The rock 'n' roll rules of ticketing
The rock 'n' roll rules of ticketing
Live Nation E-commerce
Bruce Springsteen’s new tour has brought dynamic pricing back into the public sphere, with an avalanche of outrage triggered by eager would-be concert attendees. The complaints and shock are almost quaint, not because I disagree with the sentiment expressed by most fans, but because this has been a massive problem for much longer than most seem to be aware of.
Springsteen is—or was?—considered the “gold standard” of performers who want to protect fans’ interests. That his participation has revealed how high ticket prices can be driven up reveals how far the dirty tricks of the business have trickled down. It’s not the ugliest or most exploitative move on promoters’ part.
Some recent moves include verified fan programs, which serve as a way to filter out devotees for early access. Even that has been gamed in odd, exploitative ways. When Taylor Swift embarked on her 2018 stadium tour, Ticketmaster rolled out a unique, customized program for her Verified Fans.
The purpose of the program was for fans to compete against one another for first pick at tickets. Much like the online contests that offer to maximize entries if you follow their accounts, this service was about collecting points by performing “boost activities.” Some of these activities are things fans would do anyway, like buying an album and watching music videos. Then there were activities tied to big spending; buying merch upped your points, as did purchasing the album 12 times from different outlets and in different formats.
There was no maximum amount of points that one could achieve, nor was there a limit to boost activities, in fact, your standing was relative to others’ participation. Never in the clear, fans had to watch their access to future tickets dip, urging them to participate and spend more money and more time on their activities.
This wasn’t received well by fans, especially not since collecting points wouldn’t guarantee a ticket to their preferred shows, it simply allowed them access to the pre-sale, and once there dynamic pricing would probably be at play as well. Not only that, but while plenty of stans and hardcore fans would do the activities without the program, those are also the very activities called out as attempts to game the system when it comes from those fans.
In other words, Swift HQ maximized sales of merchandise by pitting fans against each other and got away with encouraging fans to game the numbers.
I don’t believe this particular program has been used since, but I’ve no doubt it’ll make a return at some point in the future and infest even the mid-tier acts’ ticketing strategies. One might argue that the bundling of items —which has been used to increase album sales—is in the same sphere, but while exclusives serve as effective marketing incentives, it’s not being used to evaluate the standing of the customers themselves.
Through the tatters of 1D fandom, I learned of a trick that shocked me: revising seating charts just before the show, moving front row/barricade seats so that the premium that was paid ended up being moot.
This was discovered and discussed by some fans attending the European leg of Harry Styles’ tour. First there was surprise that their seats weren’t where they thought; then they went ahead and confirmed the revisions by checking their local Ticketmaster sites.
The restructuring was confirmed at five separate venues in four separate countries. Fans who contacted Live Nation were told the change was requested by Styles’ production team and that refunds were not warranted.
The same restructuring trick was also observed during BTS’s recent tour. Fans who had specifically purchased barricade/front row seats found themselves not receiving what they paid for. And once again, refunds were not considered.
There’s nothing new about these types of trickery, the collusion of industry & brokers precedes the modern era by quite a long time. The uptick in ticket costs has been credited both to the Eagles’ 1995 tour, the first to crack $100 per seat, as well as Neil Young’s 2007 solo acoustic tour. According to Rick Mueller, president of AEG Presents North America and former president of Live Nation North America, the face value pricesof 250-300 dollars per seat were a positive for future price hikes.
“I tell people: rob Peter to pay Paul. I still haven’t seen a threshold where somebody won’t buy front row seats. So let’s get more out of that front row or best ten percent of the house.”
The merger between Ticketmaster and Live Nation didn’t help matters, but it did reveal some cracks in the lacquered veneer. Bruce Springsteen came out against it, claiming it was, “the one thing that would make the current ticket situation even worse.”
Springsteen had reason to complain; Ticketmaster had flubbed the onsale of his tour. Those who wanted to buy tickets would be redirected to a reseller website, where they could pay much more per seat, on the basis that there were no tickets left. The problem was that there were tickets left, and there was no need to spring four times the face value for speculative tickets.
It would’ve been bad PR in and of itself, but in conjunction with the merger, it was essential to calm the waves. An official apology was delivered from Ticketmaster,
“While we were genuinely trying to do the right thing for fans in providing more choices when the tickets they requested from the primary on-sale were not available, we clearly missed the mark. […] we will not present an option to go to TicketsNow from Ticketmaster without the consent of the artist and the venue, both of whom work together to bring the joy of live entertainment to millions of fans.”
