I had a long conversation with a promoter who told me that with regard to a show he was promoting, Ticketmaster was guaranteeing the secondary market for the act.<\/p>\n
Let me explain this to you.\u00c2\u00a0 A certain number of tickets are pulled from the manifest and ultimately sold on TicketsNow.\u00c2\u00a0 Ticketmaster guarantees a certain gross payment to the act for these tickets, far in excess of the usual payment per ticket.\u00c2\u00a0 If the tickets don’t sell at the predicted high prices?\u00c2\u00a0 Too bad for Ticketmaster.<\/p>\n
Blame the acts for this.\u00c2\u00a0 Ticketmaster Is taking the heat.<\/p>\n
It bothers me that the traditional press and concertgoers are too stupid to see the truth here.\u00c2\u00a0 Irving said at the House hearing that only 80-85% of the tickets to a show are ever sold by Ticketmaster.\u00c2\u00a0 The question is, where do the remaining 15-20% go?<\/p>\n
A certain percentage go to senate seat holders.\u00c2\u00a0 In English, people buy season passes to every gig at a venue.\u00c2\u00a0 Sometimes, legitimately\/with good intentions.\u00c2\u00a0 These people go to each and every show or give or sell unwanted tickets to friends OR sell them on the secondary market, i.e. StubHub and TicketsNow.\u00c2\u00a0 But oftentimes the owners of senate seats are brokers\/scalpers.\u00c2\u00a0 Sure, they may eat the tickets for dog shows (figuratively, not literally), but they live for the superstar tickets, which they scalp and make a profit on.\u00c2\u00a0 So, when you see tickets available on secondary sites before the show has even gone on sale at Ticketmaster, this is most often senate seat holders.\u00c2\u00a0 They’ve got the tickets, they’ve got the right.<\/p>\n
Do other people\/brokers\/scalpers have connections at Ticketmaster and are able to buy the best seats?\u00c2\u00a0 One cannot totally eliminate fraud, let’s just take Ticketmaster’s word that it does the best to stamp out this process.<\/p>\n
Does Ticketmaster pull tickets from the original on sale and sell them on TicketsNow, bypassing the traditional 10 A.M. free-for-all feeding frenzy?\u00c2\u00a0 I don’t know the answer to this.\u00c2\u00a0 But I suspect not.\u00c2\u00a0 Because Ticketmaster is a public company and the additional revenue would have to show up somewhere in the accounting.\u00c2\u00a0 In any event, I’ve got no confirmation\/independent corroboration stating this occurs.<\/p>\n
But what shocked me was a recent conversation with a manager.\u00c2\u00a0 Who told me that Live Nation’s offer for his act included pulling multiple hundreds of tickets to sell on the secondary market.\u00c2\u00a0 I did not know that Live Nation did this.\u00c2\u00a0 Do I believe this manager? Absolutely.\u00c2\u00a0 Is this a common practice?\u00c2\u00a0 I don’t sell shows\/talent, so I don’t know.\u00c2\u00a0 But, where there’s smoke, there’s fire.<\/p>\n
We need a little truth here.\u00c2\u00a0 Where do all the tickets to a show go?\u00c2\u00a0 How many to senate seat holders, how many to the band, how many to insiders, how many to..?<\/p>\n
Ticketmaster is taking all the heat, but is Ticketmaster really the culprit here?\u00c2\u00a0 And, if it is, is it the only one?<\/p>\n
How about a little sunshine.\u00c2\u00a0 The acts are hiding behind Ticketmaster.\u00c2\u00a0 But if Live Nation wants this merger approved, how about a delineation of availability.\u00c2\u00a0 In other words, who gets the right to buy tickets?<\/p>\n
The public is ignorant.\u00c2\u00a0 The public thinks if a show goes on sale, they’re entitled to pay face rate and sit in the front row.\u00c2\u00a0 The public doesn’t know the ticket fees are kicked back from Ticketmaster to the promoter, the act, the building…<\/p>\n
Then again, some people aren’t ignorant.\u00c2\u00a0 They don’t even deal with the original on sale.\u00c2\u00a0 They go straight to the secondary market. They know what’s available, the price is clear and they make a reasonable decision, not influenced by the heat of the moment.<\/p>\n
Look at it this way.\u00c2\u00a0 If there’s a rush to buy the latest toy every Christmas, why should someone with money think he’s entitled to just log on to Ticketmaster’s site and buy great seats?\u00c2\u00a0 They can’t buy a wii.<\/p>\n
But, the game should be defined.\u00c2\u00a0 How many of the overall tickets being sold are available through Ticketmaster?\u00c2\u00a0 Are any good seats ever put on sale?<\/p>\n
Forget the Springsteen hysteria.\u00c2\u00a0 That’s not the real issue here.\u00c2\u00a0 The point is, in a country where you can look up what someone gave to a politician on the Internet, where you can research seemingly each and every fact about individuals and companies online, why can’t there be a map showing what tickets are actually available?\u00c2\u00a0 Furthermore, why can’t there be an accounting of where the "missing" tickets have gone?<\/p>\n
Don’t think shenanigans don’t take place with independent promoters.\u00c2\u00a0 These games are endemic to the system.\u00c2\u00a0 But now the government gets a say, having the right to approve or disapprove this merger.\u00c2\u00a0 Where do the tickets go and who has the right to buy them?\u00c2\u00a0 As for all the pre-sales, you need to get an American Express card and join the fan club and still you can’t get the best seats. Let’s level the playing field.\u00c2\u00a0 Or at least let the customer know he’s fucked from the get-go.<\/p>\n
<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I had a long conversation with a promoter who told me that with regard to a show he was promoting, Ticketmaster was guaranteeing the secondary market for the act. Let me explain this to you.\u00c2\u00a0 A certain number of tickets are pulled from the manifest and ultimately sold on TicketsNow.\u00c2\u00a0 Ticketmaster guarantees a certain gross […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3,2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1748","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-live-shows","category-music-business"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/s96vPs-scalping","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1748","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1748"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1748\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1748"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1748"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1748"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}