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Internal emails reveal Ticketmaster helped scalpers jack up prices, FTC says

327 points by dthread3 1y ago

2OEH8eoCRo0 1y ago
There is no reason that event tickets couldn't be sold similarly to airline seats.
- rtkwe 1y ago
  Expand on what you mean by that?
  - Zigurd 1y ago
    You can't resell a plane ticket. You can get a credit or cancel the purchase depending on the airline's terms. But there is no secondary market in plane tickets. If you show up at the airport and your ID doesn't match the name on the ticket, the ticket is invalid.
    - 2OEH8eoCRo0 1y ago
      You can also buy plane tickets from a number of providers.
    - rtkwe 1y ago
      Venues don't want to be checking all that at their gates plus they don't want to prevent scalping it's only really the artists and fans who are anti scalping the rest of the parties in the pipeline loooove scalpers.
      - carlosjobim 1y ago
        Venues are already checking IDs at the gate anyway. And it takes less than one second per ticket to scan and verify tickets.
        rtkwe 1y ago
        I don't remember ever having my ID checked at the door of a concert or show.
    - mandevil 1y ago
      That is a (relatively) new thing, however- at least in the US. Prior to the September 11th security reforms there no ID checks against tickets, and you could resell them. This was so commonplace that one US airline (People's Express) back in the 1980's did all their tickets paid in cash after you boarded. They had no idea who would be on a flight at all until the boarding started! (You can see this in the spoof movie Airplane II: The Sequel from 1982, where our hero boards the Lunar Shuttle buying a ticket from a scalper.) So this policy is younger than Google.
- OscarCunningham 1y ago
  The issue that spawned scalping and Ticketmaster is that musicians want to sell tickets under their market value. There's no analogous issue with airline pricing.
  - Zigurd 1y ago
    What other services, other than musicians operating in a monopoly environment, deserve criticism for under pricing their services? The problem is a market failure, but the musicians didn't cause it.
  - hnuser123456 1y ago
    The issue is that scalpers can buy a significant portion of tickets at initial pricing and artificially drive up demand when the event says they're "sold out". Plus, many events like to set low initial prices to try to get money flowing in earlier, and raise prices closer to the day of the event, which makes them a potential "investment" for people who have no plans to attend.
    - SoftTalker 1y ago
      The demand is the demand. TM should just set the initial price higher. This will discourage scalpers because their return is lower and their risk is higher. Fans will get to see the concert if they are willing to pay. If they aren't, then the price is too high, or the tickets will go to other fans who value them more.
      - hnuser123456 1y ago
        But many concertgoers buy their tickets early specifically to get the discount. The discount over later pricing is a valid marketing tactic. Airlines also raise seat prices closer to the day of the flight to encourage people to buy earlier ahead of time. If Ticketmaster enjoys such market dominance, they become responsible to prevent widespread misuse of their own platform, lest they become negligent. They are owned by livenation which is a public company.
  - 1y ago
- reaperducer 1y ago
  There is no reason that event tickets couldn't be sold similarly to airline seats. Charge extra for each armrest. Charge extra for priority entry to the venue. Charge to bring in a purse. Charge to sit next to your family. Charge for adequate leg room. Earn points that become worth less and less as they accumulate.
  - privatelypublic 1y ago
    Sounds like you haven't been to a venue in a while. Your snark is reality for everything but loyalty points.
    - reaperducer 1y ago
      You are correct. The last concert I saw was Genesis at Giants Stadium during the Invisible Touch tour.
leakycap 1y ago
Hard to care what happens to a company like TicketMaster. As you build your company, ask yourself how they ended up like this. Do you think the founders had this outcome in mind when they started (everyone hating them and seeing them as an evil money grab)? They probably started with a different ethos. A good reminder that what we do can change - we need to instill our values into the basics of everything we build, otherwise we'll just be building the next TicketMaster, Oracle, or Meta. As far as I know, we get one go. Let's build things that matter and make the world a better place. Greed will even ruin concerts otherwise.
- pavel_lishin 1y ago
  Oh, the shows are great. But the ticket purchasing experience is only slightly better than a root canal, and is typically more expensive.
  - bobthepanda 1y ago
    It's hard to sympathize with the experience between scalping, which is bad, but also now there's all sorts of priority queues for people with various levels of pay-to-play which are pretty distasteful. AMEX presale, cell carrier presale, etc. all feels terrible. And the show is fun but my local arena renovated within the last decade and now feels like an airport terminal with all the tiered lounges, ripoff concessions even for an arena (I saw a $48 espresso martini), etc. Similar to how I hear that Disney has basically made going to its resorts and scheduling Fastpass basically a second job.
    - billylo 1y ago
      FIFA world cup has been selling opportunities for Right-to-buy. Monopolistic behavior.
    - pavel_lishin 1y ago
      Oh, for what it's worth, I might only go to an arena show once or twice more in my life, to see those "would like to see them in my lifetime before they break up or die" bands.
pavel_lishin 1y ago
