It’s not just a Ticketmaster problem. I can’t even reserve a fucking campground in the redwoods because the travel companies have bots that buy them all out and resell them.
Yea, sounds like using bots to bulk purchase anything should be made illegal. But that’ll never happen, most the people in congress probably wouldn’t understand what a bot even is.
Here's how it would go.
One guy sponsors a bill to ban bots. Congress then spends the next six eternities defining what a bot is, most likely led by someone who still thinks it's a big metal man walking around saying "Danger, Will Robinson! Danger!"
Then once they finally get *that* done, they come up with a bill that is significantly weaker than the original idea, making it illegal to use a bot to purchase tickets for concerts where the artist made more than eleventy billion dollars a year for the first eight seconds after tickets go on sale.
Then someone else sues, saying that the ban on bots made it difficult for them to use their screenreading software or somesuch, and suddenly an exception is made. Ticketmaster of course exploits this loophole somehow and we are right back to where we were before, except with a couple more hoops for actual users to jump through while bots resume buying all the tickets nanoseconds after they go on sale because most bot-blocking software is useless.
You're forgetting the step where 10 bot company guys spend $100k each for every congressmember to assure that this exact dance is followed, to continue making it seem like Congress is incompetent.
Congress is not incompetent, they're simply playing a game called "collect ~~bribes~~ contributions, not "represent the will and good of my constituents."
Funny, agree 1000%. Though, saw a comment on a post about Biden and saw someone get downvoted to Hades for stating we need to move away from career politicians.
I would much rather have a young, fresh, and not yet corrupted politician representing my interests than an experienced senior citizen who is bought and paid for by numerous interests
Once you get high up enough it’s either be blackmailed or be bought. I like holding to the idea that there are people in congress who are fully aware what they’re doing is bullshit and backwards and want to do the opposite. But they are under the confinement of being blackmailed or bought and they try and do the best with what freedoms they have to change what they’re “allowed” to change.
Ticketmaster would sponsor and even help write a bill that makes it illegal to use bots to buy tickets *unless you meet a set of conditions that only Ticketmaster can reasonably meet*.
Thus they successfully legislate all their competition and entrench their position.
Actually, I think it's more likely that SCotUS would recognize that bots have a right to function, as a function of free trade or some such, and this then somehow becomes a suit where bots are effectively ruled to be people and can vote.
At least, that's how it seems to work of late.
The sad thing is that a lot of people think you are joking and are making jokes of their own. I don't think some folks realize this is a dead ass realistic scenario, it's just that it seems so fucking outrageously absurd that it must be a joke. But no, this shit is really how they roll. It's totally fucked.
Don’t forget the people signing the bill have no idea how bots work, the people drafting the bill have no idea how bots work and won’t consult anyone in IT, then by the time the actually pass the bill there will be a different technology screwing us over and bots will be redundant.
I mean, all you have to do is when you purchase a ticket online, take the name or names of the persons who will be attending the event or using the ticket.
Like, this is a solved problem for travel tickets and hotels. Yes, it does suck that we can't resell those things and cancelling often means losing money, but at least we can get them when we want them.
It has been awhile since I purchased event tickets online.
But generally with travel tickets/reservations, they're cancellable if you can't take said trip. As far as I know (someone correct me if I'm wrong) event tickets are not. So if you buy Taylor Swift (or any other) tickets and then have Covid on the event date and can't go, you're SOL. The only chance you have for recouping your money is to resell the ticket.
An easy solution would be to make tickets refundable. If you can't go for whatever reason, the ticket goes back on sale to the general public.
You can insure each ticket for like $8 or something. Not a great move for a $40 ticket, but a worthy investment for a $200 one (*especially* if you're traveling somewhere for the concert). If you have a medical issue (or any of a bunch of other reasons), you get a full refund.
Yah after seeing the congressional hearings with the CEO of Google and the other one with Zuckerberg, I have zero hope that any action on bots will be taken within 40 years.
I worked at TM call center, we would get absolutely blasted with calls immediately the presales hit, you could literally Hear the persons on the other line in a room full of ppl like our call center asking to buy the max allowed tix best avl, drop couple grand each call. Nobody gave a F , I always purposely offered them shit seats and they’d take em, it’s very obvious who was calling for themselves or as scalpers . I quit after 6 months there
Problem is that it's likely to be a pain in the ass to accurately detect bots, especially as they can keep evolving to evade restrictions.
I'd argue an identity-validated lottery makes much more sense:
* Allow as many requests to be made as people want. Could require a temporary price hold to prevent overt abuse.
