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Ticketmaster has it's own resale platform. It's able to double dip. They basically say tickets are relatively cheap and scalpers are the bad guys. They encourag

by bko 1y ago

Ticketmaster has it's own resale platform. It's able to double dip. They basically say tickets are relatively cheap and scalpers are the bad guys. They encourage the scalpers. Then they can resell using their own resale platform and they get fees on top of that. The fees on re-sellers are crazy, and they take fees from both seller and buyer. Seller Side: List price: $100 StubHub seller fee (15%): -$15 Seller receives: $85 Buyer Side: Ticket price: $100 StubHub buyer fee (10-15%, let's use 12%): +$12 Buyer pays: $112 StubHub's Take: From seller: $15 From buyer: $12 Total StubHub revenue: $27 So they're making an additional ~27% (on the "true" market price) in addition to the ~25% they charge in the primary market. So if the market price was $200, if they just charged that they would make $50. But instead they'll sell it for $100, make $25 on the primary and an additional $50 when sold in the secondary market. They don't own StubHub but they have their own. In 2017 they opened up TicketExchange which allow the sale and validation of tickets on third-party websites, including StubHub, which they did to capture some of that amount. They get to play like the reasonable party here, the scalpers are taking the heat and they're getting a cut of that. They do other things that's baffling like selling tickets a year ahead of time, which is kind of weird considering very few people, even big fans, would be really on top of buying tickets a year out. It's obviously designed for scalpers. You can easily solve this by having the ticket tied to a name and requiring you to show ID, maybe allow others to dump back at face value, but that would likely be gamed as well but not as easily (you dump your tickets and let someone else pick them up at that exact moment). Or make them non-transferrable but that would greatly reduce the value to fans.

kbenson 1y ago
It's much more complicated (and worse) than that. Ticketmaster reserves some seats during sale to be dynamic pricing, which they start higher than normal and then depending on demand and what they see on the secondary market they re-price those as the initial sale or presale is ongoing, just minutes after it starts. Also, promoters, artists and venues might get their own allotment of tickets to do with as they want, likely negotiated in contracts. Those seem to find their way onto secondary markets often as well. > They do other things that's baffling like selling tickets a year ahead of time, which is kind of weird considering very few people, even big fans, would be really on top of buying tickets a year out. It's obviously designed for scalpers. Yes, I've commented on this here before. In some cases it's because tours go on sale at the same time (to generate buzz), and the early events are relatively soon and the last events are quite far out. They also often do release chunks of ticket inventory at later stages. That said, I'm convinced that often brokers are used as a simple way to provide immediate cash and reduce risk. Why would a promoter want to sell out over months when they can sell out immediately and know that regardless of whether the brokers make money (they don't always) they have sold everything and can say the event is sold out and they have cash in hand now and not months from now. I used to work in this industry and there's a lot of shady stuff that goes on, and it's not all on the broker/scalper side. > You can easily solve this by having the ticket tied to a name and requiring you to show ID That's been done for a long time and you can still get around it if the margin is good enough. You just have to either want to go to the event yourself or be willing to one ticket out of the maximum you can purchase as the cost of doing business. You can't really make every seat have a name initially because not everyone actually knows who they're going to invite for sure at time of purchase, so if you want to really make it effective you have to limit the number of tickets per transaction to 4 or less. Even then, people will be incentivized to buy the max and have people go with them to use the extra tickets at cost or more, it may not be brokers but the regular public will do it too. The actual solution for this is fairly simple. It's supply and demand. Play more shows at a location and the ticket prices will drop. Kid Rock has done it for decades at this point. Artists don't like having to put the extra work in for less money (tickets will be cheaper) and don't want to take the risk that the demand won't be there if they book the venue early. That risk is pushed out to brokers.
- carlosjobim 1y ago
  > That's been done for a long time and you can still get around it if the margin is good enough. You just have to either want to go to the event yourself or be willing to one ticket out of the maximum you can purchase as the cost of doing business. You tie each ticket to the name of that specific attendee. The ticket buyer doesn't even have to get a ticket for himself. This is bullet proof, unless scalpers can convince their customers to make a fake ID to attend. > not everyone actually knows who they're going to invite for sure at time of purchase Then wait with your purchase until you have figured it out.
Spooky23 1y ago
Ticketing is like dating websites, many are affiliated in various ways. Ticketmaster doesn’t down StubHub… Livenation (the company that owns them), and operates most of the venues, does. They are structured to have nominal competition to meet competitive bidding requirements for .gov owned facilities. Long ago I worked for a company that did some novel work in the ticketing and contained reservation space. We didn’t do resale due to the nature of the product, but the fees we extracted were bonkers - the facilities operators basically paid a nominal amount to stand up the platform, and we derived all (and it was a lot of) revenue from the customer - often on a white label basis. Long story short, Ticketmaster elbowed in and bought the company and the tech once we had traction. That pattern holds in many similar business models.
carlosjobim 1y ago
> (you dump your tickets and let someone else pick them up at that exact moment). Very easy to counteract, the venue just releases those tickets back for sale in batch at an unspecified date and time.
carlosjobim 1y ago
> They do other things that's baffling like selling tickets a year ahead of time, which is kind of weird considering very few people, even big fans, would be really on top of buying tickets a year out. It's obviously designed for scalpers. Serious venues and artists do the same thing. It is to reward the early fans with the cheapest tickets and to get early cash flow. Nothing shady about it.