We bought $700 tickets to see a show we really wanted to see, but ended up being unable to make it. We tried selling it on Ticketmaster, where you can in theory set your own price, or accept their "best offer". Our best offer was somewhere in the neighborhood of $150, and given that it was the night of the show, we accepted it. We paid $54 per ticket in "processing fees" when purchasing, and paid $50 in more "processing fees" when selling. I'm sure the eventual buyers of our tickets probably had to pony up something like that as well. If I had a magic button that made everyone above a certain level working there destitute and homeless, I'd probably break my finger pushing it.
- yard2010 1y ago
  Their whole business is based on bullying, dark patterns and ripoff, they either go out of business and become homeless or turn out to be the next president of the united states.
  - JumpCrisscross 1y ago
    > Their whole business is based on bullying, dark patterns and ripoff No. It’s based on monopoly. There are a limited number of venues that can host a modern superstar, generally no more than one per geography, and Ticketmaster made it a point to represent all of them. Which means any modern superstar and their fans must work through Ticketmaster. Which, in turn, enables this nonsense. The cause is monopoly. Not “bullying, dark patterns and ripoff;” those are effects.
    - bombcar 1y ago
      It’s worse than that. The venue contracts with Ticketmaster to hike all the fees and shit, which then get kicked back in some percentage to the venue (and sometimes the band) and Ticketmaster takes the heat. So the 50% that goes to “Ticketmaster” may be 80% to the venue.
      - MengerSponge 1y ago
TheJoeMan 1y ago
Not in any way to defend Ticketmaster's unscrupulousness, but my undergraduate university used TM for the student football tickets and we had none of the unfairness, which leads me to agree with the sentiments that TM is actually following the will of the artists / event managers. At school, we could sell our tickets to other students gray-market, and just "transfer" them for "free" in the TM app without issue. They even started out with static QR codes, but decided to enable the "live" updating QR codes due to embarrassments with duplicate ticketers denied entry. So not only is TM to blame, they are the henchmen.
- galaxy_gas 1y ago
  This is also what I am experienced. In the music festival world, there is a TM subsidiary, In the same venue you can see fees differ by dozens of percent based on who the Artist, the ones known for being good people are much lower even if the base ticket price is identical
  - shermantanktop 1y ago
    So TM is just the stooge doing terrible things that the artist wants to do, but would prefer someone else take the heat for it? All while the artist engages fans as their parasocial friend, who would never do them wrong? That's cynical enough for me to want to believe it.
    - shipman05 1y ago
      There's an episode of Your Favorite Band Sucks that details a lot of how this works, and that's the picture they paint. Unsure how accurate it is, but the guys who do the show have a lot of experience in the music industry. You can find it on YouTube: Ticketmaster Sucks - Your Favorite Band Sucks Podcast
    - kevinsync 1y ago
      Believe it lol [0] "The acts are responsible for all of it. They set the ticket prices. They created the large fees. Ticketmaster is paid to take the heat. Because the acts don’t want their fans to hate them. Even worse, the fans don’t hate them even when they’re told the acts are at fault, they just don’t believe it!" For more insight into ticket pricing, see [1] That said, up until I read this Ars article, I understood what Ticketmaster was and why they exist and kind of had few problems with it or moral compunctions about it; the concert business is cut-throat and it's very hard to turn a profit without some of these tactics in place. I find this new revelation about protecting revenue by actively supporting + enabling the corrupt reseller market to be quite fucking distasteful though! [0] https://lefsetz.com/wordpress/2022/11/17/ticketmaster-swift-snafu/ https://lefsetz.com/wordpress/2022/11/17/ticketmaster-swift-... [1] https://lefsetz.com/wordpress/2024/03/01/the-truth-about-ticket-prices/ https://lefsetz.com/wordpress/2024/03/01/the-truth-about-tic...
EGreg 1y ago
The real question is, why is TicketMaster allowed to strongarm venues into essentially perpetuating its monopoly forever?
- Zigurd 1y ago
  No need to strong arm the venues. They own them.
- spullara 1y ago
  the venues are in on it and get paid
- criddell 1y ago
  As I understand it, all the crazy fees are shared with the venue and performers. I don't know that a whole lot of strongarming is going on.
- saaaaaam 1y ago
  Because its parent company Live Nation owns a whole bunch of venues. And a whole bunch of artist management contracts.
- solumos 1y ago
  Ticketmaster + venues are incentivized to maximize primary ticket sales. Ticket brokers are generally willing to take on the risk of buying up tickets to events on the primary market and constrain supply to turn a profit on the secondary market. This works because TM and secondary platforms can claim ignorance and control the narrative: “we do our best to prevent bots”/“fans should be free to resell their tickets” The only way around it is for the government to regulate prices, like they do in the UK (i.e. you can’t resell tickets for more than face value) That means that TM/venues likely aren’t guaranteed as much profit, and ticket brokering businesses disappear, but both of those things are ultimately net negatives for consumers anyway.
  - SoftTalker 1y ago
    > you can’t resell tickets for more than face value I believe some states have tried that but it runs afoul of individual rights and first sale doctrine. Once I buy something, it's my property and I'm free to sell it for whatever price I can get.
vlucas 1y ago