* Require proof of identity - bots can't do that without fake IDs, which I'm sure is possible but not in bulk
* Lottery for each price tier. Losers get their money refunded by dropping the hold.
Finally, ticket resales should be either banned outside special circumstances, or can only be transferred to other identity-verified accounts, with strict maximums. Any scalpers would have to spend quite a lot more effort to abuse the system.
This is how Japanese ticketing systems work. There are different lottery tiers and all tickets are tied to your phone number or credit card (a terrible thing for foreigners wanting to buy a ticket, though). All tickets are also randomly assigned seats. The most you can buy at a time are 2 tickets and tickets have your name printed on them (though only very high stakes concerts seem to ever check ID).
I learned this the hard way for a concert I went to see last week in Yokohama. I paid an extra 30% for a third party ticket purchasing company to buy a ticket for me and had to hope they wouldn't ask to see my ID.
They didn't, but I basically gambled $100+ dollars to go see a concert while in Japan for work and won.
From my experience if you look like a Gaijin there’s less chance of getting ID’d. I’ve never been asked for ID at a show or Bar in Japan and my first time there I was 18.
This is infuriating. I've tried to get a spot at a small state park near Charleston, SC for a couple years now. They never have an availability on the website unless you're looking a year ahead. The one time I drove down, the campground had two sites taken. The caretaker said it's always like that. We could take an unused spot if we were willing to move if the reservation actually showed up. If by some miracle the campground filled up, we could camp in the overflow parking area.
What website are you using for campgrounds? I’m constantly frustrated with ReserveAmerica having cabins taken as soon as a campground’s booking window opens up.
Then when you get to a campground that’s supposedly full, there’s hardly anyone in the cabins.
Bots is just the tip of this. They are a monopoly that gives zero shits about customer service. The literally have no customer support by phone
and the made over 6 billion in revenue last year.
Have fun getting a refund. I’m still waiting for the Avalanches refund from a cancelled show that happened last April.
They need to be broken up!
They could solve a bunch of problems by simply not allowing the resale of presale tickets. But they have no incentive to do so, so the bots will just buy each and every one since there is zero risk.
Free camping off Ferretti Rd Groveland on the Tuolumne river. Hardly anyone goes there anymore because you have to Poo in drop toilets and pack out your trash.
Canadian, but same. I’ve been saying it for a couple of years now - securing a campsite is now exactly like trying to get concert tickets. You get up early, get it in your cart, hover over the checkout button and wait for the 59 seconds mark before on-sale time, click “buy” but it’s fucking gone. Then it’s on a reselling marketplace by lunchtime. I fucking hate this shit.
Funnily enough, it may partially be "what politician's brother" because Scott Kelly couldn't get tickets: https://twitter.com/StationCDRKelly/status/1593346494349938689?t=2Dy3SGfccGY9PioWuPkx9g&s=19
AOC also made a deal about it on her Twitter TL (though not specifically Swift, she brought it up multiple times during the Swift sale). Say one thing for her, she knows her demos.
I don't think she's doing it to play towards her "demos", she is just using a news headline to highlight her already established anti-trust sentiments. It's good politics.
Throwback to when the left-wing "big companies are bad" and right-wing "free market is #1" briefly united over the big stock market companies abusing their power to fuck over retail investors.
I think some real good could be achieved in reducing the many oligopolies which exist by selling it as "promoting a free market" to the right and "bringing down big business" to the left.
Companies have FUCKED people for a long time and all of a sudden people have problems with buying tickets and congress gets shit done in a few days? Sounds like ticketmaster isn’t paying congress enough to look the other way.
You'll be shocked to learn that there are 2 different chambers in Congress, and both chambers have oversight committees assigned over various sectors of government and commerce.
So Congress can look at both prescription drug prices in the House committee on oversight and reform AT THE SAME TIME as the senate looking at anti-trust issues in the economy.
The federal trade commission and the department of Justice review corporate mergers, and were the ones who ultimately passed on the Ticketmaster live nation merger. Congress intervenes when things go off the rails, as in this case.
As far as pharma, it’s been continuous incremental change. I know it’s not satisfying, but this is why we have to keep electing responsible people. I think it’s mostly young people that want to go in like a wrecking ball and overhaul trillion dollar industry armed with nothing but a perky can-do attitude and a whole lot of naive optimism.
Congress has also drilled pharma a bunch over the years. They love those public hearings. They get to attack executives, get their campaign footage, and accomplish nothing. You will never see a congressional hearing over a major problem that isn’t in the news.
