to fall back on to allow those loophole exceptions, however, this event tour does not have that, and thus could not be leveraged in this way. It comes down to the concept of monopolies and capitalism and why those monopolies should always have these clauses if we're going to allow them to exist without breaking them up.
5) It's worth noting that the AEG ticketing systems work similarly with the amount of code they sell off to have other back-end things run on or use snippets of their code under licence agreements. For example, AEG owns Ticketek in Australia, and the Ticketek backend software, Softtix, is sold off largely around the Asia Pacific in this usage, so it's important to remember that Ticketmaster is not the only one who deals in this practice. If we want to open the door to criticising Ticketmaster for doing it, we need to realise that we criticise AEG for it too because it is the industry standard.
6) I honestly don't think the event of Live Nation losing Ticketmaster will change Ticketmaster's ways because they will just sign deals with Live Nation as a secondary company to maintain exclusivity. Therefore, if the government chooses to break them up in the aftermath, they also need to ensure they don't just sign pretty pieces of paper that allow it to continue in this fashion regardless, or ensure those clauses are in there that allow exceptions.
I did notice you through in a lot of references to Taylor Swift songs in this video, so well played
Live Nation scammed me off my money when the covid began. They cancelled a SOAD show (quite understandably), but instead of at least a partial refund, they gave me a coupon, which lasted only until the end of the next year... which was still a covid year. So, they effectively just took my money and offered local performances in return, which I couldn't care about less.
Recently, a Tenacious D show was announced and I was really considering it, but ultimately the previous experience put me off. And since I'm not an avid enjoyer of concerts outside of my few favorite bands, I can say Live Nation lost themselves hundreds of dollars from me in the future to save a couple dozen back then. Screw them.
Unluckily since they are a monopoly it is hard to boicot them especially if people really want to go to concerts so your hundreds will be paid by another concert goer. 😢
Why didn't you dispute the charge with the bank/credit card company?
Concert goers have been mad at Ticketmaster, but I'm glad someone (and their fans) large enough is being affected and it's gaining more attention
Loving the puns. I counted 6.
I would also add, I think you missed an important point about the ticketmaster issue. fans weren’t just angry because of the fees. I would say most were angry because of technical issues with the site. Many had to queue for hours and then were kicked to the back of the line for no reason or claimed a ticket only to have them snatched away by someone else.
Yeah, the puns were great
Very nice video, but could you please also mention the ticket scalpers and bots that have uncontrolled reign on the Ticketmaster platform? Besides the shady monopoly tactics of Ticketmaster, the reason nobody can buy tickets nowadays is because scalpers use bots to snatch all the tickets the second they go on sale. Those millions of tickets were not purchased by real fans, they were purchased by bots and they will go for sale on scalping platforms for double or triple the price.
it not just Bots, TM also own a numbe of resale sites, and you can often find a large amount oftickets on sale on them before tickets are offical on sale, basicly TM is the worlds largest Scalper
Scalpers have been a thing people have complained about long before the internet.
@@Bonanzaking I am too young to remember the pre internet era but one thing's for sure, scalpers are enabled by bots and they can do their "work" much more easy and efficiently. They can easily unleash automated scripts that snatch up automatically thousands of tickets before normal people have had the chance to buy them.
@@InTimeTraveller well I’m not ancient nor am I young at 30. But my concert going experience since I was a teenager ranged from early integration of the internet to still going to the venue and buying a ticket directly from the box office. Scalpers have existed since Woodstock half a century ago. Before they had bots or the internet or home computers.
I don’t have a negative attitude towards scalpers. On more than one occasion it allowed me to go to a show that was otherwise soldout. Many times the old fashioned way of exchanging a ticket for cash long before smartphones were ubiquitous. The key with scalpers is to play their game. The money they sank on said tickets is worthless after the show. Those scalper prices tend to drop back to earth as a show starts.
Ticketmaster charged me for the privilege of printing my ticket with my own paper and my own ink. The bastards.