There is no business that I hate more than TicketMaster. In 2016, the OKC Thunder were making a playoff run. They just advanced to the finals and tickets were set to "go on sale to the public" at 10am on a certain day. I signed up for an account, got logged in, etc. and kept refreshing the page around 10am that day, card in hand to buy. The second that time elapsed, all tickets were sold out. Yet somehow thousands of tickets were available for "resale" instantly at $100+ more per ticket PLUS a transfer fee. My jaw was on the floor. Absolute and complete bullshit. I knew the gig then. It was obvious they just let all tickets get bought up by resellers/scalpers/bots without a care in the world for the actual fans. They actually make even more money allowing it to be this way due to the extra transfer fees on top of the original sale. I watched the finals on TV instead since I didn't have the money for that earlier in my career. Burn this company to the ground with the heat of a thousand suns.
- solumos 1y ago
  Ticket brokers control 85%+ of the market. The problem is that they’re completely insulated from any scrutiny by the platforms (Stubhub and Vividseats actively work with larger ticket brokers as well). Punishing Ticketmaster doesn’t really change that dynamic.
  - eastbound 1y ago
    Well, start with punishing Ticketmaster like the EU would do, and see whether they don’t find any solution for scalpers.
mrstone 1y ago
How many times is Ticketmaster going to be slapped on the wrist before something is actually done? They are clearly corrupt and colluding with scalpers and every 4 years or so the FTC says "hey now don't do that" and Ticketmaster goes back to their old schtick. It's immensely frustrating because they are also a monopoly and no one can feasibly compete with them because they also control the event venues. I guess this is end-stage capitalism though..
- saaaaaam 1y ago
  Alongside the FTC lawsuit the DOJ is looking at breaking up Live Nation
  - mrstone 1y ago
    I feel like I've heard this one before. With this administration, I can't seem them actually doing it.
temptemptemp111 1y ago
[dead]
101008 1y ago
I love going to concerts and love going to sport events. Ticketmaster is awful, but most of the ticketing platforms are. I always talked with fellow friends how we would love to start a new startup for this, for selling tickets, a fair one, etc. But of course people in the industry wouldn't want it. Really a shame, because it would be one of those cases where I'd be working on somethign that excites me so I would give it all.
- Zigurd 1y ago
  Not investable until Ticketmaster/Live Nation is broken up and the venues sold off.
- saaaaaam 1y ago
  Selling tickets is a really tough really low margin business with a ton of gatekeepers and risk. First up you need to convince promoters to give you the tickets. Not artists. When an artist signs a deal with a promoter the promoter owns the tickets and can pretty much do what they want. Problem is, a lot of good promoters in the US particularly are owned by Live Nation, which owns Ticketmaster. That’s fine though - just work with promoters who aren’t owned by Live Nation! Only problem is the venues those promoters are hiring are owned by Live Nation. Also, a bunch of artist management companies are owned by Live Nation too. So if you want to sell tickets for shows in non-Live Nation affiliated venues for non-Live Nation affiliated artists that’s fine. But those are going to be small shows with relatively unknown artists. The risk increases in inverse proportion to the size of the show and profile of the artist. The promoter you’re dealing with is going to want cash up front, so as the ticketing company you’re going to have to loan them the money. If they run or the show flops or whatever else you are left holding the can. And because you’re tiny and dealing with unknown shows you’re never going to get allocation for big name shows, so you’re not going to be able to build a valuable list of consumers that you can cross sell shows to. And for the shows you’re selling you’re going to be left with remnant inventory and so you need someone with good lists who can shift that for you. So you’ll probably end up giving Ticketmaster 30-40% of your allocation from the promoters you are working with.
- yonatan8070 1y ago
  I doubt you'd have much luck getting investors on board with a pitch that amounts to "we don't want to screw customers for additional profits" But what do I know, I'm better with computers than people.
wnevets 1y ago
If Ticketmaster wants this to go away all they have to do is stop selling tickets for artist that have something mean about the current president. Look out Taylor Swift!
kyleblarson 1y ago
Masters tickets are arguably one of the hardest to get for any event but they do a very good job of making it a fair process, all in house: https://tickets.masters.com/en_US/ticketsFAQ https://tickets.masters.com/en_US/ticketsFAQ
kazinator 1y ago
In Vancouver, Canada, the PNE (Pacific National Exhibition), owned by the City of Vancouver, got fed up with Ticketmaster and created its own ticket-vending outfit called Ticketleader. https://ticketleader.ca https://ticketleader.ca This might have been around 2011? This PDF document from 2010 (don't let the 2018 in the URL fool you) still mentions TicketMaster. It is an announcement in connection with the 100 year anniversary (1910 - 2010): https://www.pne.ca/files/uploads/2018/01/entertainment.pdf https://www.pne.ca/files/uploads/2018/01/entertainment.pdf Rick Beato thinks that AutoTune and whatnot killed music. Maybe it was just Ticketmaster. Ticketmaster is the obvious reason why fewer people go to live shows in North America, whether rock and roll or not.
zeagle 1y ago
Well, I look forward to getting another 45 dollars of credit to spend only at ticketmaster in five years through a class action1. Hard not to be cynical about it when the fines when caught are tiny. 1 https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/saskatoon/ticketmaster-class-action-settlement-1m-canadians-deceptive-fees-1.7443909 https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/saskatoon/ticketmaster-class-...
sellmesoap 1y ago
It is past time for TicketMaster to have a more PC name. At least the dynamic is printed on the tin? You get what you put up with I guess.
amanaplanacanal 1y ago
