I'll have to ask my wife about her sister's daughter's TS concert this weekend. She was able to land 2 tickets in the front row of a concert in Atlanta (?) but considering what has happened, I cringe to think what she paid for them.
Checked her site and there aren't a single concert this year so either they are tickets for next year and she's farting from the mouth.
Blink-182 Tickets Are So Expensive Because Ticketmaster Is a Disastrous Monopoly and Now Everyone Pays Ticket Broker Prices The way that dynamic pricing works is that for many seats in a venue, there is no longer really a “face value” price of a ticket, and that prices for many events are now as high as people are willing to pay, as determined by an algorithm. This has been likened to Uber’s surge pricing, which fluctuates based on demand and a raft of other unclear metrics. Here is how Ticketmaster opaquely explains it: “In some instances, events on our platform may have tickets that are ‘market-priced,’ so ticket and fee prices may adjust over time based on demand. This is similar to how airline tickets and hotel rooms are sold and is commonly referred to as ‘Dynamic Pricing.’” Ticketmaster has not explained in detail how it determines the “market price” of any given show, but for many events, the Live Nation/Ticketmaster conglomerate controls the ticketing process, owns or operates the venues, and represents the artists (which often means that it is advising them on ticket prices and venue choice; Live Nation artists, for example, rarely play non-Live Nation venues). We can safely infer that ticket prices are calculated via some proprietary mix of: a band’s historical ticket sale performance in a specific venue (and nationwide), historical secondary market performance, ticket sales performance of similar artists, number of shows in a given market, performance during presales, etc., and can then be adjusted on the fly during an onsale based on the velocity of ticket searches and sell-through rates. All of this is data that Ticketmaster and Live Nation owns or can reasonably monitor given its position as a music industry behemoth and monopoly.
My wife almost got to see them for free a few weeks back. She had a conference in Vegas and her window overlooked the venue and was told she wouldn't get much sleep any way. So she was going to listen to them and the other 20 or so acts including Green Day but the morning of the concert, there was a huge dust storm with high winds so they canceled it. You can imagine how much money they lost considering the 1,000 plus workers spending all week setting up the stages.
Ah behold the inherent contradictions of capitalism, dominating the market creates situations where the market becomes dysfunctional and fails to allocate resources efficiently. How does this square with your "actually price gouging is good take?" Why is buying water after a hurricane for $1000 efficient allocation, while the Ticketmaster situation a mess?
Taylor Swift is a monopoly. Middle man or not this will never be an efficient mkt. Why don’t you offer a solution. If you had all tix for a Denver TS show how would you allocate them?
My daughter and her friends flew out to Vegas to see that show on Saturday Fortunately, they were able to get resale tickets for Sunday at a 30% premium.
Probably a lottery of some kind at a fixed price, and never let me control the resale market if people that win wish to resell. If you want to scalp, do it the old fashioned way.
nothing against live music but with limited resources, there are so many more things I would place much higher on the list for the price to attend some of these events, especially for the good seats. Two front row tickets for $10k could get me and the family of 5 a full week in Grand Cayman at a nice resort and unlimited diving with some great dining mixed in.
Ticketmaster and price fixing, tickets going to “black market” has been a problem for a decade or more. They don’t fix it, because they profit from it. Make them like student tickets, o voting name and ID.
I think the issue here is that Ticketmaster is a vertical monopoly. They control the tickets the venues and a lot of the artists. A venue that doesn’t play ball won’t get the acts. The artist who doesn’t play can’t play the big venues. And then of course they control the primary and secondary market. First thing I would do is force the divestiture of control of venues and make all venues take all comers. Then I would allow the artists to sell their own tickets. Steve Hofstetter (sp?) the comedienne sells his own ticket’s online. Bands have done this in the past. I would then seize the assets of the board members of Ticketmaster and execute the board publicly. Not sure who would sell the tickets.
I think that that would help. I am all for eliminating middlemen especially monopolistic ones. But, in the case of TS, TM is mostly taking from the consumers, not Taylor, b/c supply is very inelastic hence it is hard to take from Taylor. 1 of 2 things would happen if we could kill the middleman. Taylor either takes the majority of what they were taking or if she underprices, scalpers will share what TM was taking. Consumers would not be much better off on avg. If sales are limited in # for each customer, the middleman eliminated & the artist prevented from holding tix, the secondary mkt would allocate tix pretty well.
From the outside it looks like an issue is allowing dynamic pricing in the primary market. Seems to me that shouldn’t be allowed. Say Taylor Swift has a concert in Rampa. Upper deck prices at $150 middle level $250 floor $500 and so on. Everyone gets a shot to buy on the primary and then allow a free for all on the secondary market. Maybe I’m missing something….
I paid $600/ticket to see the Eagles. I was in the front row left of the stage. It was like watching them in a bar. I don't go to concerts unless I can get tickets like that.