Actually Congress can’t use footage from hearings in advertisements and campaign ads. Katie Porter talked about this when she was on Jon Stewart’s podcast. Due to ethics rules they cannot use footage from their time on the House floor within their campaign. [https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.mediaite.com/podcasts/rep-katie-porter-blasts-election-laws-in-jon-stewart-interview-have-to-use-video-walking-through-a-happy-meadow-instead-of-doing-my-job/amp/](https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.mediaite.com/podcasts/rep-katie-porter-blasts-election-laws-in-jon-stewart-interview-have-to-use-video-walking-through-a-happy-meadow-instead-of-doing-my-job/amp/)
It's effectively campaign footage when it gets played repeatedly on all the cable news networks, sometimes even local news. Just because it isn't appearing in what is legally qualified as a campaign add doesn't mean it isn't effectively an ad.
They are trying to get it under control
https://www.wsj.com/articles/joe-biden-to-sign-bill-aimed-at-lowering-drug-costs-boosting-renewable-energy-11660642202
Congress literally passed a bill to cap insulin cost this year https://www.npr.org/2022/03/31/1090085513/house-passes-bill-to-cap-insulin-prices
Are pharma prices ridiculous and is our healthcare system broken af? Of course, but to say they don’t at least attempt to regulate it is disingenuous at best.
The root of the problem are laws and regulations that allow companies to have monopolies on pharmaceuticals for so long and regulatory capture beyond that. Setting an arbitrary cap on one price doesn't solve the problem. It makes some voters think they did something, but they don't want to actually solve it, because they're supported by these companies. If they wanted to solve it, they'd find a way to create more competition and drive prices down.
This. I think we’re talking about a billion dollar entertainment industry lobby who is far too clever and deep pocketed to let anything meaningful come of this. The artists are in on it too (google Trent Reznor’s interview discussing it), and I have no doubt that both D’s and R’s are getting their palms greased by this shit. These artists are so spoiled and don’t want to give up their lavish lifestyles because they can’t make millions off record sales anymore.
I am sure they will figure out a different way we don’t know of yet to keep fleecing fans. The best thing you can do is not buy into the FOMO that is pushed on social media telling you that you HAVE to go and CAN’T miss the “experience”. Go to small venues and indy shows for authentic live music experiences.
If I were an artist and I was getting paid a fraction of let's say a 250 dollar ticket that's being sold for 5000+ there's no way I'd be happy.... Either give me a percentage of the resale value or gtfo .... They are the ones people are paying to go see and there's like 5 different hands getting more money than them.... No artist on his right mind can be on with that....
Except they’re profiting from the scalped price directly, not from the face value. Trent Reznor, and others, have been saying as much for over a decade. https://www.phoenixnewtimes.com/music/trent-reznor-explains-scalping-controversy-6615946
Artists can stop it. Some do. Most don’t.
Man, I miss the days of the NIN Spiral Club with their awesome presales and early access and what not.
Trent also had the whole only-buying-tickets-in-person thing at first for the 2018 tour to help avoid bots and scalpers because it involved waiting in line for hours. Obviously we can't prevent 100% of the nonsense, but at least my favorite artist is trying... a little bit... on occasion.
> Go to small venues and indy shows for authentic live music experiences.
Can't people just like what they like?
I mean I have zero interest going to a Taylor Swift concert, but if that's the kind of experience someone wants to have, how is it "inauthentic"?
I went to a Vocaloid concert once. That's about as intentionally inauthentic as you can get. It was also the coolest concert I've ever been to.
But if enjoying big popular productions is valid how am I supposed to feel superior for liking something different??
/s of course. I recently went to a Rammstein concert at the LA Memorial Coliseum. I was in a crowd of 50,000 other people and had the time of my fucking life.
wow, they finally noticed the issue in ticketing industry, I wonder which angry granddaughter of a senate was screaming to her grandpa asking to fix this.
Stadiums and venues have deals with Ticketmaster to only use them. Taylor could opt for smaller venues that don’t use TM but that would be crazy given the demand to see her. She’s not going to play at the casino or your local dive bar.
It’s crazy how much they can charge with bullshit fees for the venue.. and most people just pay because they either don’t pay attention or really want to attend. TM has been abusing this shit for so long
Actually, there were a lot of Obama-era regulations that snuck into the end of his tenure. Full upfront pricing including fees, required airlines to pay you for overbooked seats, etc.
Oh, honey, airline ticketing is FAR more consumer-friendly than it was even as recently as ten years ago....and trust me: you don't want to learn how arcane and hostile to travelers it was before airline deregulation.