All they have to do is suck up to the president and it will all go away. I fully expect this to happen.
- jimt1234 1y ago
  No way. We've got them now. Heads are gonna roll this time. ... Just kidding. Nothing's gonna happen.
Atlas667 1y ago
I don't understand why people can't make the logically necessary step to conclude that capitalism promotes cartels because there are profits to be made in cartels. Capitalism always results in monopolies and cartels. This was known 100 years ago and it is still true now, just not as publicized. I wonder why...
- JumpCrisscross 1y ago
  > This was known 100 years ago and it is still true now, just not as publicized. I wonder why Economics education in America sucks. (Along with civic, legal and other education. Not for cynical reasons, but because we treat schools as job centres and day care.) The housing debate reflects a base inability to grasp supply and demand. The antitrust debate, market failures. Economics takes a modicum of effort to grasp. In the TikTok world, it’s easier to justify laziness by spouting nonsense about economics assuming everyone is rational or whatnot. (This confers a massive advantage to those who know what they're talking about. And perhaps this is part of what's driving the elite disparity in American today. Renters will happily protest for their landlords against new developments.)
prmoustache 1y ago
There would be no scalpers if people weren't buying tickets to scalpers. The answer is easy. Don't buy crazy expensive tickets.
- dfxm12 1y ago
  The answer is easy. Don't buy crazy expensive tickets. I think this is a knock on effect of wealth inequality. People on here are talking about buying $700 tickets. My first thought is that the price sounds insane, but my second thought is to recognize that some folks have way more disposable income than I do. So $700 might be just another night out for someone else...
  - smelendez 1y ago
    I know people who go to a big stadium show every so often and basically don’t spend any other money on music. I know other people who are going to $0 to $20 shows every week. They feel like different hobbies and communities nowadays, and I don’t think that was always so true.
  - pavel_lishin 1y ago
    It's me! I bought $700 tickets! It's very rare for us to go to something so expensive, but it was two bands that we both really wanted to see, and we're genuinely not sure if we'll ever have the chance to see them again. Don't think of this as "regular concert spending"; think of this as "anniversary dinner" spending. (But, yes, we both work, and can afford to buy the $700 tickets, and eat most of the cost as well when we couldn't attend the show last minute.)
    - climb_stealth 1y ago
      Agreed. Some of the artists I like are in their sixties nowadays. Any show may literally be the last show to see. Especially in a remote country. So I'm willing to pay about any price I can afford. Still feel bad about it, though.
- Symbiote 1y ago
WalterBright 1y ago
It's just supply & demand. The tickets go to whoever will pay the most.
prewett 1y ago
This not to say that Ticketmaster is not scummy (and the article elucidates some of their scumminess). But this seems like partly a consequence of "ticket stabilization". As is commonly cited on HN, rent "stabilization" distorts the market and leads to all kinds of problems, like lack of available apartments and people living where they do not want to live because it's financially infeasible/unattractive to move to where they want to be. Clearly ticket prices are too cheap, or the scalpers could not make any money. As one would expect, selling under market value creates arbitrage traders. It's totally Ticketmaster scumminess if transfer fees are ridiculous (see pavel_lishin's post). Likewise if Ticketmaster has difference standards for Big Scalp versus retail scalping. But the existence of scalpers (arbitrage traders) is inevitable if a) tickets are underpriced and b) tickets are transferable. You'd have apartment scalpers for rent-stabilized apartments if leases were transferable (which they are not). When demand (concert-goers) greatly outstrips supply (seats), you have three options: long queues (the historical socialist approach) or lotteries (the egalitarian approach), high prices (the market economy approach), or corruption (the current approach). There is no realistic solution that makes everyone happy, but you can choose the kind of unhappiness you get. There is a strong case to be made that the artists do not want to be seen as greedy merchants, so they underprice their tickets and offload the anger onto Ticketmaster (see kevinsync's post).
- thimabi 1y ago
  I for one find it much, much more fair to have the queue or the lottery systems. If it can be paired with anti-scalper measures such as truly non-transferable tickets or banning resales at a profit, even better. But of course the problem runs deeper when we consider what you and others have been saying: it’s just too convenient for artists to reap the profits of the current system and have Ticketmaster as their scapegoat.
  - notreallyauser 1y ago
    Artists don't reap the profits of the current system -- they get the face value -- Tickmaster and the scalpers do. My solution would be some kind of auction where people put in bids of what they're willing to pay for different seating types and allocation happens so same-type seats are either sold at their reserve price or sold out at the lowest price they'd sell out at exactly, while maximising revenue -- that would give the revenues to the artists, avoid queues and disincentive scalpers. Legislating for no resale above list price and fair fees would disincentivise TM supporting scalping. TM etc could always negotiate a cut of selling-price-above-reserve to encourage them to do the best for the artist from however the auction works.
ChrisArchitect 1y ago
Source: https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2025/09/ftc-sues-live-nation-ticketmaster-engaging-illegal-ticket-resale-tactics-deceiving-artists-consumers https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2025/09/...

