The funny thing is, LYV, having achieved a near monopoly over ticketing, venues, and performers, loses money.
Of course Ticketmaster isn't just keeping all the extra money. They're probably splitting that with the performer as well.
We don't know what the details are on how the money is divvied up, but I do know that artists must be getting upside on this dynamic pricing.
Listen, that's exactly what they have. The music business mostly exists to screw artists out of money made from their work, probably more now than ever.
The artist signs a contract to pay for X dollars, that's what they get and they have no leverage whatsoever to go after that upside. Ticketmaster would have to share the data about the dynamic pricing in the first place and they are NOT doing that.
Granted the band probably negotiated minimums and a cut. Remember, you also have the venue, security, traffic, marketing, etc. There's a lot involved with these kind of events.
Because TicketMaster/LiveNation own most of the large music venues in the country. And if you don't use them in a "vertical stack" you don't get to play those venues.
And even at $50/ticket, you make money a lot faster in a 25,000 seat arena than you do trying to play 15 nights at an "intimate" theater (hey, guess what, TM/LN own a huge swathe of those too).
We complain on HN about tech "monopolies" (or debate their existence, at least). TM/LN is a much larger effective monopoly that, to my knowledge, has not had any real investigation.
Blink-182 is not in this category.
Pearl Jam and Bruce Springsteen will tell you a similar story.
Springsteen's team is defending dynamic pricing [1], with Ticketmaster claiming "promoters and artist representatives set pricing strategy and price range parameters on all tickets, including dynamic and fixed price points."
[1] https://www.ticketnews.com/2022/07/springsteen-manager-fires...
2. the concerts are held in almost exclusively TM venues, leading to #1
3. the concerts are produced by LiveNation, which is TM, leading to #2
4. the bands are more and more often signed to LN for their tours, leading to #3
if you need more info you can do your own research.
TicketMaster can extort the performer for a bigger cut because if the performer takes no action, TicketMaster gets the resale, and the performer gets nothing. TicketMaster owns the data, so they can negotiate the dynamic royalty more efficiently and get a yield better than resale.
I dislike Ticketmaster as much as the next person, but no one is holding a gun to Blink-182 to come out and perform in a nationwide tour with TM taking all the upside. I just can't fathom that negotiation taking place, unless TM was also guaranteeing revenue to the band, i.e. taking downside risk. Theres no point to that. Also, yes, LiveNation controls an impressive number of venues, but they dont control all the venues, not be a long shot. If the TM deal was such a raw deal for artists, nothing prevents artists from just hosting their own concerts in publicly owned venues, setting up longer term performance residences in interesting locations, or expanding the fan experience from the tired formula of "opener act, 2x 1-hour sets, and an encore" to something better like a collaborative fan experience over a whole weekend. Plenty of opportunity for creativity on the artist's part that would make the artist less money in a night but yield a potentially waaaay better lifestyle and creative process.
At the end of it, Live Nation is a publicly traded company, but not a very attractive one. Lots of debt, rapidly increasing labor costs on the event hosting side, household budgets getting a major squeeze which will impact entertainment spend.
Yeah I don’t think that’s true?
My understanding is that even a portion of the “service fee” TM charges also goes to the artists.
One of the most important services that TM provides is they are a scape goat. Artists can charge crazy high prices and TM takes the blame. They’re willing to be the bad guy.
The money is split between Ticketmaster, venue, promoter, and artist.
Can you provide any numbers of any kind? I certainly can’t find specifics. So it’s no evidence versus no evidence.
I know TM has a near monopoly. But I personally think they have that monopoly because they’re willing to be the bad guy everyone blames for high ticket prices.
I think logic dictates that artists would not opt-in to dynamic pricing, and yes it is optional, unless they see upside.
LiveNations quarterly earnings states: “With market-based pricing being widely adopted by most tours, we expect to shift over $500M from the secondary market to artists this year”. It’s hard to tell what percentage that is.
If that's a problem for artists then why do artists chose to do business with ticketmaster? Selling tickets isn't exactly high tech...
Eg. https://www.barclayscenter.com/news/detail/seatgeek-to-becom...
https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/business-news/liv...
The reality of the matter is that a artist has much more to worry about than what Ticketmaster handles, and they provide a service that is useful, especially when it can all be rolled up into the "venue costs".
Why use Live Nation? As Pearl Jam has taught us: Artists are limited by venues and venues are either owned or have a deal with live nation. Not going through ticketmaster/live nation means not playing the Gardens in New York or most other large venues where you will have to settle for a warehouse in Jersey instead. A huge monopoly exists that requires an uber like attack on the industry or government intervention.
Are you saying these big A++ acts are signing deals with TicketMaster saying "yea sell em for whatever you want, we just need $X / ticket?"
Yes.
> The Blink-182 tour, it should be noted, is “produced” by Live Nation, according to the Live Nation press release announcing the tour. In the U.S., they are playing almost exclusively Live Nation venues (in Blink-182’s hometown, San Diego, they are playing at the Pechanga Arena, a venue that is operated by AXS, which is a different company.) The tickets for all shows besides the San Diego one are being handled by Ticketmaster. The press release announcing the tour does not list any prices.