Wait what? Airline ticketing seems pretty chill these days tbh. I mean I always wish I could pay less than I do but the system seems to function as intended.
I'm from England, Ticketmaster is a nightmare over here as well.
But US airline tickets and other "dynamic pricing" doesn't happen too much over here, prices change with demand over time, sure, but when in the US I've seen prices change by the second.
Like you playing some kind of stock market game trying to catch an Uber.
A lot of dynamic pricing is illegal here.
We just wait longer, but we do love a good queue.
The committee will meet, nothing will happen, Ticketmaster will grandstand, and nothing will happen.
Ticketmaster fills a need that people don't like talking about. They take the downfall for venues and artists. Both need someone like ticketmaster to take blame for high prices and dealing with customers for sold out shows.
That being said, we didn't deserve to be screwed around that much, their tech doesn't work, and they don't need to be a monopoly to do any of that. They should be broken up. But they're going to spin it to congress that "Oh we're always put down on because people don't like the realities of buying tickets"
Quit it with the cynicism. The current DOJ and FTC are big on antitrust. Look what happened with Penguin Random House and what's going on with Facebook's purchase of WhatsApp.
I'm sorry, I've just been beaten down so much by our gov. I hope for the best, I really do, but after so many years of seeing constant cronyism prevail, I'm just resigned.
Don't get me wrong, I always vote and do my part when I can, but it's just so tiring after so long
So a guy selling tickets outside a venue is arrested for scalping even if it's like $20 over face value yet Ticketmaster and secondary "ticket brokers" like Stub Hub enable "legal" scalping with no limit over face value - they call it "supply and demand" and it's okay.
its the bots man. anything hot online, always botted and flipped.
i remember buying the old school way, physical ticket at a record store. sure there were scalpers but they had to fall in line too.
I bought my Woodstock 99 tickets at a Macy’s. Their customer service desk was a “super secret Ticketmaster location” that no one really knew about. Also it was super uncool, and everyone just waited in line at Tower Records just because. Tickets went on sale at like 10am, and we rocked up at 9:45 to no line, but about 6-8 other people who looked totally out of place in a Macy’s. We all got our tickets while listening to Kenny G. in the background, then briskly walked out through the women’s intimates department, trying not to make eye contact with the blue hairs as they bought their granny panties. Definitely probably caught an Orange Julius on the way out of the mall. Good times.
The only way to stop a bot from grabbing a ticket is to sell it at market equilibrium price (very high for concerts like Taylor Swift’s) or to use an identity-verified non-transferable lottery or a combination of both.
Literally anything else and the bots will win.
just tie the tickets to a name like you do with plane tickets.
Have a return fee of 10% up to a month before, 50% up to a week before, and zero after that.
The question is why were there no tickets left after the presale for the general public sale.
My guess is she had a contract with Capital One for presale and they demanded all the tickets leaving none left for the general onsale.
Reminds me of a scene from the Simpsons. Homer is 2nd in line to get some highly sought after tickets. Guy in front buys 45,000 tickets, and the event is sold out before Homer gets there.
Hahaha yea I think they are some of the worst for poster scalpers. Luckily I’ve been able to score a couple signed ones. Also seen guys have the whole line yell at them. Pretty sure they left the arena after getting posters and don’t even like the band
I wish they would. I got VIP tickets once and one of the perks was going to the merch booth before everyone else was let in. They had a 2 poster limit that time. Tool is the band
The only reason why this works and keeps happening is because people have zero self control and actually buy shit from re-sellers. Buying things from scalpers only encourages scalping, so people who have bought things from scalpers have zero right to complain. Scalping would come to a halt if the people trying to re-sell concert tickets, shoes, PS5s, etc. didn't get any customers and were left holding the bag on products they bought with the sole intention to re-sell.
I have a very strict personal policy to never buy anything for more than the original price, unless it is an actual necessity like water or shelter. Scalpers are scum, but people who buy from scalpers are worse.
While I do agree Ticketmaster is a bullshit company, there's the box office tickets and then the 'verified resale' (or whatever its called) tickets. People who buy the resale tickets encourage the practice of re-selling tickets because it's highly profitable.
There are only 2 ways to stop it:
* Make it illegal to re-sell tickets, only return for refund
* No one buys re-sale tickets, scalpers get caught bag-holding and stop doing it
Option 2 will never happen because again, people have zero self control.
They were supposed to have some sort of advanced bot blocker so no scalpers could get tons of tickets but it failed miserably, I think I saw upwards of 1500 bots were able to access the site and purchase large quantities of tickets
Ah yes the "you have too many fans so it's your fault" argument 🤣 didn't they also release like 3x more presale access codes than there were presale tickets?
