I'm not sure this is true. Most (~80%) large venues are owned and operated by Live Nation, who also owns Ticketmaster. They also have exclusivity agreements with hundreds of others.

It's, in effect, a shell operating as a scalper and a customer service disruptor. This has very little to do with the artist beyond selecting venues.

It's about 60% of large venues. The 80% is Ticketmaster's share of the ticketing marketplace.

I don't think this is accurate. Ticketmaster/LiveNation control most good/big venues so artists have to deal with them in some way. Artists generally don't want to charge market clearing prices to their fans (for niceness and PR reasons) but Ticketmaster is happy to be the bad guy and do that via exorbitant fees. I'm very in favor of breaking up Ticketmaster but we should be clear-eyed about what that will do: it will transfer money from either Ticketmaster to scalpers or transfer money from Ticketmaster to artists.

Fundamentally, if there's someone out there willing to pay up to $x for a space-limited event, they will find someone to give that $x to. I'd rather that person be the artist.

There was an article in the LATimes article a few years ago with the former ceo of Ticketmaster who explicitly confirmed the above. Ticketmaster does a deal with the band to charge as much as possible and take all the negative blowback or whatever about it and then gives them a kickback.

Fees split into thirds, (TM, performer, venue) is my recollection.

Taylor Swift's manager is a woman. And an artist like TS is going to know exactly how it works behind the scenes

The grandparent is implying that "Taylor Swift" and the "Evil Manager" are two sides of the same coin; they don't need to even be different people. The system lets a (big) artist extract value while keeping their public image clean. It's a shell game, and Ticketmaster plays the role of bad-guy-as-a-service.

Of course, their insane monopoly means they also get to take advantage of smaller artists, venues etc. None of this is good.

Hey now, it's 2024, anyone can twirl their evil mustache if they want to sport one. Just wash your hands afterwards.

If Britney Spears's book is to be believed, the talent can be kept in the dark.

Britney Spears ended up forced into a conservancy. Taylor Swift is much more savvy (gets songwriter credit on everything, successfully rereleased her early tracks to get better royalties from her back catalog, manages her fanbase really well in general). She definitely knows the game with Ticketmaster.

Britney Spears is not your typical situation. She was legally incompetent and in a conservatorship control by her dad until very recently.

Can you provide a source for artists getting a cut of the greater-than-MSRP resale market?

There are a lot of journal articles about this, but here's a recent NPR story [0] and a Vox article from 2019 [1].

[0] https://www.npr.org/transcripts/154299904

[1] https://www.vox.com/the-goods/2019/7/22/20703858/live-nation...

There was a trial in 2009 that had Katy Perry’s contract with Ticketmaster released into the open - cannot find it at the moment but it was explicit about how many tickets would be available for her to sell etc

This is all open and documented in the upcoming prosecution by US attorney - also cannot find atm

Why shouldn't the artists get a cut of the greater-than-MSRP resale? Yeah, I realize that some pretend that the MSRP is the real price, but if anyone should get a cut of the jacked up fees, it should the people on the stage or producing the show.

I don’t think anyone is arguing otherwise. The frustration is the inaccurate pricing and other monopolistic behavior from TM et al.

I mean, they should have that revenue, and a lot of us want them to just raise the prices for that reason. What's arguably kinda dishonest is when they have deals with Ticketmaster's scam of a resale scheme that result in them getting a large amount of the 'scalping margin' while also yelling about how they price their tickets SO low, and it's scalpers to blame for 'stealing the tickets from all you Real Fans!'

Sounds great. Won't be going to any ticketmaster events ever, and you shouldn't either.

I, too, love a good Tuvan throat death-metal band in the outer suburbs of Ulaanbaatar.

I would _totally_ go to that show.

As much as I dislike Ticketmaster this is pure conspiracy unless you provide sources

I can't confirm what they said, but TicketMaster does have a "partner" reseller program for scalpers where they have tools to help scalpers list and manage resale tickets in bulk. They also have events where they help teach scalpers how to make more money, which is good for TicketMaster since it makes even more money on secondary sales. Ticket scalping used to be illegal, and now TicketMaster is helping facilitate it.

Source: https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/ticketmaster-resellers-las-...

Scalping aside, TicketMaster is taking massive fees each time the same ticket is sold. For example, I went to an event last year and the fee was $50 on each ticket, and these were reseller tickets so TicketMaster had already taken a fee on each of those tickets at least once already (perhaps more than once).

TicketMaster also owns many venues or has exclusive deals with most large venues that prevent those venues from using any other ticket selling platform. The DOJ is currently investigating this monopoly. TicketMaster alleges it is not a monopoly since there are many smaller venues that they are not involved with.

> Scalping aside, TicketMaster is taking massive fees each time the same ticket is sold. For example, I went to an event last year and the fee was $50 on each ticket, and these were reseller tickets so TicketMaster had already taken a fee on each of those tickets at least once already (perhaps more than once).

So your evidence is that you were charged a $50 fee on a separate transaction that didn't involve TicketMaster?

This is not the compelling evidence that you think it is.

Actually, TicketMaster was involved in each transaction. Let's revisit the first paragraph: "TicketMaster is taking massive fees each time the same ticket is sold."

