If you’ve been to even one concert in the past few decades, you’ve probably spent some time trying to answer one question: “How does Ticketmaster get away with charging so much?”
Although this question stretches back almost as far as the creation of the ticket seller, it has recently focused on blue-collar hero Bruce Springsteen. Two weeks ago, after spending hours waiting in a digital queue to get tickets to his upcoming North American tour, many Boss fans came face-to-face with everything else: “dynamically priced” tickets – which change upwards and down based on demand — up to $5,000, with all the more modest face value tickets long gone.
And Springsteen fans are far from alone out there. In 2018, Taylor Swift fans complained when tickets reached $1,500, with many fans complaining that they weren’t even allowed into the program, which would have allowed them to purchase tickets at more modest prices in the presale.
Looking back earlier this year, Harry Styles’ regularly priced $200 tickets soared to over $1,000 on the only Canadian stop of his tour – prompting some fans to start a petition calling for cheaper options. Meanwhile, just last month, tickets to Drake’s OVO Fest sold out almost instantly, with “meadow” seats at Toronto’s Budweiser Stage — far from where the rapper was set to perform — listed for $900.
But despite recent examples, it’s Springsteen’s failure that has reignited a decade-long battle between Ticketmaster and concertgoers. Upset with market dominance and a lack of transparency, these fans are demanding to understand the reasoning behind the ticket giant’s seemingly nonsensical prices.
On closer inspection, this confusion is nothing new – it’s simply a symptom of a monopolistic industry and the complex nature of ticketing.
Going to concerts has become more expensive
In 1994, alternative rock band Pearl Jam was one of the first to join the ticketing platform. After experience – and they fail — to impose a maximum service charge of $1.80 in the U.S. with Ticketmaster on their $18 tickets, the group complained to the U.S. Department of Justice, saying the company violated antitrust laws, used its monopoly to charge excessive taxis and later forced the event’s organizers to deny artists access to other venues.
“It is well known in our industry that a portion of the service fees that Ticketmaster collects on ticket sales is distributed back to the promoters and venues,” Pearl Jam guitarist and songwriter Stone Gossard told a congressional subcommittee in 1994. It’s this inbreeding and the lack of national competition for Ticketmaster that has created the situation we face today.”
But after a year-long investigation, the Ministry of Justice abruptly ended the case, with US Attorney General Janet Reno citing “new businesses” entering the ticketing industry. For his part, Pearl Jam singer Eddie Vedder had a more pessimistic reaction, telling fans at a subsequent show that he “hates[d] to think that this is the wave of the future – corporate giants that cannot be brought down.”
And since then, the world of ticketing has become increasingly complex — and expensive.
For starters, increasing service charges and fees are added to the ticket price, while Ticketmaster often lobbied against transparency laws this would require them to explain these additional costs to buyers.
But at the same time, the way we see – and appreciate – live music has also changed.
IN 2011 interview, former Ticketmaster CEO Fred Rosen explained that as the Internet became a central part of people’s lives, the amount and speed at which brokers could sell tickets exploded. This, combined with a number of changes in the industry that forced artists to rely on live music far more than record salesturned concerts into the expensive industry they are today.
“It used to be that you’d make the record and tour to support it,” said Rosen, who left the company in 1998. “Now … you’re touring to make money because the prices have caught up with the value and albums aren’t selling at same level.”
More than a decade ago, Springsteen, left, complained to Ticketmaster after it was discovered that fans were being redirected from the platform to a subsidiary, also owned by Ticketmaster, that was charging far above face value for tickets. (Klaus Fisker/AFP/Getty Images)
Forced to focus more on touring – which meant dealing more with Ticketmaster – brought more problems to the artists. This problem grew so much that in 2009 Springsteen himself was forced to come out against the company.
At the time, fans complained that when they tried to buy tickets at face value from Ticketmaster’s site, they were redirected to Ticketmaster’s subsidiary site with tickets listed by distributors for hundreds of dollars more than their original cost.
Before the US Federal Trade Commission investigates and reached a settlement with Ticketmaster regarding the claimsSpringsteen’s team released a statement to apologize to fans and condemn the company.
“Ticketmaster’s abuse of our fans and our trust has made us as furious as many of you,” Springsteen and his manager Jon Landau wrote on the label’s website, before offering some prophetic advice.
“The only thing that would make the current ticketing situation even worse for fans than it already is would be Ticketmaster and [artist manager and venue operator] Live Nation offers a unified system, thereby returning us to a near-monopoly situation in the sale of music tickets.”
Antitrust violations
Less than a year later, the merger between Ticketmaster and Live Nation was approved by both DOJ and Canadian Competition Bureau.
Since then, there has been a deluge of stories about music fans complaining — and suing — about antitrust violations, hidden fees and skyrocketing ticket prices.
Most recently in 2019, the Competition Bureau ordered Ticketmaster to pay a $4.5 million penalty for misleading customers when selling tickets onlinewhile the Bureau also ruled the company’s practice of recruiting scalpers in secret buying and reselling tickets on Ticketmaster at inflated costs was legal.
But shortly thereafter, the DOJ stated that Ticketmaster and Live Nation had “repeatedly and over several years” violated the legal agreement that allowed them to merge, using “intimidating and retaliatory behavior” to force venues to stick with Ticketmaster “so they wouldn’t risk lose Live Nation concerts, preventing effective competition for primary ticketing services.”
The two later reached an agreement that extended the terms of the merger, which was set to expire in 2020, and tightened the rules. In response, the nonprofit American Antitrust Institute published a letter arguing that tougher amendments are needed to address the fact that the harmful effects of their merger on the entertainment industry “cannot be underestimated.”
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Complaints continue to surface to this day. Earlier this year, Ticketmaster and Live Nation were hit another lawsuitclaiming that they created a “barrier to entry” for other ticketing companies, allowing them to arbitrarily raise event ticket prices in both the primary and secondary (resale) markets.
Ticketmaster did not respond to a request for comment from CBC, and both Ticketmaster and Springsteen’s team defended the dynamic pricing model. Ticketmaster told Variety that those tickets represent only approx 11 percent of availablewhile Springsteen’s manager John Landau said in a statement to the New York Times they chose prices that “are lower than some [performers] and equal to others.”
In fact, the astronomical prices that have drawn attention back to the issue may be something of a red herring.
Ticketmaster’s dynamic pricing model is not a new invention, said John Bergmeier, legal director of the US nonprofit Public Knowledge. Also known as surge pricing, the model aims to adjust prices to real-time demand, a complex task perhaps more familiar in industries such as air travel, ride-sharing and hotels.
Ticketmaster labels its dynamically priced tickets as “Platinum Seats.” Although the name suggests a prime location, these seats can actually be located anywhere in the hall. For certain shows, the company will simply reserve a certain number of tickets to have a price that can fluctuate up or down depending on demand.
Effectively, Bergmeier explained, this means that Ticketmaster acts as a distributor of its own tickets — leaving a certain number available at much higher prices, even when a show is in high demand.
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Ticketmaster’s website describes the practice as providing “fans with fair and safe access to the best tickets, while enabling artists and others involved in organizing live events to price tickets closer to their true market value.” “
Instead of trying to charge huge prices only for big shows, Bergmeier said Ticketmaster is promoting the technique as primarily designed to protect against scalpers, since selling tickets for too little would result in independent scalpers selling them instead — without no profit to go to the artists.
As for its efficacy, Bergmeier says he has his doubts.
“Ticketmaster would say it’s the only way [to fight scalpers] uses their system,” he said. “But there are competing systems….
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