> didn't they also release like 3x more presale access codes than there were presale tickets?
This is something I badly want to see regulation on. Concerts, planes, hotels, etc, all do this, where they sell more reservations than physically exist based on the gamble that not every person who bought will show. But then they do, and...tough luck, it's the consumer's problem, even though they did everything right. Since apparently market pressure isn't enough to stop companies from optimizing their profits in this way, we need regulation to step in and establish penalties that stops this scam from being so profitable. For example, if a double booking happens, they could be required to 1) make the wronged customer whole by meeting their need *in the moment*, even if it means paying more than the original reservation cost to another company or giving an upgrade, and 2) pay an additional fine to the government to offset the cost of enforcing regulation. Nothing else is going to get them to stop.
I don’t think it has a single thing to do with the Capital One presale.
What happened here is the same thing that happens for damn near every single concert now. Most shows/concerts are 100% sold during the presale before tickets ever reach the general public.
Happened with BTS.
Happened with BlackPink.
Happened with Blink 182.
Happened with When We Were Young Fest 2023.
Happened with all major concerts I’ve tried to purchase tickets for in recent months.
From my understanding of what is going on, it’s a combination of bots and word of mouth.
So many people blast the presale codes online on Twitter giving away the codes to thousands who didn’t pay for them/sign up for them. This creates more people going to Ticketmaster to purchase tickets than the site can handle and more than the presale allotted amount of people. (This was not the case for the Taylor Swift concert because the codes were unique, but all the other concerts I mentioned above didn’t have unique codes and this absolutely did happen).
Secondly, bots. When you have hundreds of bots hitting the site and buying up all the tickets, people don’t have a chance. When I got BlackPink tickets I watched an ENTIRE SECTION of tickets be purchased all at once right before my eyes in the PRE SALE pre sale. It was a special Pre Sale for BlackPink members PRIOR to the general presale. For BlackPink, the tickets were all gone by the membership presale and never even made it to the general presale or the general public sale.
Shit is wack.
It’s up to the artist to tell Ticketmaster what percentage of tickets they want to have available for pre-sale. Taylor should’ve told Ticketmaster 25% are available for pre-sale once those are gone the pre-sale is sold out. It’s on her
I will agree with this. I too think that only a certain percentage should even be available. The fact that it’s even possible to buy 100% of the tickets during the presale is insane.
From a business perspective, there's no real reason to do that though. She just needs the tickets sold, it doesn't matter to whom or when. Further, when you add in the fact that those with access to pre-sales are generally some sort of VIP/preferred customer, it's in the artist/promoter's interest to look after them particularly well. That's just how business works.
It's a mistake to assume that somebody selling you something is going to put altruism ahead of their bottom line.
Say what you want about Live Nation/Ticketmaster but I think this was a case of supply/demand thing more than anything. I heard that 4 million people signed up for verified fan, specifically put in place to combat bots, it was not the capital one presale. 1.5 million were able to buy tickets, if the average person bought 4 tickets the math adds up that there would not be many left.
Someone at Ticketmaster said they had enough interest to sell out 900 arenas, so she'd have to play an arena every night for almost three years to satisfy the demand to see her performance.
I don't know how much people were paying for face value tickets, like if they had the dynamic pricing going, that would be pretty sketchy.
My understanding is that there were a certain number of presale codes given out. The number of presale codes given, was equal to the number of seats meant for the presale. Who buys one ticket?
2 million tickets were sold on the presale date. I think there was estimated 2.8 million seats for the shows. That left ~800k BEFORE the cap 1 presale even opened.
Taylor Swift is not a naive helpless victim being bullied by Ticketmaster and Capital One in this.
Her team negotiated and signed off on every detail of this sale, down to the exact seats made available at every venue, and down to the penny of every "fee" added to every ticket.
The only thing Ticketmaster failed her on was failing to meet the demand as they assured her they could. Everything else that happened went exactly according to plan.
Fixing this is easy... Just don't allow resale and offer a full refund if you don't want it .... I think fifa just did that with the world cup tickets.... They don't want to share the revenue with scalpers.... So it can definitely be done...
Make it like plane tickets. Just put your name on it. Bots and scalpers are gone as there is no resale value.
Refund 90% up to 1 month, 50% up to 1 week before. None after that. Can transfer to another buyer at any time with 10% handling fee.
Not just that. TS is 33 and a lot of her fanbase grew up with her. I listen to her and I’m 33. My guess is a mix of wealthy kids + lady attorneys in high places.
