No. It’s based on monopoly. There are a limited number of venues that can host a modern superstar, generally no more than one per geography, and Ticketmaster made it a point to represent all of them. Which means any modern superstar and their fans must work through Ticketmaster. Which, in turn, enables this nonsense.

The cause is monopoly. Not “bullying, dark patterns and ripoff;” those are effects.

From the site guidelines:

> Eschew flamebait. Avoid generic tangents. Omit internet tropes.

Live Nation had been engaging in a venue refit programme to make a higher percentage of venue seating - 40% or so - ‘premium’ seating where they can charge far higher rates.

As someone in this thread pointed out the biggest problem with tickets is that (at the top end) musicians certainly but sports teams also sell tickets far below market rates.

It’s a catch 22: if you are a sports team and only sell $1000 tickets you might sell out the show but you alienate your core base who buy lots of other stuff like shirts and caps and beer. If you’re only selling to VIPs you slowly kill what makes your team valuable.

For music it’s harder: for superstar artists you could almost certainly sell out a stadium at crazy prices. But the fans are going to feel gouged and are going to be very vocal and for a lot of musicians that is a red line. There’s been a lot of controversy recently over airline style ‘dynamic’ demand-driven pricing for concerts, and a lot of big name artists have come out against it.

Again, it kills the golden goose. Better to have fans who will pay $100 a ticket every time you tour for the next 20 years whether you are fashionable or not than sell out three years for $1000 a ticket to people who won’t want to buy if you’re not the hot thing.

Or two people buy seats together, one can’t make it, and now the other person is stuck sitting with a stranger. And they have a friend who also wants to go who is also sitting alone.

The venue might still sell out but it’s a worse experience for everyone. Even groups who all get in together get annoyed by people trying to swap seats or cram in the aisles to be with their friends. Venue staff are stuck dealing with crowd control issues.

Similar to how I hear that Disney has basically made going to its resorts and scheduling Fastpass basically a second job.

Sorry, this simply isn't the case. Before TM, the best available ticket was whatever the vendor you were dealing with had in their inventory. TicketMaster was started by 3 people who wanted to make the process of getting the "best available" ticket easier than going to all the disconnected ticket-sellers and finding out who had the best ticket.

The company changed models in the 1980s when a new owner took over who was solely focused on revenue.

> See 1994 Pearl Jam vs TM and monopolistic behavior 30 years ago.

Your takeaway seems different than mine. I see a company who could have changed or been regulated 30 years ago. Now they'll slowly die or be replaced quickly by something better like an AI ticketing system. Finding someone who likes TicketMaster today is impossible. When TM launched, everyone loved it. What a loss.

As many of us here have a role in how our companies are built and what they become, it is worth asking how TM lost its way and how we can avoid bringing the same level of gross, enshittified capitalism into the world with what we build.

We have larger venues for larger artists, almost always international ones, and there ticket prices are often starting at around $80-100 and quickly go way up if you want a good location.

However personally I found I enjoy the sub-$40 concerts the most. Mainly because the smaller venue lets you get close, sound is usually much better and quite often I find a lot more passion on stage at these venues, which turns into more memorable experiences. And if the concert ends up not being my thing or just not that great, then I've just wasted the price of a few beers so no big deal.

One thing that keeps Ticketmaster in its reins here in Norway is our legislation, which limits the kind of processing fee shenanigans and similar they can do. Also scalpers became much less of a problem after they introduced a law that you can't charge more than the original price when reselling tickets.

And honestly? It really improved my concert-going experience.

That's cynical enough for me to want to believe it.

I believe some states have tried that but it runs afoul of individual rights and first sale doctrine. Once I buy something, it's my property and I'm free to sell it for whatever price I can get.

I remember finding some story about a contract for Ke$ha or Kathy Perry or some other pop-concoction of the previous decade getting leaked (*) , and one of the ways in which the artist got paid was trough a percentage of the tickets to distribute trough unofficial resale channels.

The issue that spawned Ticketmaster is that as a class artists are greedy, but they want to pretend they aren't. Being hated is a vital part of that company's business model.

(*) I think it must have been Ke$ha, as that one was involved in some financial dispute, but I can't find the story right now.

I wonder how many simple facts of life like that one remain hidden right under my nose.

Scalping has existed since forever.

The thing was it was local promoters + local sales (aka criminals) who would get tickets from management (yes thats the artists management) and kick the money back to the artist if they were lucky (if not the management kept it).

Now TM owns the venue, they are the promotor, they are the manager(to an extent) and have full control of the tickets, and the secondary market. The artist is now 100 percent in on the action making fans buy a fan club membership then get "face value" tickets at presale only with expensive meet and greet packages that range from a few hundred bucks to a 1000. An artist can tack on 50k to several 100k doing this at every date/venue.

As for TM's uncharges, most of that is because the artist either demands they do it (my prices are reasonable) making TM the scape goat, or they want a sum that is the total of the door and TM needs to cover venue costs and make profit so that just gets baked in as a "fee".

Just to put a fine point on this. In the old model promoters, venues all of those entities being separate and charging a markup made sense. When TM consolidated they didnt change the markup they just kept the margin...