[deamanto]

I'd also like to highlight another bad practice by Ticketmaster.

When you purchase a ticket from them and resell it on their marketplace, once someone purchases it, they(Ticketmaster) hold your funds and only give you the money ~7-14 business days after the event is over. They say this is to verify the validity of the ticket.

On the buyer side, you purchase the ticket from the marketplace and it gets added to your account immediately. (I think) You get the barcode some time ~1 week before the actual event begins.

The confusion for me? Ticketmaster owned the ticket and all logic relating to the validity of it. The logic to validate this shouldn't be complex at all. They OWN the ticket. They KNOW it's legitimate because it never left their database. Yet they double dip and hold both buyer and seller funds. Events can be close to a year in the future but the seller won't see that until after that event ends.

[bonestamp2]

There's another good point in here. Why do they hold the ticket until just before the event? I bought tickets to a concert for my wife's favorite band. Then, my wife's work scheduled an event for that same week and she had to leave town. So, what I really wanted was a refund so someone else could buy the tickets. They don't do that of course. So, then I wanted to sell the tickets for face value... but ticketmaster didn't "deliver" the tickets to my account until the day before the event!

I watched for a month leading up to the event as the ticket prices plummeted while the scalpers were desperate to get at least something for their tickets before my ticket was even delivered to me.

As soon as they take my money, they should update the database to show that the ticket is mine. If I want to sell it, I should be able to do that immediately too.

But, from what I've read, that instant resale ability only belongs to their "partners" who resell a lot of tickets, and you need access to their "TradeDesk" tool to do it: https://tradedesk.ticketmaster.com

[Ocha]

Just vote with your pocket and don’t buy tickets from them. I do that - yes I don’t get to go to major concerts but there are still so much more that is not on ticket master. I found a lot of new entertainment and was happy to pay $4 fee instead of whatever TM charges nowadays.

[trustno2]

They have an effective monopoly.

[dml2135]

On large venues for big name artists.

Granted, I live in NYC, which probably has one of the most vibrant local music scenes in the country. But it's not like nowhere else has local bands that play at small venues.

It feels like a lot of the people that complain about ticketmaster's monopoly have never branched out from Billboard chart artists.

[to11mtm]

It's weird?

Even the most 'hole in the wall' places around here have deals with LN/TM, short of a bar-band or niche-local joint.

One of the more 'fun' ways that LN/TM did shenanigans at the past I observed: Metal shows at smaller places in the Detroit area like Harpo's (famous place but known for the sketch area) or Token Lounge (literally a bar with a dance floor and stage, pretty fun tho) you'd have one of the local small/startup bands selling tickets, often -below- cost at the box office.

Why? If they sold enough tickets, they got to play as an opener. Yes some scammers would try to fake this, but I never saw anyone actually get 'taken'. And yes I'd buy them if I didn't already have them to help the locals out.

That said, the concerts at those smaller venues, despite being TM/LN, were in the 20-30 dollar range after fees. Not 'top billboard' type stuff per se but Children of Bodom, Lacuna Coil, and other 'popular but niche' bands in the 2005-2007 timeframe.

[quantified]

There are a lot of musicians that aren't on the charts that play in Ticketmaster-controlled venues.

[sirsinsalot]

Not just on tickets, but on venues, catering, security, logistics. It's pretty bad.

[account42]

... for a completely optional form of entertainment.

At the very least you have the choice not to go to any concerts until there are better options. You can also make that clear to your favorite bands.

[skywhopper]

lol, people and bands have been complaining about it for 30 years and it’s only gotten worse. Yes, you could skip concerts for the rest of your life, I suppose, to make a point. But it’s not going to fix anything.

[account42]

Complaining yes, but how many people are actually putting their foot down? As for bands, they may actually be profiting from this scheme where ticketmaster ensures higher prices while taking the blame. If they really cared enough they could chose not to deal with Ticketmaster. Sure, that would limit their choices in venues which could mean lower potential for profit. Probably not going to be a real issue for the the more popular groups.

And yes, if there are no concerts with acceptable terms (and that's really a hypothetical if) then don't go to any for the rest of your life. You make it sound like this is some kind of required part of the human experience when it is just one of many possible ways to spend your time. Even if you are really into music, concerts are just one way to experience it - and when it comes to audio quality, a fairly crappy one.