327 points by dthread3 1y ago

2OEH8eoCRo0 1y ago

There is no reason that event tickets couldn't be sold similarly to airline seats.

rtkwe 1y ago
Expand on what you mean by that?
- Zigurd 1y ago
  You can't resell a plane ticket. You can get a credit or cancel the purchase depending on the airline's terms. But there is no secondary market in plane tickets. If you show up at the airport and your ID doesn't match the name on the ticket, the ticket is invalid.
  - 2OEH8eoCRo0 1y ago
    You can also buy plane tickets from a number of providers.
  - rtkwe 1y ago
    Venues don't want to be checking all that at their gates plus they don't want to prevent scalping it's only really the artists and fans who are anti scalping the rest of the parties in the pipeline loooove scalpers.
    - carlosjobim 1y ago
      Venues are already checking IDs at the gate anyway. And it takes less than one second per ticket to scan and verify tickets.
      - rtkwe 1y ago
        I don't remember ever having my ID checked at the door of a concert or show.
  - mandevil 1y ago
    That is a (relatively) new thing, however- at least in the US. Prior to the September 11th security reforms there no ID checks against tickets, and you could resell them. This was so commonplace that one US airline (People's Express) back in the 1980's did all their tickets paid in cash after you boarded. They had no idea who would be on a flight at all until the boarding started! (You can see this in the spoof movie Airplane II: The Sequel from 1982, where our hero boards the Lunar Shuttle buying a ticket from a scalper.) So this policy is younger than Google.
OscarCunningham 1y ago
The issue that spawned scalping and Ticketmaster is that musicians want to sell tickets under their market value. There's no analogous issue with airline pricing.
- Zigurd 1y ago
  What other services, other than musicians operating in a monopoly environment, deserve criticism for under pricing their services? The problem is a market failure, but the musicians didn't cause it.
- hnuser123456 1y ago
  The issue is that scalpers can buy a significant portion of tickets at initial pricing and artificially drive up demand when the event says they're "sold out". Plus, many events like to set low initial prices to try to get money flowing in earlier, and raise prices closer to the day of the event, which makes them a potential "investment" for people who have no plans to attend.
  - SoftTalker 1y ago
    The demand is the demand. TM should just set the initial price higher. This will discourage scalpers because their return is lower and their risk is higher. Fans will get to see the concert if they are willing to pay. If they aren't, then the price is too high, or the tickets will go to other fans who value them more.
    - hnuser123456 1y ago
      But many concertgoers buy their tickets early specifically to get the discount. The discount over later pricing is a valid marketing tactic. Airlines also raise seat prices closer to the day of the flight to encourage people to buy earlier ahead of time. If Ticketmaster enjoys such market dominance, they become responsible to prevent widespread misuse of their own platform, lest they become negligent. They are owned by livenation which is a public company.
- 1y ago
reaperducer 1y ago
There is no reason that event tickets couldn't be sold similarly to airline seats. Charge extra for each armrest. Charge extra for priority entry to the venue. Charge to bring in a purse. Charge to sit next to your family. Charge for adequate leg room. Earn points that become worth less and less as they accumulate.
- privatelypublic 1y ago
  Sounds like you haven't been to a venue in a while. Your snark is reality for everything but loyalty points.
  - reaperducer 1y ago
    You are correct. The last concert I saw was Genesis at Giants Stadium during the Invisible Touch tour.

leakycap 1y ago

Hard to care what happens to a company like TicketMaster. As you build your company, ask yourself how they ended up like this. Do you think the founders had this outcome in mind when they started (everyone hating them and seeing them as an evil money grab)? They probably started with a different ethos. A good reminder that what we do can change - we need to instill our values into the basics of everything we build, otherwise we'll just be building the next TicketMaster, Oracle, or Meta. As far as I know, we get one go. Let's build things that matter and make the world a better place. Greed will even ruin concerts otherwise.

pavel_lishin 1y ago
Oh, the shows are great. But the ticket purchasing experience is only slightly better than a root canal, and is typically more expensive.
- bobthepanda 1y ago
  It's hard to sympathize with the experience between scalping, which is bad, but also now there's all sorts of priority queues for people with various levels of pay-to-play which are pretty distasteful. AMEX presale, cell carrier presale, etc. all feels terrible. And the show is fun but my local arena renovated within the last decade and now feels like an airport terminal with all the tiered lounges, ripoff concessions even for an arena (I saw a $48 espresso martini), etc. Similar to how I hear that Disney has basically made going to its resorts and scheduling Fastpass basically a second job.
  - billylo 1y ago
    FIFA world cup has been selling opportunities for Right-to-buy. Monopolistic behavior.
  - pavel_lishin 1y ago
    Oh, for what it's worth, I might only go to an arena show once or twice more in my life, to see those "would like to see them in my lifetime before they break up or die" bands.