Such a valuable video. TLDR explanation skills were desperately needed to explain for us internet plebs how corporate power works. Hope further videos like this follow.
Besides the ridiculous fees (my most recent purchase had the per ticket fees of "venue fee" and "service fee" along with the total purchase charges of "venue fee", "service fee", "delivery fee" (which was electronic) and something just called a "fee") you didn't even touch on the fake that they are also a secondary market handler of tickets and they hold back upwards of 50% of the total tickets. It seems very odd that you can go onto ticketmaster's secondary market for an event and find hundreds of tickets available minutes after tickets go on sale for the advanced market.
Ticketmaster should not be broken up, it should be dismantled and their leaders arrested
This feels like a segment from John Oliver's Last Week Tonight. It's comprehensive and in-depth. Well done, TLDR Business!
That’s because John Oliver already covered this topic months ago.
Guys...I'm starting to think that monopolies might not have consumers' best interests at heart
Ticketmaster is also basically the only ticket service I used in Belgium for museums, exhibitions, theatre, festivals and others
I just don’t understand how Ticketmaster‘s system isn’t set up to only allow a certain number of tickets to be sold for a pre-sale. At this point I cannot believe they don’t have an easy way to adjust only allow a certain percentage of the seats to be sold. I was one of the lucky ones I managed to snag two in my area but it shouldn’t have been so much hassle for everyone, especially the fans who legitimately love Taylor and just want to see her. There’s a special place in the hell that I don’t believe in for scalpers.
I think all those hurdles are placed exactly to filter out the high demand and allocate the tickets to the lucky few. There's no easy way to do this
Scalping helped me pay for my Uncle's cancer treatment we wouldn't have been able to afford otherwise.
@@Talonidas7403 that’s so incredibly fucked and says so much about our medical system. What about people who don’t have the income in the first place to even buy some thing like a concert ticket to resell? I’m sorry about your uncle but I’m even more sorry about how terrible the system is for those of us that aren’t rich.
@@Hiiiiiiiiieeee our priorities are all effing wrong. We have companies specializing in selling tickets and taking everyone for a ride, while regular folk have to turn tricks in order to get money to pay for life-saving medical treatment. Meanwhile, the world's smartest folks are designing software to sell more tickets or psychologically influencing people into clicking ads.
As a society, we've decided that the best brains should design mindless, borderline sociopathic software instead of solving medical/socio-economic problems.
Something similar happened here in Mexico during Bad Bunny's concert. Ticketmaster opened the pre sale and sale of the tickets, which some people bought online or through the ticket booths
The thing is that when the concert date arrived approximately 1000 people were left outside of the stadium because supposedly their tickets were already used even if they bought it from the official site or the booths, meaning that Ticketmaster pretty much commited fraud by selling already used ticket numbers to people or resellers. They offered refunds, but the refund won't give back the travel fees and some of the tickets were ripped by the stadium staff
Last time I went to a concert, I just showed up to the venue, went to the booth and asked for a ticket.
I don’t get the fees tho. Where does the ticket money itself goes to, then??
You got lucky then.
The artist
The VAST majority of the money goes to the artist/promoter/venue. The ticket vendor (aka Ticketmaster) makes very little by comparison. Even some of the money listed as "service fee" on the ticket may be contractually obligated by the artist/promoter/venue and not going to Ticketmaster.
@@Me__Myself__and__I it's just bs hiding the actual price tho
@@tomlxyz Agreed, but that very much isn't Ticketmaster's decision. The reason artists & promoters like TM so much is because they can hide behind Ticketmaster and avoid fans hating them.
It's such a surprise that an organisation would attempt to maximise profits at the expense of consumers when there were no barriers to stop them, I cannot think of another example where this has happened, not one....