Irving Azoff’s Open Letter of Apology to Bruce Springsteen, Jon Landau and the entire Springsteen Tour Team, February 5 2009
The DOJ approved the merger, and the FTC charged Ticketmaster with “deceptive bait-and-switch tactics” because of the Springsteen faux pas, resulting in a settlement with refunds being ordered to consumers who were deceived. The matter could be struck from the record, and the merger could go forth.
When Live Nation Entertainment took form, Azoff visited CNN extolling the positives and referring to the newly minted company as “an e-commerce opportunity more than being a concert promoter and ticketer of live events.” He also discussed Ticketmaster Platinum, which you would understand today as simply dynamically priced tickets, and how Platinum, “yields the highest prices in the business.”
The proponents of dynamic pricing argue that it’s about supply and demand, but that leaves out how the supply is meted out in such a way to maximize demand. Industry executives love to say scalpers only exist because “you’re not priced to market,” reiterated by Kenneth Feld at an industry conference.
This leaves out how much impact executives, artists, managers, and promoters feed into the sacred market themselves.
“I could take a lie detector test right now, I've never ever scalped a ticket to one of my own shows, ever, to this day. Now by the way, that makes me a schmuck. That makes me a schmuck because as best as I can tell--there might be one or two examples, but even the examples I thought I would give you now I'm not so sure of--everybody was fucking scalping tickets. And the managers knew it, couldn't stop it, there were all kinds of schemes you know, that people were running, so they said, ‘We might as well get into the scalping business.’”
In 2017, Billboard covered a Live Nation plot to distribute 88,000 Metallica tickets directly through StubHub. They admitted that, “the company has facilitated the quiet transfer of concert tickets directly into the hands of resellers through the years, though only at the request of the artists involved.”
The article narrowed in on Metallica but also acknowledged that, “artists sought Live Nation’s help to capture more of the profits going to scalpers — and a slew of well-capitalized resale firms cropped up to assist.”
Sports teams are also mentioned as profiteers, including NBA and MLB teams. The Toronto Blue Jays’s tactics were uncovered as part of a CBC/Toronto Star investigation in 2018; 45% of all stadium seats went directly to secondary resellers. StubHubs’s Glenn Lehrman confirmed that all MLB teams received a cut from tickets sold on their platform. The investigation also uncovered that Ticketmaster recruited scalpers directly, and fostered professional resellers.
“Ticketmaster's resale division turns a blind eye to scalpers who use ticket-buying bots and fake identities to snatch up tickets and then resell them on the site for inflated prices. Those pricey resale tickets include extra fees for Ticketmaster.”
The CBC/Toronto Star investigation coincided with an attempt on Ontario’s part to pass the Ticket Sales Act, which among other things would’ve capped the resale price at 50% above face value. To the public, it was a welcome intervention, to industry, not so much.
The act was passed in 2017, due to come into effect July 1st. It took less than a month before the new Ontario government announced that they scrapped the resale cap because “it was unenforceable.” This change was welcomed by industry, including Ticketmaster Canada, StubHub and Vividseats.
The above chart was created in anticipation of the resale cap being passed to show the gouging on the resale scene. Instead, it serves as a reminder that this is the “market value” that industry wants to match. Does that seem reasonable? Especially since fans are the ones being exploited?
I specify fans because dynamic pricing benefits the casual listeners who are interested in an event, but not that interested. I benefited from it during Taylor Swift’s Reputation tour; I’m not a fan, I was not a Verified Fan and did not have to participate in the Swift Hunger Games, but the dwindling demand for nosebleed seats allowed me and a friend to score a deal for her birthday.
I tend not to be interested in the big acts with high demand on tickets, so really, I’m not as affected by this gouging as others— but I still don’t like it. I don’t like that fans who are treated like evangelists for artists’ brands are simultaneously being gouged; in a way, their passionate promotion is what pushes the demand and the prices.
I don’t like that it normalizes the doublespeak; that sellers can point at the prices they’ve driven up and say that’s market value.
I'm not a fan of going to see live music, mostly because I found that fans were increasingly trying to make a show that was for someone else, about themselves. Reading this, I can't imagine being a fan of someone that's bigger than an indie venue; it just seems like a perpetual hell of dealing with people and industries who truly don't care about you, and have unlimited demand to cope with you bailing.
The fan program "to be entered into a draw to have a chance to..." stuff is just insidious and stupid. Something that a suit put together with the most flowery language of "fan access and respect", but in another breath mentioned how much it could be used to squeeze fans, to thunderous applause.
Really interesting explanation of something I'd noticed but never looked into - thank you! Great read.