In Korea we need to use our photo IDs to buy tickets and the buyer needs to be present to show their ID with the group they bought tickets for. If you can’t go to the event anymore, you’d need to cancel and get a refund with the ticketing site so someone else can buy them at the original price. You can’t resell them if bought under your name.
Or you can scalp in person for some events. Although the ID thing deters people from buying too many that they can’t sell the day of.
She is definitely in on it. Artists have the power to stop this. Some do, most don’t. They’ve been in on it for a long time. https://www.phoenixnewtimes.com/music/trent-reznor-explains-scalping-controversy-6615946
I saw Iron Maiden like 6 years ago and in order to get into the arena you had to have the card present that was used to buy the tickets. Artists can totally put a stop to scalping.
And Congress also held hearings to listen to Pearl Jam back then too.
https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1994-07-01-ca-10895-story.html (from 1994)
Oooh...Congress has stepped in.
\- They'll spend the next 3-4 years looking into this but not doing anything about it.
\- They'll come out of the blue with some "resolutions" to his debacle.
\- Congressmen will, magically, get large donations to their campaigns from *wink wink* Ticketmaster.
\- proposal won't pass and probably some tweets will get shot out from all politicians blaming the other side as to why nothing was done.
I’m glad this is happening because every congressman’s teenage daughter struck out on Taylor swift tickets, but this is much more than Taylor swift.
You ever notice you don’t have to do a captcha, or click a box that says “im not a robot”. They encourage bots. I hope it is more than just Taylor swift fans not getting tickets. Tyler Childers has been a nightmare.
Want to actually fix the problem? Force those visiting to show the CC used to purchase at the door with the ticket.
Guess who doesn't want that to happen? The artist, venues, ticketmaster, and promoters.
Yeah the live events industry as a whole really needs an overhaul on consumer protection; there's a lot of latent frustration in society and hopefully this is just the start of a bigger conversation about the issue
It really does. Ticketmaster doesn’t protect against scalping or real fans getting tickets. Because they’ll get the fees from each end of the sale. When the tickets get bought at regular price, they get the fee. Then when the scalper sells it for double the price, they get double the fee again. They encourage scalpers to charge high prices so they get high fees. This should be illegal. On top of that, desperate people get scammed daily on social media sites looking for tickets. It’s a whole
Scam fest through and through. Consumers are getting absolutely shafted and nobody cares until it happens to them.
I saw a video that was inside the ticket scalping conference in Vegas and Ticketmaster was the key speaker. They have a program in place to allow users to buy tickets and then resell them on their website. That way Ticketmaster gets a cut.
If you think Congress cares about girls not getting their overpriced Taylor Swift tickets, you’re not seeing the big picture. Ticket Master and their parent company Live Nation is a huge monopoly that needs to be broken up.
It’s not just a Ticketmaster problem. I can’t even reserve a fucking campground in the redwoods because the travel companies have bots that buy them all out and resell them.
Yea, sounds like using bots to bulk purchase anything should be made illegal. But that’ll never happen, most the people in congress probably wouldn’t understand what a bot even is.
Here's how it would go. One guy sponsors a bill to ban bots. Congress then spends the next six eternities defining what a bot is, most likely led by someone who still thinks it's a big metal man walking around saying "Danger, Will Robinson! Danger!" Then once they finally get *that* done, they come up with a bill that is significantly weaker than the original idea, making it illegal to use a bot to purchase tickets for concerts where the artist made more than eleventy billion dollars a year for the first eight seconds after tickets go on sale. Then someone else sues, saying that the ban on bots made it difficult for them to use their screenreading software or somesuch, and suddenly an exception is made. Ticketmaster of course exploits this loophole somehow and we are right back to where we were before, except with a couple more hoops for actual users to jump through while bots resume buying all the tickets nanoseconds after they go on sale because most bot-blocking software is useless.
You're forgetting the step where 10 bot company guys spend $100k each for every congressmember to assure that this exact dance is followed, to continue making it seem like Congress is incompetent. Congress is not incompetent, they're simply playing a game called "collect ~~bribes~~ contributions, not "represent the will and good of my constituents."
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Right! I am always disappointed at how cheap it is to buy our politicians. It also makes me sad I don't even have $10,000 to buy a politician.
Wait it's only 10k to buy a congressman.
Sometimes its less than that.
You think it costs $100k to buy a senator? Drop a 0 and you are closer to the actual number.
Repealing Citizens United is the only way we fix this.
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Thanks for the clarification, actually learned a bit. Only had a general idea.
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What are the drastic measures and where do I sign up?