Lets not forget that they often also move tickets to their subsidary resellers, bumping the prices and constricting supply too
....how many song titles did you sneak in here
They should at least introduce legislation to make the price advertised the actual price. Any fees should already be included. Charging for 'delivery' of an e-ticket shouldn't be allowed either
And that's not even considering that if you have other region's apps, you can't purchase tickets. Someone I follow on Twitter said they went to the US and wanted to buy a ticket for a sports event, but they couldn't buy tickets on site, and the app wouldn't let them buy them as it was from a different country. I can understand why, but at least have a choice to check where you're from or some other way to certify you're available to buy such ticket!
The lengths scalpers go to is insane. Scalpers have massive bot farms that will do anything to get tickets. Left unchecked they would buy out all the tickets for events in seconds. So a lot of the little things that seem annoying or picky are necessary to try and fight the bots. fyi
@@Me__Myself__and__I I mean, yeah. That's why I said I could understand it, but in that case, they really have to find a way to set physical vendors to let people who are traveling to be able to buy them.
@@cyberrb25 They have that ability. Ticketmaster invested in a ton of technology to allow ticket sales concurrently across multiple platforms (internet, call center, physical vendors, the venue, etc). If its not being done its probably because the artist/producers didn't want those options.
dont forget about their crazy dynamic pricing system that saw some Taylor Swift tickets going for like $20k and up.
But yeah, pretty much the only way there is going to be any kind of resolution is if the government breaks up their ticket and venue businesses, as they had various other monopolies do.
And very much prevent them from signing exclusivity deals with each other (otherwise we are still back in the same situation)
But Taylor didn't have dynamic pricing. Artists can trun them off so Taylor did. I think you are confusing the reseller prices
This is the real issue. It's almost ridiculous it wasn't even mentioned. Jack up the prices 3x, collect 30%+ in fees on rising prices, and then allow bots/scalpers to resell those same tickets AGAIN at an even higher price through THEIR OWN TM fan resale platform, and collect another 15% in fees!
As Inez already mentioned, Taylor didn't have dynamic pricing on. The prices of her tickets did not fluctuate in the range of thousands of dollars - that happened with reseller prices.
@@SourSyda Perhaps not in this case (I don't go to TSwift shows), but it's very rapidly showing up with other artists. It is a real issue in many cases. Should have been mentioned as another example of a suspicious practice
@@seansmodernlife9823 Taylor doesn't do dynamic pricing (I know she hasn't done this on the Reputation Stadium Tour and I'm pretty certain she's not done this on the other ones either but I've only been a fan since 2017), but you're right about it being a much more common occurrence. A lot of touring giants, like Adele, have been using it and honestly, I find it a little exploitative and gross to jack up the prices of your tickets like that, given that the big acts already earn a bunch of money from touring.
The biggest issue here is Ticketmaster themselves though, who allow dynamic pricing and add like an additional 45% to the ticket price with their r*tarded fees (like the delivery fee for an email 😭), and all of these fees go to their pockets because in a lot of cases they own the venues the shows are played in, giving artists no choice than to go with them if they want to tour.
I thought there were laws having a monopoly.... there's not another choice but Ticketmaster.... sounds like a monopoly to me.
There are actually a number of other choices, its just that all of them suck compared to Ticketmaster. If you think TM has issues, the competition are either garbage or can't handle anything but small events.
@@Me__Myself__and__I are there?? Cause I haven't seen one. Since the 90s bands have been saying stuff.
Well, for a start no one is stopping you from selling tickets by yourself. This isn't an area where a monopoly becomes all powerful
@@sab3295 There are. I haven't been involved in ticketing for awhile so I forget the names. I think one was called Brown Paper Tickets.
@@Me__Myself__and__I Some college students hope Ticketmaster sees "karma," and, like Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, want the company broken up after its website crashed during the pre-sale for Taylor Swift's upcoming tour and forced fans into hours-long waiting lists. "I don't think that one ticketing service should have all of the power over that many people," Kaylie, a University of Texas student, told Fox News.
Thank you for your service, Swifties ❤
Very satisfied that my favorite news outlet shares my love for TS. This is a Great War.