[quantified]

The extra fees are shared with venues and bands. Keeps them on TM's side.

[Loughla]

That's the secret.

If nobody used them, they would go away.

[wrsh07]

That's not really possible, because they contractually require venues and performing artists to only perform at their venues

This kind of gross exclusionary contract should be illegal (it's kinda the same BS that Google does with Android OEMs - contractually force them to [1]), but for some reason antitrust avoided acting on the matter (including allowing acquisitions in the space) for quite some time

[1] > Predicating the availability of any of Google’s apps, including the Google Play Store, on OEMs not taking advantage of the open source nature of Android on devices that will not include Google apps seems much more problematic than Google insisting its apps be distributed in a bundle. The latter is Google’s prerogative; the former is dictating OEM actions just because Google can. https://stratechery.com/2018/the-european-commission-versus-...

[mattmaroon]

Our options shouldn’t be see no concerts from successful musicians or pay monopoly pricing. This is something government should solve.

[shiroiushi]

Expecting the US government to properly handle monopolies and anti-trust issues is a fool's errand. It's like saying the US government should solve the issue of gun proliferation in the US: it's simply not going to, in our lifetimes.

[mattmaroon]

I don’t think that’s accurate. They’ve successfully handled plenty of anti trust issues in the past and very recently got on this one.

[skywhopper]

On the contrary, the US government is probably a lot easier to influence than an entrenched monopoly.

[nulbyte]

You're right, of course, those shouldn't be our options. But that's just how it is. If you aren't willing to stop playing, the game will never end.

[mattmaroon]

Again, not true, that's a false dichotomy. Political pressure is an alternative. The justice department is already suing. Clearly it can be done.

You writing your congressperson is more likely (albeit, still not at all likely) to make a difference than you not going to your annual concert.

[NickC25]

That might have been true in decades past.

They now, having merged with LiveNation, have effective ownership of all major and semi-major venues around the country. They also aren't just doing concerts, they're doing sporting events and other live entertainment as well.

They aren't going anywhere. They are just too big, and too ingrained.

[spicybbq]

While this is literally true, solutions in the form of "if everyone would just X" are not solutions at all.

[Dylan16807]

That's why they've done so much to force performers to use them.

[NoahKAndrews]

See Tickets seems to be on the rise recently, which I've been glad for

[bonestamp2]

I did that for several years. I don't really consider it voting though because nobody is counting the votes -- they still sell out of tickets with higher profits each year.

[mike503]

This began a lot more on third party sites like stubhub due to Covid and the massive amount of cancellations; before most places paid out after the sale, and if the buyer wound up having an issue (due to the seller mistake, selling it multiple times, whatever) they would charge the seller and usually assess a penalty.

But when everything in the world was being cancelled I assume they didn't have all the money just sitting around to reverse and it was a ton of thrash to deal with. As someone who had bought tons of tickets and sold some, it was a mess. I had a ton of credit card refunds back, the third party sites had to reverse payments, etc.

Waiting until after the event is just less overhead. Guarantees the transaction happened without a hitch.

There are some POS and broker sites that still pay on transfer, but none of the "primary" secondary market does.

[EGreg]

I’ve never dealt much with TicketMaster, despite them being a monopoly. So my questions here may just be out of naiveté:

1) Why would TicketMaster pay event organizers ahead of time, if the event might be shit and attendees may demand their money back? Rather than having to deal with a lot of chargebacks and making it their own problem with the banks, they might prefer to make sure the event goes off without a hitch and refund people while they still can. Rather than subsidizing the refunds they make the event organizer have to get (and pay for) financing instead, backed by their payout. They might also offer such financing.

2) I get that they hold event organizers hostage by making contracts with the venues for years, that might be an antitrust issue but it’s separate from 1.

3) Why would TicketMaster make scalping easy? Middlemen would just buy up all the tickets and then pump and dump the price, much like early crypto investors in a meme token or altcoin do. So they don’t “deliver” the ticket to you until just before the event, exactly for that reason.

With ChatGPT it’s now easier than ever to impersonate thousands of people at scale, with credit cards and everything. But I will admit, showing up to an event at least once confirms there is a human behind the account. But a first-timer buyer? Shouldn’t be able to resell, no.