I'll lay it out in detail so it's more clear: TicketMaster sold the original ticket to the scalper. Then the scalper listed the ticket on TicketMaster's secondary market. Then I bought the ticket on TicketMaster's secondary market and TicketMaster collected a $50/ticket fee from me. TicketMaster also collected a fee on each ticket the first time TicketMaster sold those tickets to the scalper.

TicketMaster also charges the scalper a fee to list the ticket, so TicketMaster actually made more than the $50/ticket fee that they collected from me.

It's also possible that the ticket was sold on TicketMaster's secondary market several times before I bought it on TicketMaster's secondary market, which would allow TicketMaster to collect many fees on the same ticket.

Yes, I misunderstood what you wrote.

There are plenty of scalpers who sell tickets outside of TicketMaster, despite their best efforts. Do you think the $50/ticket fee that you paid would have been lower if you'd done your transaction outside of TicketMaster's platform?

I have purchased secondary tickets outside of TicketMaster many times and the fee has always been lower. But, that's anecdotal of course... there's no reason why they couldn't be higher. But, let's leave the actual fee amount aside for a moment...

I'm slightly less concerned with the actual amount of the fee and more concerned with the fact that ticket scalping has apparently become legal and that the original ticket seller is not only in on it, but getting even higher fees on the scalped tickets than the original tickets.

It's disturbing that it's illegal to scalp a single ticket in person outside an event, but if someone does it online with hundreds of tickets then they're a "ticket broker" and that's legal (in California at least).

> It's disturbing that it's illegal to scalp a single ticket in person outside an event, but if someone does it online with hundreds of tickets then they're a "ticket broker" and that's legal (in California at least).

Legal space around ticketing is... insane. The laws protecting "ticker brokers" are cloaked as consumer friendly regulations, and ironically TicketMaster actively lobbies against online "ticket brokers".

> I have purchased secondary tickets outside of TicketMaster many times and the fee has always been lower. But, that's anecdotal of course... there's no reason why they couldn't be higher.

In general, TM's share of resell is much smaller, and the resell market is heavily fee sensitive, as the brokers like to keep as much of the money as they can, so the fees tend to be set by the market (and they didn't go up when TM got in to the business).

I think you can probably re-read and understand that their entire post is about the fact that Ticketmaster hosts, processes, and charges fees on resale tickets.

I know that you already know this, based on your other posts on this thread.

The technology referenced in the post above is, at least in part, to prevent you from reselling the ticket without involving TicketMaster. That may be justified as a way to prevent selling the same ticket more than once, but it’s certainly the case that this is one of many possible approaches, and it’s the one that most favors this business.

It would probably be criminal for the company to act any other way, so I’m not claiming any evil doing here.

> I think you can probably re-read and understand that their entire post is about the fact that Ticketmaster hosts, processes, and charges fees on resale tickets.

Yup. I misread the comment.

LiveNation (who owns Ticketmaster) acknowledges that they do this with the artist's consent. https://archive.md/1JeG5

Even if it's true it's a conspiracy

> Conspiracy

> a secret plan by a group to do something unlawful or harmful.

It could be true but Ticketmaster is explainable by the purely mundane evil of a monopoly. I could be convinced but I too would want evidence.

Not sure why you are saying Taylor Swift's fans are 12 year olds because they aren't. The average age of a Taylor Swift fan is closer to 30.

And because of Taylor Swift there is now a DOJ investigation of ticketmaster. Taylor Swift is not on the side of ticketmaster like you are conspiracizing.

> Taylor Swift is a nice-ish person and ...

Face value on tickets for her last tour started at 75.

All that money went to Taylor. ALL OF IT.

How do you pay for support staff, trucking how do you pay to move t-shrits from one venue to the next.

This is where all those fees come in... It's not the manager grabbing the money (that bit is later), it's the promoter covering the cost of the tour. Paying for staff to haul and set up a stage at every venue, paying for band members, dancers, people to run lights...

The Management (and the artist) will then "hold back" tickets. Most of the best seats are sold one of two ways. Fan club packages, where you pay 3000 bucks to meet the artist, get a photo and get a good seat. - OR - they go directly to the secondary market. This used to be scalpers (who "worked" for management) but now is secondary sales sites.

There are still two more bits: Consessions. Most artist get a pretty hefty kick back after covering venue staffing. These contracts can be weird, but artists, managers and promoters LIKE Ticketmaster being a one stop shop. It lets them negotiate a single deal (and one that is better for the artist) for the whole tour. Then there is merch, this is a gold mine for the artst and management too. Again there is a staffing component but that is covered by the concessions (mostly).

IN a lot of cases a venue will not sell out, and that is FINE. What happens is that the "fans" ran to the front of the line and paid too much for tickets, bought on the secondary market to get good seats. IN many cases there was so much money made at this stage that the monetary value of the rest of the tickets drops to zero....

At that point no one wants an half empty venue... So it gets papered over. They give away tons of free tickets, they "leak" a late box office hold being released... but it's now a fire sale. The nose bleed seats are selling for 5-10 bucks (even in today's market). Because assess in seats sells beer, t-shirts, and a full venue makes it an "experience"

This is the model that Bill Graham built and the vision of the industry he was going towards. TM is still, at its core, Bill Graham Presents.

I used to work in the industry, it's a hot mess and every one is greedy.