I signed up for verified fan and I have never been to a TS show, bought her album, or any merch, and I got a presale code! I’ve been listening to Taylor on streaming for many years though. Actually I think I used to have CDs way back but they were bought with cash.
Plenty who bought the above were never given a code. Seems random who got a code. And when I went to presale, the tickets were all sold out except one that I could see, I put it in my cart, and it said someone else got it first.
The same tours in Europe are wayyyy cheaper. Even before the fees.
They have priced us all out of going to concerts. Its is completely unjustifiable now.
Boycott the ticket sellers!!!
In my opinion, you need to ORGANIZE flash mobs 4 hours before the concert starts and get in line like you have a ticket for the concert and walk away from the ticket takers, this delaying the concert or the concert gets cancelled!!!!!
just to give people more context on why this is such a big deal to fans: in that 4 year span since her last tour in 2018, she's put out 6 albums (Taylor's Versions included) and went into a pandemic genre-shift from true Pop to Folk-Indie-Pop. 6 albums--no arena/stadium tours, and she barely played Folklore/Evermore songs in front of a live audience. If your favorite artist couldn't go on to their next album without touring, just imagine having five of them. It may be in Taylor's wishes to not hold concerts after bagging the record of highest grossing tour by a female artist for her Reputation tour so she took a break, but now she's back and well, stronger than a 90's trend.
now back to Ticketmaster: You can't blame the fans for being mad, they're just customers. You can't blame the artist too, she's just a client. As explained in this video, Ticketmaster pretty much monopolizes the ticket sales in the business. With how many blockbuster movie screenings, flashy concerts, championship finals, etc. they have sold tickets to year after year, and most of them were contractual, imagine how much being that 70% giant brings back to Ticketmaster's revenue... and yet here we are
@@jaylencalinaw1080 not sure if there's a way to sell limited tickets without getting people mad.
I'm more fixated that they just slipped a Wildest Dreams pun at 5:15 and no one noticed yet-
To clarify, it’s not that Taylor and her team went to Ticketmaster because they were the biggest in the game; but they really had no choice but to work with them. Many arenas have exclusive licensing agreements forcing artists to work with them if they want to perform there. Pearl Jam ran into this issue in 1994. The company is a monopoly. They botched the execution; people should’ve been entering their presale codes upon following the link, but many people swarmed the site who didn’t have codes. TMs own employees bought tickets to resell at a higher price, and the bot attacks they complained about were most likely sourced from TM. Their pricing model incentivized that behavior.
The video already addressed that about arenas licensing agreements.
Sorry, but i don't fully believe it. Yes ticket master has a lot of influence, so hard to avoid and that's bad. But an artist like swift can also put down a lot of pressure. If she says no, ticketmaster is out a lot of money. And her fan base could put down a lot of pressure if ticketmaster gets blamed for a lack of concerts and locations. The reality is that swift's connection to ticketmaster is very lucrative and she didn't really want to mess with that. Money comes first.
@@bzuidgeest I've not seen any analyses of this one as it's too recent but on I did see some on past attempt to get around ticketmaster. Pearl Jam's for example said "I regret to say that it is impossible for a major rock group to put on a national tour under the current circumstances without Ticketmaster" after trying to avoid them for 14 months.
@@shandrakor4686 yes i know the example, but that's my point. If That's the case, they should cancel the tour and refer the fans to ticketmaster. Put a reason with that like lower ticket cost for extra fan anger directed a ticketmaster. and if enough major acts do this, ticketmaster will have to adjust. Swift is large enough to force them if she really wants to. It's never easy, but it can be done. If they limit themselves to summer they can even play in open fields, you only need a stage builder in that case. No ticketmaster required. Ticketmaster doesn't own every field in the world.
I mean so what that is just an issue with the internet... Remember a few days ago when it happened everywhere due to black firiday or any hyped up game leunch?