pavel_lishin 1y ago

We bought $700 tickets to see a show we really wanted to see, but ended up being unable to make it. We tried selling it on Ticketmaster, where you can in theory set your own price, or accept their "best offer". Our best offer was somewhere in the neighborhood of $150, and given that it was the night of the show, we accepted it. We paid $54 per ticket in "processing fees" when purchasing, and paid $50 in more "processing fees" when selling. I'm sure the eventual buyers of our tickets probably had to pony up something like that as well. If I had a magic button that made everyone above a certain level working there destitute and homeless, I'd probably break my finger pushing it.

yard2010 1y ago
Their whole business is based on bullying, dark patterns and ripoff, they either go out of business and become homeless or turn out to be the next president of the united states.
- JumpCrisscross 1y ago
  > Their whole business is based on bullying, dark patterns and ripoff No. It’s based on monopoly. There are a limited number of venues that can host a modern superstar, generally no more than one per geography, and Ticketmaster made it a point to represent all of them. Which means any modern superstar and their fans must work through Ticketmaster. Which, in turn, enables this nonsense. The cause is monopoly. Not “bullying, dark patterns and ripoff;” those are effects.
  - bombcar 1y ago
    It’s worse than that. The venue contracts with Ticketmaster to hike all the fees and shit, which then get kicked back in some percentage to the venue (and sometimes the band) and Ticketmaster takes the heat. So the 50% that goes to “Ticketmaster” may be 80% to the venue.
    - MengerSponge 1y ago

TheJoeMan 1y ago

Not in any way to defend Ticketmaster's unscrupulousness, but my undergraduate university used TM for the student football tickets and we had none of the unfairness, which leads me to agree with the sentiments that TM is actually following the will of the artists / event managers. At school, we could sell our tickets to other students gray-market, and just "transfer" them for "free" in the TM app without issue. They even started out with static QR codes, but decided to enable the "live" updating QR codes due to embarrassments with duplicate ticketers denied entry. So not only is TM to blame, they are the henchmen.

galaxy_gas 1y ago
This is also what I am experienced. In the music festival world, there is a TM subsidiary, In the same venue you can see fees differ by dozens of percent based on who the Artist, the ones known for being good people are much lower even if the base ticket price is identical
- shermantanktop 1y ago
  So TM is just the stooge doing terrible things that the artist wants to do, but would prefer someone else take the heat for it? All while the artist engages fans as their parasocial friend, who would never do them wrong? That's cynical enough for me to want to believe it.
  - shipman05 1y ago
    There's an episode of Your Favorite Band Sucks that details a lot of how this works, and that's the picture they paint. Unsure how accurate it is, but the guys who do the show have a lot of experience in the music industry. You can find it on YouTube: Ticketmaster Sucks - Your Favorite Band Sucks Podcast
  - kevinsync 1y ago
    Believe it lol [0] "The acts are responsible for all of it. They set the ticket prices. They created the large fees. Ticketmaster is paid to take the heat. Because the acts don’t want their fans to hate them. Even worse, the fans don’t hate them even when they’re told the acts are at fault, they just don’t believe it!" For more insight into ticket pricing, see [1] That said, up until I read this Ars article, I understood what Ticketmaster was and why they exist and kind of had few problems with it or moral compunctions about it; the concert business is cut-throat and it's very hard to turn a profit without some of these tactics in place. I find this new revelation about protecting revenue by actively supporting + enabling the corrupt reseller market to be quite fucking distasteful though! [0] https://lefsetz.com/wordpress/2022/11/17/ticketmaster-swift-snafu/ https://lefsetz.com/wordpress/2022/11/17/ticketmaster-swift-... [1] https://lefsetz.com/wordpress/2024/03/01/the-truth-about-ticket-prices/ https://lefsetz.com/wordpress/2024/03/01/the-truth-about-tic...

EGreg 1y ago

The real question is, why is TicketMaster allowed to strongarm venues into essentially perpetuating its monopoly forever?

Zigurd 1y ago
No need to strong arm the venues. They own them.
spullara 1y ago
the venues are in on it and get paid
criddell 1y ago
As I understand it, all the crazy fees are shared with the venue and performers. I don't know that a whole lot of strongarming is going on.
saaaaaam 1y ago
Because its parent company Live Nation owns a whole bunch of venues. And a whole bunch of artist management contracts.
solumos 1y ago
Ticketmaster + venues are incentivized to maximize primary ticket sales. Ticket brokers are generally willing to take on the risk of buying up tickets to events on the primary market and constrain supply to turn a profit on the secondary market. This works because TM and secondary platforms can claim ignorance and control the narrative: “we do our best to prevent bots”/“fans should be free to resell their tickets” The only way around it is for the government to regulate prices, like they do in the UK (i.e. you can’t resell tickets for more than face value) That means that TM/venues likely aren’t guaranteed as much profit, and ticket brokering businesses disappear, but both of those things are ultimately net negatives for consumers anyway.
- SoftTalker 1y ago
  > you can’t resell tickets for more than face value I believe some states have tried that but it runs afoul of individual rights and first sale doctrine. Once I buy something, it's my property and I'm free to sell it for whatever price I can get.