[mhuffman]

#1 and #3 are related. They make scalping easy so they get all of their money immediately and can pay event organizers ahead of time. I personally think scalping should be straight-up illegal but business schools loove it and consider it an excellent example of helping with liquidity in a system and finding the true "willingness to pay" price of something.

[EGreg]

willingness to get ripped off LOL

I built a blockchain-based solution.

It features a price discovery mechanism: you auction off M tickets to M people, the price goes up every time after M people buy and the oldest buyer is booted when the others buy, but can buy back in again. Buyers can set a “reserve price” to automatically bid up to that price.

No scalping, because tickets aren’t transferrable.

Similarly, you can disallow transfering of bearer token X but let the user sell it back to the central market maker and someone else buys it. Enforcing commissions on sales.

Blockchain makes all this work, decentralized.

[amarant]

Tbf, this does sound like a fairly efficient anti-scalper strategy, so I guess there's at least some upside to this mess.

[bonestamp2]

I guess it depends on your definition of scalper. It prevents mom and pop from reselling their unwanted tickets. If they stopped there and prevented all reselling I'd be fine with that even though I'd lose out on some money in this one case.

But then they literally built a whole platform (link in my last comment) for actual scalpers to resell tickets in bulk. So, they're not trying to prevent scalping, they're just ensuring that only their "partners" can scalp.

[cypherpunks01]

It's simply 0% financing for their business. No more complex than that.

[tesrx]

Excellent point. I wonder if Ticketmaster profits by making interest off of holding those funds?

[mixmastamyk]

Wonder no more—yes.

[ipsum2]

Do you work at ticketmaster? Otherwise, how do you confirm this?

[mixmastamyk]

Every big corp holds money longer than necessary to maximize interest. It’s free money. We know TM. “Why wouldn’t TM do it” is what you should be asking proof for.

[tsukurimashou]

exactly this

[seanhunter]

Ticketkmaster earns interest on cash they hold[1]

This is cash that ticketmaster is holding

Therefore they will be earning interest on this.

[1] see interest incom on their latest 10-K https://investors.livenationentertainment.com/sec-filings/an...

[passwordoops]

Rule of thumb when it comes to monopolies: always err on the side of rentierism. In fact, it should be incumbent on their defenders to prove (insert greedy activity) is not practiced by said corporation

[fallingknife]

1. ticket master holds the money for 14 days before paying the customer

2. there are a lot of customers

3. therefore ticket master holds lots of customer cash in transit (this is called the "float")

4. cash earns 5% interest so this year they will earn about 5% * avg float

[krger]

>When you purchase a ticket from them and resell it on their marketplace, once someone purchases it, they(Ticketmaster) hold your funds and only give you the money ~7-14 business days after the event is over. They say this is to verify the validity of the ticket.

I imagine it's more about discouraging scalping, regardless of what they may say about it.

[patates]

Maybe to stop people selling the ticket and still going to the event with a pre-printed one? Solving that would also be easy if they have a central verification system (just invalidate the ticket and issue a new one) but not if it is all p2p.

(disclaimer: I'm a complete outsider, last time I bought anything from Ticketmaster was a really long time ago).

[Phemist]

They would need to solve that anyway in case 2 or more friends attempt to get in on the same ticket.

Not at all difficult - simply share screen a third device and display the rotating QR-code through e.g. zoom on individual phones. For additional trickery, try to split the group into joining multiple ticket scanning lines and timing the scan of the ticket to be as close as possible to eachother.

[garaetjjte]

Possibly it's fraud prevention, in case payment for the original ticket was fraudulent and chargeback occurs after the ticket is resold on marketplace?

[LorenPechtel]

That does sound like a very reasonable thing to do. Otherwise you have a threat vector of steal card, buy ticket, sell ticket, pocket the cash, card owner disputes, now Ticketmaster has paid a stolen identity who took the money and ran.

Anything that can be used to monetize stolen cards will tend to be used for the purpose even if it's inefficient.

[babypuncher]

I really, really, really hope Ticketmaster gets broken up. Their shittiness seemingly knows no bounds.

[elcomet]

Because you could just print the ticket, then sell it, and still enter the show with it ?

[mmmlinux]

This is literally what the rolling codes prevent.