10 hours, scores of errors, 5 separate times being booted back to the end of the queue, zero tickets. It was a great day. 😐
Ticketmaster tried to make a VIP field ticket happen for a RATM concert. IF not evil, outright stupidity.
Potentially the best video you’ve made
new game: take a shot everytime you hear a taylor swift reference
John Oliver did a segment on ticketmaster a while ago. They found tickets where the total value of fees was more than the face value of the ticket.
Their monopoly is killing live music. They need breaking up.
It feels like an easy solution to this whole problem is not necessarily that Ticketmaster itself is doing anything wrong, but that it has all these special deals. Force them to divest their exclusivity rights on venues and artists, and that makes things more competitive for everyone across the board.
Welcome to the US. Most problems here have simple fixes, but the people involved will engage in decades of hang wringing, furrowed brows, and vehement argument about the best way to solve things while dragging their feet and achieving sweet effing nothing.
In the Netherlands we have a competitor of theirs that’s called TicketSwap. They limit the prices you can sell your tickets and are way more fair.
I feel so sorry/my heart goes out/I have sympathy for friends who couldn’t get tickets! I am so lucky, and it was just pure luck, that my friend and I were able to get our tickets.
Also, the Taylor Swift puns in this video were making me so happy.
Maybe some big artists can invest in and work exclusively with a small competitor? That should get them past ticketmaster lock-in. And without lock-in, ticketmaster is as advanced as an airline seat reservation system. Easy to replicate.
They'd be missing out on most of the best venues. I would take years and cost millions. I hope they do... but I wouldn't hold my breath.
Edit: the best bet could be to ban exclusive ticket agreements.
@@somethinglikethat2176 That would be best. But failing that, I think it would only take a handful of big artists with a good business sense. Sure it would cost millions, but the upside would be in the millions (or even billions) as well. Should be easy to raise capital for something like.
@@somethinglikethat2176 The Sherman Antitrust Act already bans exclusive contracts that restrict trade.
Ticketmaster and Live Nation also (allegedly) have close ties and lucrative contracts with record labels.
Interesting that Ticketmaster and O2 are both owned by liberty and therefore all the o2 venues in the uk only use Ticketmaster. Essentially libertys owner is one very very rich man
The bloopers on this video must be hilarious, I can't imagine not cracking up while saying some of these lines
Even the oblivious me caught a lot of those puns lol
I think if Taylor found another ticket agency to work with, she'd turn back to Ticketmaster and say 'We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together'. To which the company might respond by saying 'but You Belong With Me'.
To which she'll reply "I Forgot That You Existed".
But, let's be honest - she would again complain about basicly the same problems as with ticketmaster^^
They have a strangle hold on tickets and venues.
They should be broken up for scalping alone.
They sold tickets to themselves before the public had access, then resold them for massively more.
With all those puns just imagining the TLDR team secretly being hardcore Swifties!
I think the only way Ticketmaster is gonna lose is if artists or record labels come together and invest into their own ticketing platform making the use and need of Ticketmaster obsolete.
What's interesting is that Ticketmaster doesn't have a monopoly in Australia. That honour goes to Ticketek which pretty much handles 90% of the concerts and pretty much all of the theatres. However what bugs me about Ticketmaster is that I can't use my Australian account to book tickets in Europe/UK and I can't set up a Europe/UK account using the email address for my Australian account.
An anecdote. ESL - the largest independt esports league in the world - decided to host their pro league finals in america and sell tickets at reasonable price. Starting a 25 for gen admissions and go up to 100 for the vip premium pass.
The fees at almost every level for 100% of the cost of the ticket. That $25 dollar ticket was $60 after taxes. The 100 was almost 200 after taxes and fees.
The only reason for these fees? The venue required the use of ticket master. They couldn't sell direct to the customer
Ticketmaster absolutely need regulated. I understand the argument that having large scale infrastructure is really effective when planning major worldwide tours, however the fees they charge out of pure greed, the dynamic pricing model that inflates prices insanely, and the prominence of scalpers being allowed to profit off their systems needs to stop.