vlucas 1y ago

There is no business that I hate more than TicketMaster. In 2016, the OKC Thunder were making a playoff run. They just advanced to the finals and tickets were set to "go on sale to the public" at 10am on a certain day. I signed up for an account, got logged in, etc. and kept refreshing the page around 10am that day, card in hand to buy. The second that time elapsed, all tickets were sold out. Yet somehow thousands of tickets were available for "resale" instantly at $100+ more per ticket PLUS a transfer fee. My jaw was on the floor. Absolute and complete bullshit. I knew the gig then. It was obvious they just let all tickets get bought up by resellers/scalpers/bots without a care in the world for the actual fans. They actually make even more money allowing it to be this way due to the extra transfer fees on top of the original sale. I watched the finals on TV instead since I didn't have the money for that earlier in my career. Burn this company to the ground with the heat of a thousand suns.

solumos 1y ago
Ticket brokers control 85%+ of the market. The problem is that they’re completely insulated from any scrutiny by the platforms (Stubhub and Vividseats actively work with larger ticket brokers as well). Punishing Ticketmaster doesn’t really change that dynamic.
- eastbound 1y ago
  Well, start with punishing Ticketmaster like the EU would do, and see whether they don’t find any solution for scalpers.

mrstone 1y ago

How many times is Ticketmaster going to be slapped on the wrist before something is actually done? They are clearly corrupt and colluding with scalpers and every 4 years or so the FTC says "hey now don't do that" and Ticketmaster goes back to their old schtick. It's immensely frustrating because they are also a monopoly and no one can feasibly compete with them because they also control the event venues. I guess this is end-stage capitalism though..

saaaaaam 1y ago
Alongside the FTC lawsuit the DOJ is looking at breaking up Live Nation
- mrstone 1y ago
  I feel like I've heard this one before. With this administration, I can't seem them actually doing it.

temptemptemp111 1y ago

[dead]

101008 1y ago

I love going to concerts and love going to sport events. Ticketmaster is awful, but most of the ticketing platforms are. I always talked with fellow friends how we would love to start a new startup for this, for selling tickets, a fair one, etc. But of course people in the industry wouldn't want it. Really a shame, because it would be one of those cases where I'd be working on somethign that excites me so I would give it all.

Zigurd 1y ago
Not investable until Ticketmaster/Live Nation is broken up and the venues sold off.
saaaaaam 1y ago
Selling tickets is a really tough really low margin business with a ton of gatekeepers and risk. First up you need to convince promoters to give you the tickets. Not artists. When an artist signs a deal with a promoter the promoter owns the tickets and can pretty much do what they want. Problem is, a lot of good promoters in the US particularly are owned by Live Nation, which owns Ticketmaster. That’s fine though - just work with promoters who aren’t owned by Live Nation! Only problem is the venues those promoters are hiring are owned by Live Nation. Also, a bunch of artist management companies are owned by Live Nation too. So if you want to sell tickets for shows in non-Live Nation affiliated venues for non-Live Nation affiliated artists that’s fine. But those are going to be small shows with relatively unknown artists. The risk increases in inverse proportion to the size of the show and profile of the artist. The promoter you’re dealing with is going to want cash up front, so as the ticketing company you’re going to have to loan them the money. If they run or the show flops or whatever else you are left holding the can. And because you’re tiny and dealing with unknown shows you’re never going to get allocation for big name shows, so you’re not going to be able to build a valuable list of consumers that you can cross sell shows to. And for the shows you’re selling you’re going to be left with remnant inventory and so you need someone with good lists who can shift that for you. So you’ll probably end up giving Ticketmaster 30-40% of your allocation from the promoters you are working with.
yonatan8070 1y ago
I doubt you'd have much luck getting investors on board with a pitch that amounts to "we don't want to screw customers for additional profits" But what do I know, I'm better with computers than people.

wnevets 1y ago

If Ticketmaster wants this to go away all they have to do is stop selling tickets for artist that have something mean about the current president. Look out Taylor Swift!

kyleblarson 1y ago

Masters tickets are arguably one of the hardest to get for any event but they do a very good job of making it a fair process, all in house: https://tickets.masters.com/en_US/ticketsFAQ https://tickets.masters.com/en_US/ticketsFAQ

kazinator 1y ago

In Vancouver, Canada, the PNE (Pacific National Exhibition), owned by the City of Vancouver, got fed up with Ticketmaster and created its own ticket-vending outfit called Ticketleader. https://ticketleader.ca https://ticketleader.ca This might have been around 2011? This PDF document from 2010 (don't let the 2018 in the URL fool you) still mentions TicketMaster. It is an announcement in connection with the 100 year anniversary (1910 - 2010): https://www.pne.ca/files/uploads/2018/01/entertainment.pdf https://www.pne.ca/files/uploads/2018/01/entertainment.pdf Rick Beato thinks that AutoTune and whatnot killed music. Maybe it was just Ticketmaster. Ticketmaster is the obvious reason why fewer people go to live shows in North America, whether rock and roll or not.

zeagle 1y ago

Well, I look forward to getting another 45 dollars of credit to spend only at ticketmaster in five years through a class action1. Hard not to be cynical about it when the fines when caught are tiny. 1 https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/saskatoon/ticketmaster-class-action-settlement-1m-canadians-deceptive-fees-1.7443909 https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/saskatoon/ticketmaster-class-...

sellmesoap 1y ago

It is past time for TicketMaster to have a more PC name. At least the dynamic is printed on the tin? You get what you put up with I guess.

amanaplanacanal 1y ago

All they have to do is suck up to the president and it will all go away. I fully expect this to happen.

jimt1234 1y ago
No way. We've got them now. Heads are gonna roll this time. ... Just kidding. Nothing's gonna happen.