by bko 1y ago

kbenson 1y ago

It's much more complicated (and worse) than that. Ticketmaster reserves some seats during sale to be dynamic pricing, which they start higher than normal and then depending on demand and what they see on the secondary market they re-price those as the initial sale or presale is ongoing, just minutes after it starts. Also, promoters, artists and venues might get their own allotment of tickets to do with as they want, likely negotiated in contracts. Those seem to find their way onto secondary markets often as well. > They do other things that's baffling like selling tickets a year ahead of time, which is kind of weird considering very few people, even big fans, would be really on top of buying tickets a year out. It's obviously designed for scalpers. Yes, I've commented on this here before. In some cases it's because tours go on sale at the same time (to generate buzz), and the early events are relatively soon and the last events are quite far out. They also often do release chunks of ticket inventory at later stages. That said, I'm convinced that often brokers are used as a simple way to provide immediate cash and reduce risk. Why would a promoter want to sell out over months when they can sell out immediately and know that regardless of whether the brokers make money (they don't always) they have sold everything and can say the event is sold out and they have cash in hand now and not months from now. I used to work in this industry and there's a lot of shady stuff that goes on, and it's not all on the broker/scalper side. > You can easily solve this by having the ticket tied to a name and requiring you to show ID That's been done for a long time and you can still get around it if the margin is good enough. You just have to either want to go to the event yourself or be willing to one ticket out of the maximum you can purchase as the cost of doing business. You can't really make every seat have a name initially because not everyone actually knows who they're going to invite for sure at time of purchase, so if you want to really make it effective you have to limit the number of tickets per transaction to 4 or less. Even then, people will be incentivized to buy the max and have people go with them to use the extra tickets at cost or more, it may not be brokers but the regular public will do it too. The actual solution for this is fairly simple. It's supply and demand. Play more shows at a location and the ticket prices will drop. Kid Rock has done it for decades at this point. Artists don't like having to put the extra work in for less money (tickets will be cheaper) and don't want to take the risk that the demand won't be there if they book the venue early. That risk is pushed out to brokers.

carlosjobim 1y ago
> That's been done for a long time and you can still get around it if the margin is good enough. You just have to either want to go to the event yourself or be willing to one ticket out of the maximum you can purchase as the cost of doing business. You tie each ticket to the name of that specific attendee. The ticket buyer doesn't even have to get a ticket for himself. This is bullet proof, unless scalpers can convince their customers to make a fake ID to attend. > not everyone actually knows who they're going to invite for sure at time of purchase Then wait with your purchase until you have figured it out.

Spooky23 1y ago

Ticketing is like dating websites, many are affiliated in various ways. Ticketmaster doesn’t down StubHub… Livenation (the company that owns them), and operates most of the venues, does. They are structured to have nominal competition to meet competitive bidding requirements for .gov owned facilities. Long ago I worked for a company that did some novel work in the ticketing and contained reservation space. We didn’t do resale due to the nature of the product, but the fees we extracted were bonkers - the facilities operators basically paid a nominal amount to stand up the platform, and we derived all (and it was a lot of) revenue from the customer - often on a white label basis. Long story short, Ticketmaster elbowed in and bought the company and the tech once we had traction. That pattern holds in many similar business models.

carlosjobim 1y ago

> (you dump your tickets and let someone else pick them up at that exact moment). Very easy to counteract, the venue just releases those tickets back for sale in batch at an unspecified date and time.

carlosjobim 1y ago

> They do other things that's baffling like selling tickets a year ahead of time, which is kind of weird considering very few people, even big fans, would be really on top of buying tickets a year out. It's obviously designed for scalpers. Serious venues and artists do the same thing. It is to reward the early fans with the cheapest tickets and to get early cash flow. Nothing shady about it.