If more than one company can sell the ticket this wouldn't have happened
There are not many companies I hate, but as a music lover I’ve actively hated TicketBast___ since the early 90s.
Fun fact - liberty media also own formula 1 that would be an interesting TLDR business video considering some of the dodgy business history of F1 and people like Bernie ecelstone
Great job in sneaking in so many Taylor’s song names 😂
Jon Bellion + Lawrence have a legit reason to call out LiveNation. To quote their song 'False Alarms': "fame is overrated an' LiveNation's a monopoly"
If only the US enforces anti-monopoly statutes on a regular basis…
Ticketmaster has been horrible for years and years. I can ony hope they finally face consequences.
Never payed me back for tickets cancelled from covid. Even emailed me to say I can have a refund. Then nothing worked and didn't reply to my emails.
Report it to your bank. Your bank in some cases can process the refund depending on the situation or send requests to the payee you sent money to send you your money back
love all the swiftly delivered puns
The US government needs to force partial refunds to Ticketmaster customers, among other companies. They've taken advantage of the American people and the only way this kind of stuff is going to stop is if it negatively impacts corporate bottomlines.
Part of the problem is that there really isn't a good solution. Ticket sales are how most acts make their money now. They don't make much selling albums, and everyone knows that streaming pays very little. Tickets are going to cost more even without Ticketmaster. Selling products where there's far more demand than supply is also inherently challenging. Sure, you can do a lottery, but some people hate that. (I know I greatly prefer first come first serve, or just paying more.) You can limit tickets to one or two per person, but that pisses off people who want to go with their friends or families. You can raise the prices so that there's less demand, but that pisses off fans on a budget. You can do first come first serve, but you run the risk of servers crashing, etc.
Realistically, acts need third parties like Ticketmaster. When they go through Ticketmaster, no one gets angry at the act themselves. This is a mess, but it's not the first time bands have been in this position. The civilized thing to do is to add more tour dates.
Do you think Ticketmaster is owned by a bunch of fools? Why would a profit-seeking company that has a monopoly not squeeze every cent of profit they can? Did you perhaps not notice that they charge tens of dollars for "ticket delivery", which is basically sending an email.
Tickets will definitely not "cost even more without Ticketmaster". With a real competitor, the price will go down drastically. It's economics 101.
@@ChasmChaos I don't know. For me the fees never really bothered me. For the acts that I usually see the fees are next to nothing compared to the price of the tickets.
@@Bunny-ch2ul I get it. You're comfortable enough that the ticket prices don't matter. That doesn't make your assertion of "tickets will cost even more without ticketmaster" true.
How American law allows for exclusive deals for venues while still having anti-monopoly provisions?
the fans can stop TM, just don't buy Tickets. yes i know that it means giving up on seeing your favoured artist (for the first time in 40 years I will NOT be going to see the Boss) but ifwe don't break the power of TM they will keep screwing us formore andmore money
Despite understanding the issue here, it seems like everybody is very greedy and are not willing to invest in change as it would hurt their short term gains.
Funny with all those fees. Never seen them here in Sweden, I assume we already have legislation that prohibits hidden fees when listing prices. So when a company lists a price for something to an end customer it always includes VAT and any obligatory fees.
Their crap systems prevented me from getting Peter Kay tickets. Ticket master can rot for all I care...
Ticketmaster has several problems:
* Exclusive Contracts giving no competition
* High Service Fees added to tickets (often a lot more than the quoted price)
* Being owned by a concert promotion and production company (LiveNation) leading to even more monopolistic actions
* Giving so many of their tickets pre-sale making it hard for fans without insider access or a high end credit card to get concert tickets.
I Support the DOJ actions to try to break up TicketMaster and Live Nation.
10:42 this is pedantic, but the plural of Attorney General is technically Attorneys General
You didn't address most of the actual issues with the pre-sale. This made it sound like fans are update because tickets sold out. There are 400 other issues you breezed over.