Ticketmaster claims "promoters and artist representatives set pricing strategy and price range parameters on all tickets, including dynamic and fixed price points" [1].
[1] https://www.ticketnews.com/2022/07/springsteen-manager-fires...
Ultimately if one ticketing company offers a band 200k to perform a night and another company offers 150k then every band is going to go with the 200k - even if there is a dynamic pricing model for the fans.
Its my understanding that some NFL actually has an official deal to sell through Ticketmaster first - though presumably any of these other companies could have that deal if they paid the NFL more.
FWIW I do think ticket convenience fees should be eliminated (or made so they have to be listed upfront) and this would be good for transparency - but I am also pretty sure that doing so would ultimately just raise listed prices.
> Ticketmaster has done something that is very lucrative for itself and for artists, but also worse for the average fan: It has simply jacked up ticket prices for certain high-profile events to a level where all tickets are more-or-less priced at the maximum level that the secondary market would normally bear
Once you get big enough you are pretty much forced to get into bed with Ticketmaster and take whatever deal they offer.
There are so many comments in here saying dynamic pricing is screwing over artists but it seems like a huge win for them since it doesn't result in tickets being sold in secondary markets where they can't capture the margins.
Mark Hoppus has a complaint about the _experience_ of dynamic pricing but note that he isn't complaining about the actual prices.
To be fair, I'm sure artists like Blink-182 are still getting a decent chunk of change from the tour, especially from merch sales. But I also think Ticketmaster/Livenation is feeing them like mad and walking away with the lion's share of the revenue.
It is very convenient for venue owners to let TM handle ticketing for the events. TM handles more than just sports and concert tickets. Since so many forms of live entertainment use TM, the company can bring in a lot of events to fill in off-season time. So an arena can host basketball & concerts on the weekend, then fill the weekdays with minor things like dirt bike races.
This situation repeats in practically every major metro. The massive arenas are probably owned by the city, or maybe the owner of the team that plays in them.
Which goes back into my argument, they own some venues. But not all of them, and certainly not the major arenas that mega artists play in.
An interesting thing about AXS tickets is that they are presented using a smartphone app and are only valid for something like 60s before they need to be refreshed. This presumably makes tickets harder to resell outside of AXS's system.
I'd then click "book tickets". That might be a link to ticketmaster, but it could be a link to seetickets or any other ticket system.
If blink182 used seetickets, and I wanted to go to their concert, even if I went to ticketmaster, once I found that I couldn't buy a ticket, I'd go elsewhere.
The tickets are owned by the promoter. The promoter is one who pays the artist.
People often underestimate how risky live events are, as whey they think about a concert they think about U2, Jay Z or other major artists.
In reality, less than 50% of live events sell out.
And there's a fair bit of risk in putting them on. You need to layout the initial capital for things like venues (far from cheaps) and artists often want to get paid a minimum amount, regardless of ticket sales. The promoter needs to figure out how to market & get butts in seats -- including how to effectively price tickets, etc.
Artists typically don't want to deal with all that. They just want to produce their art.
Generally, tickets sell out immediately, and then scalpers set the price. The average fan has very little chance to get a face-value ticket since they are gone as soon as they're released. You also have the situation where the average fan who gets lucky with a ticket then has to do the calculus of "I got lucky buying 4x$55 tickets, should I sell them $7k instead of going to the show?"
If the status quo was really a problem for the big artists (not all) then alternatives would emerge.
If you want to learn all about it, this book does a good job: https://www.amazon.com/Ticket-Masters-Concert-Industry-Scalp...
The artists get paid. Even back in the days "scalpers" were largely selling tickets that artists ear-marked to be sold at market prices. It gave them cover for high ticket prices by selling a few at "official" prices, while letting them earn market value on most tickets sold.
And anything the scalpers couldn't sell would be put back on ticketmaster at the official list price. And people would get an email about how they "found" more tickets to a show.
the article doesn't say anything about this
> If artists took home the extra profits
Do you have any evidence to show that they do not? they definitely weren't under the previous model, because it was the secondary market where prices were getting set "dynamically". But now that it's happening in the primary market, aren't the artists paid out on a % basis?
No.
This is just wrong. Pricing & fees are determined by the promoter and/or the artist. Ticketmaster takes a cut, but the tickets are owned by the promoter. The promoter has the final say in how revenue is shared with everyone -- including the artist & Ticketmaster.
Are you sure?
TFA: > Ticketmaster has done something that is very lucrative for itself and for artists
Scalpers can help clear tickets in advance of expected demand - but with all the data TM has why not capture the value themselves
The problem is alienating fans while trying to discourage scalpers
Now what I don’t like is the monopoly however. That’s bad…
If artists took home the extra profits, there would be more incentive for the market to provide more quality artists, more concerts, and cheaper prices, supply would meet demand.
But since the profits go to ticketmaster, ticketmaster might not even have higher total earnings if it increased supply, as prices might decrease faster. Higher supply of concerts would also give opportunities for competitors to ticketmaster to emerge, as it would have to control a bigger market.