[tonymet]

Ticketmaster's clients are the venues and/or promotors (or both), not the ticket buyer (i.e. you). The undesirable convenience fees and other fees collected go to the venue & promotor, not to Ticketmaster. Ticketmaster's actual service fees are just a few percent -- not the 20-30% you see when you check out. They are effectively a punching bag to allow the venues , promotors & artists to collect excessive fees while retaining goodwill with the fans.

The more you hate Ticketmaster, the better they are doing their job, really (assuming reliable service is being provided, which they do well).

Moreover, pricing , tiering, selling, lobbying , on-sales, marketing, customer support, check in / validation (often without stable internet) are really hard problems.

The lesson here : the consumer experience of a business is usually just the tip of the iceberg, and extremely biased , often missing the crux of the business.