I didn't hear you comment on ticketmasters "demand pricing" which is another way they rip off customers. Nor did you mention anything about resale tickets and how TM makes ANOTHER cut on those tix. Nor any mention that ticketmaster makes you resell tickets for face value and encourages higher than face value.
It's disgusting what ticketmaster does
I remember when this was first raised as a concern in the 90s and shocking nobody it played out exactly as we all feared back then.
And yet scalpers have no problem getting tickets to resell, but fans seem to left out in the cold.
Just change the logo of Tickmaster to Galactic Empire and throw in a soundbyte of Palaptine's evil laugh.
Ticketmaster charges too many high questionable fees just to make extra bucks on ticket sales. A processing fee, I understand. But a facility fee, a convenience fee and a delivery fee, that's way over the top! When I go to the store, it doesn't charge me a facility fee or a convenience fee for walking in. And this is exactly what Ticketmaster does to every customer. Sorry, but they got to go or break them up or give us better choices to go buy tickets.
To be fair to ticket master she could have just made a website and sold the tickets herself and only went to venues outside the system.
It's an old fashioned monopoly and should never been allowed to happen and is the failure of the US Congress to protect consumers. Ticket Masters and Live Nations should be broken up and limited on the number of venues that can be owned by a single company. The cost of tickets more than doubled in this specific instance, I watched it happen. Amazingly no tickets available for general sales but resellers were able to get, makes me wonder anyway how that happened. Ticket Masters process is nothing less than legalized scalping. It's way past time to invoke anti trust laws.
Oh my God, the number of TS song puns
Just wait until Ticketmaster owns a delivery company. Then they can get all the fees themselves without needing to share them.
Also beware that its not anti-capitalist to not like ticket master
in fact this anger will probably generate the demand for more competition
aka , capitalism working as intended
Yes. I paid 20-something extra for a ticket recently. Sigh. Only vendor that’s not resale, and price difference from resale wasn’t big enough to risk resale
Loved all the song references !
very well organized content, thank you!
10:36 Although it very much makes me laugh to think of the army staffing general attorneys in the fight against Ticketmaster, I believe the legal officials actually looking into the company are designated Attorneys General in the plural.
And thank you for allowing my morning pedantry to blow off some steam ^^
Have a lovely day everyone!
One easy solution would be to just show one price, the amount to pay. Don't show the various fees.
Wasn't ticketmaster encouraging scalpers with built-in scalping support?
How is this not on the CMA’s radar? (Competition and Markets Authority)
Why do I hate Ticketmaster? Easy, because it should be called Ticketscalper, and it's 'service fee' are ridiculous to boot!
I watched Presale tickets for Muse go from $70 to over $400 when they were made available to the general public.
They really need to break this monopoly.
As a swiftie and I knew a lot of this but the video is excellent at explaining the situation. Although I have to say the pure anger, frustration and disappointment we felt could be an another video of its own.
If you are planning on a future video an another point to consider would be Reputation tour sales. Everyone agrees that the process was 1000x better but from what I understand Taylor wasn't allowed to use that anymore cause it causes less profit to TM.
Also the thing about the fees is that I heard TM gets another round of fees during the resale of the ticket meaning that they have no cause to make the prevention features from scalpers and bots actually working..... f*ck ticketmaster.
If you really want to f**CK ticketmaster don't buy a ticket, they count on blind stupid fans to do it anyway. And the artist earns a lot of money from them. So Swift doesn't really care, despite the pr bullshit.
Sound like a the anti-trust law people should finally wake up. How can we even allow this type of monopoly, trust and tying (exclusiviy contracts) between venues, artists and a single worldwide ticket-company? This is just straight-out unlawful. Either they break it up or they nationalize it.
Btw Ticketmaster work with scalpers and let them in because they get a cut… I’m ready for the fight for tickets
I love the feel of this channel!