Atlas667 1y ago

I don't understand why people can't make the logically necessary step to conclude that capitalism promotes cartels because there are profits to be made in cartels. Capitalism always results in monopolies and cartels. This was known 100 years ago and it is still true now, just not as publicized. I wonder why...

JumpCrisscross 1y ago
> This was known 100 years ago and it is still true now, just not as publicized. I wonder why Economics education in America sucks. (Along with civic, legal and other education. Not for cynical reasons, but because we treat schools as job centres and day care.) The housing debate reflects a base inability to grasp supply and demand. The antitrust debate, market failures. Economics takes a modicum of effort to grasp. In the TikTok world, it’s easier to justify laziness by spouting nonsense about economics assuming everyone is rational or whatnot. (This confers a massive advantage to those who know what they're talking about. And perhaps this is part of what's driving the elite disparity in American today. Renters will happily protest for their landlords against new developments.)

prmoustache 1y ago

There would be no scalpers if people weren't buying tickets to scalpers. The answer is easy. Don't buy crazy expensive tickets.

dfxm12 1y ago
The answer is easy. Don't buy crazy expensive tickets. I think this is a knock on effect of wealth inequality. People on here are talking about buying $700 tickets. My first thought is that the price sounds insane, but my second thought is to recognize that some folks have way more disposable income than I do. So $700 might be just another night out for someone else...
- smelendez 1y ago
  I know people who go to a big stadium show every so often and basically don’t spend any other money on music. I know other people who are going to $0 to $20 shows every week. They feel like different hobbies and communities nowadays, and I don’t think that was always so true.
- pavel_lishin 1y ago
  It's me! I bought $700 tickets! It's very rare for us to go to something so expensive, but it was two bands that we both really wanted to see, and we're genuinely not sure if we'll ever have the chance to see them again. Don't think of this as "regular concert spending"; think of this as "anniversary dinner" spending. (But, yes, we both work, and can afford to buy the $700 tickets, and eat most of the cost as well when we couldn't attend the show last minute.)
  - climb_stealth 1y ago
    Agreed. Some of the artists I like are in their sixties nowadays. Any show may literally be the last show to see. Especially in a remote country. So I'm willing to pay about any price I can afford. Still feel bad about it, though.
Symbiote 1y ago

WalterBright 1y ago

It's just supply & demand. The tickets go to whoever will pay the most.

prewett 1y ago

This not to say that Ticketmaster is not scummy (and the article elucidates some of their scumminess). But this seems like partly a consequence of "ticket stabilization". As is commonly cited on HN, rent "stabilization" distorts the market and leads to all kinds of problems, like lack of available apartments and people living where they do not want to live because it's financially infeasible/unattractive to move to where they want to be. Clearly ticket prices are too cheap, or the scalpers could not make any money. As one would expect, selling under market value creates arbitrage traders. It's totally Ticketmaster scumminess if transfer fees are ridiculous (see pavel_lishin's post). Likewise if Ticketmaster has difference standards for Big Scalp versus retail scalping. But the existence of scalpers (arbitrage traders) is inevitable if a) tickets are underpriced and b) tickets are transferable. You'd have apartment scalpers for rent-stabilized apartments if leases were transferable (which they are not). When demand (concert-goers) greatly outstrips supply (seats), you have three options: long queues (the historical socialist approach) or lotteries (the egalitarian approach), high prices (the market economy approach), or corruption (the current approach). There is no realistic solution that makes everyone happy, but you can choose the kind of unhappiness you get. There is a strong case to be made that the artists do not want to be seen as greedy merchants, so they underprice their tickets and offload the anger onto Ticketmaster (see kevinsync's post).

thimabi 1y ago
I for one find it much, much more fair to have the queue or the lottery systems. If it can be paired with anti-scalper measures such as truly non-transferable tickets or banning resales at a profit, even better. But of course the problem runs deeper when we consider what you and others have been saying: it’s just too convenient for artists to reap the profits of the current system and have Ticketmaster as their scapegoat.
- notreallyauser 1y ago
  Artists don't reap the profits of the current system -- they get the face value -- Tickmaster and the scalpers do. My solution would be some kind of auction where people put in bids of what they're willing to pay for different seating types and allocation happens so same-type seats are either sold at their reserve price or sold out at the lowest price they'd sell out at exactly, while maximising revenue -- that would give the revenues to the artists, avoid queues and disincentive scalpers. Legislating for no resale above list price and fair fees would disincentivise TM supporting scalping. TM etc could always negotiate a cut of selling-price-above-reserve to encourage them to do the best for the artist from however the auction works.

ChrisArchitect 1y ago

Source: https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2025/09/ftc-sues-live-nation-ticketmaster-engaging-illegal-ticket-resale-tactics-deceiving-artists-consumers https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2025/09/...