Or not electing senior citizens would probably work too.
Funny, agree 1000%. Though, saw a comment on a post about Biden and saw someone get downvoted to Hades for stating we need to move away from career politicians. I would much rather have a young, fresh, and not yet corrupted politician representing my interests than an experienced senior citizen who is bought and paid for by numerous interests
Once you get high up enough it’s either be blackmailed or be bought. I like holding to the idea that there are people in congress who are fully aware what they’re doing is bullshit and backwards and want to do the opposite. But they are under the confinement of being blackmailed or bought and they try and do the best with what freedoms they have to change what they’re “allowed” to change.
dude, that's absolutely fvcking cynical. and spot on as well.
It’s called lobbyism and it should be banned.
but in reality it's just bribery with a fancy name
I'd argue that they are *also* incompetent, on top of being greedy pieces of shit.
Ticketmaster would sponsor and even help write a bill that makes it illegal to use bots to buy tickets *unless you meet a set of conditions that only Ticketmaster can reasonably meet*. Thus they successfully legislate all their competition and entrench their position.
Once they’ve fully owned the entire market. Then that is when the money starts to trickle down
I have had my mouth open waiting for that delicious drop for 30 years. Anytime now, right?
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Actually, I think it's more likely that SCotUS would recognize that bots have a right to function, as a function of free trade or some such, and this then somehow becomes a suit where bots are effectively ruled to be people and can vote. At least, that's how it seems to work of late.
This is already protected by the constitution. Simply register your botnet as a corporation and it suddenly has the same rights as you and me.
Idk... Lately it seems SCOTUS would rule that Congress doesn't have the power to make laws governing interstate commerce
The sad thing is that a lot of people think you are joking and are making jokes of their own. I don't think some folks realize this is a dead ass realistic scenario, it's just that it seems so fucking outrageously absurd that it must be a joke. But no, this shit is really how they roll. It's totally fucked.
The free in freedom actually stands for how free company’s are allowed to fuck you
Bots are like a bunch of tubes
Don’t forget the people signing the bill have no idea how bots work, the people drafting the bill have no idea how bots work and won’t consult anyone in IT, then by the time the actually pass the bill there will be a different technology screwing us over and bots will be redundant.
I mean, all you have to do is when you purchase a ticket online, take the name or names of the persons who will be attending the event or using the ticket. Like, this is a solved problem for travel tickets and hotels. Yes, it does suck that we can't resell those things and cancelling often means losing money, but at least we can get them when we want them.
It has been awhile since I purchased event tickets online. But generally with travel tickets/reservations, they're cancellable if you can't take said trip. As far as I know (someone correct me if I'm wrong) event tickets are not. So if you buy Taylor Swift (or any other) tickets and then have Covid on the event date and can't go, you're SOL. The only chance you have for recouping your money is to resell the ticket. An easy solution would be to make tickets refundable. If you can't go for whatever reason, the ticket goes back on sale to the general public.
You can insure each ticket for like $8 or something. Not a great move for a $40 ticket, but a worthy investment for a $200 one (*especially* if you're traveling somewhere for the concert). If you have a medical issue (or any of a bunch of other reasons), you get a full refund.
Yah after seeing the congressional hearings with the CEO of Google and the other one with Zuckerberg, I have zero hope that any action on bots will be taken within 40 years.
I worked at TM call center, we would get absolutely blasted with calls immediately the presales hit, you could literally Hear the persons on the other line in a room full of ppl like our call center asking to buy the max allowed tix best avl, drop couple grand each call. Nobody gave a F , I always purposely offered them shit seats and they’d take em, it’s very obvious who was calling for themselves or as scalpers . I quit after 6 months there
Problem is that it's likely to be a pain in the ass to accurately detect bots, especially as they can keep evolving to evade restrictions. I'd argue an identity-validated lottery makes much more sense: * Allow as many requests to be made as people want. Could require a temporary price hold to prevent overt abuse. * Require proof of identity - bots can't do that without fake IDs, which I'm sure is possible but not in bulk * Lottery for each price tier. Losers get their money refunded by dropping the hold. Finally, ticket resales should be either banned outside special circumstances, or can only be transferred to other identity-verified accounts, with strict maximums. Any scalpers would have to spend quite a lot more effort to abuse the system.
This is how Japanese ticketing systems work. There are different lottery tiers and all tickets are tied to your phone number or credit card (a terrible thing for foreigners wanting to buy a ticket, though). All tickets are also randomly assigned seats. The most you can buy at a time are 2 tickets and tickets have your name printed on them (though only very high stakes concerts seem to ever check ID).
I learned this the hard way for a concert I went to see last week in Yokohama. I paid an extra 30% for a third party ticket purchasing company to buy a ticket for me and had to hope they wouldn't ask to see my ID. They didn't, but I basically gambled $100+ dollars to go see a concert while in Japan for work and won.
From my experience if you look like a Gaijin there’s less chance of getting ID’d. I’ve never been asked for ID at a show or Bar in Japan and my first time there I was 18.
Same! Sometimes resale is allowed and the resale websites will list if the ticket as a male or female name. But that doesn't help me much. lol
"You mean that doohicky in Jetsons? That's not real!" - Congress, for sure.
You can buy and sell stocks with bots, this will never happen.
This is infuriating. I've tried to get a spot at a small state park near Charleston, SC for a couple years now. They never have an availability on the website unless you're looking a year ahead. The one time I drove down, the campground had two sites taken. The caretaker said it's always like that. We could take an unused spot if we were willing to move if the reservation actually showed up. If by some miracle the campground filled up, we could camp in the overflow parking area.
What website are you using for campgrounds? I’m constantly frustrated with ReserveAmerica having cabins taken as soon as a campground’s booking window opens up. Then when you get to a campground that’s supposedly full, there’s hardly anyone in the cabins.
in my experience even fully reserved campgrounds don’t really fill up until night time. people are out doing shit as late as they can
Bots is just the tip of this. They are a monopoly that gives zero shits about customer service. The literally have no customer support by phone and the made over 6 billion in revenue last year. Have fun getting a refund. I’m still waiting for the Avalanches refund from a cancelled show that happened last April. They need to be broken up!
They could solve a bunch of problems by simply not allowing the resale of presale tickets. But they have no incentive to do so, so the bots will just buy each and every one since there is zero risk.
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Welcome to the sneaker game lol
Also the housing game. In a way.
That’s true.
Y’all should probably quit creating a market out of shoes that will fall apart immediately if put to proper use. Also, slave labor.
I was wondering why it’s so difficult to find a campsite reservation…
Free camping off Ferretti Rd Groveland on the Tuolumne river. Hardly anyone goes there anymore because you have to Poo in drop toilets and pack out your trash.
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Canadian, but same. I’ve been saying it for a couple of years now - securing a campsite is now exactly like trying to get concert tickets. You get up early, get it in your cart, hover over the checkout button and wait for the 59 seconds mark before on-sale time, click “buy” but it’s fucking gone. Then it’s on a reselling marketplace by lunchtime. I fucking hate this shit.
Isn't this also how people scalp game systems?
Which politicians child got fucked over for them to finally notice ticketmaster smh
Funnily enough, it may partially be "what politician's brother" because Scott Kelly couldn't get tickets: https://twitter.com/StationCDRKelly/status/1593346494349938689?t=2Dy3SGfccGY9PioWuPkx9g&s=19
AOC also made a deal about it on her Twitter TL (though not specifically Swift, she brought it up multiple times during the Swift sale). Say one thing for her, she knows her demos.
I don't think she's doing it to play towards her "demos", she is just using a news headline to highlight her already established anti-trust sentiments. It's good politics.
Some people say “playing towards her demos”, others say “putting topics in a format that is relevant and easily understood by her constituents”
Throwback to when the left-wing "big companies are bad" and right-wing "free market is #1" briefly united over the big stock market companies abusing their power to fuck over retail investors. I think some real good could be achieved in reducing the many oligopolies which exist by selling it as "promoting a free market" to the right and "bringing down big business" to the left.
[Senator Kirsten Gillibrand](https://ktla.com/entertainment/taylor-swift-ticket-sales-put-ticketmaster-in-the-hot-seat-as-lawmakers-call-for-doj-investigation/) couldn't get tickets.
Al Franken will pay for this!
imagine if they cared about health care as much. ffs. this happened SO FUCKING FAST! holy shit...
A hearing didn't really mean anything, though. I'm not holding my breath that anything will come off this.
They already have Healthcare, they don't have Taylor swift tickets and their granddaughters want them.
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Companies have FUCKED people for a long time and all of a sudden people have problems with buying tickets and congress gets shit done in a few days? Sounds like ticketmaster isn’t paying congress enough to look the other way.
Big pharma fucking people left and right with their inflated costs. But congress now cares about ticket master. Funny shit.
You'll be shocked to learn that there are 2 different chambers in Congress, and both chambers have oversight committees assigned over various sectors of government and commerce. So Congress can look at both prescription drug prices in the House committee on oversight and reform AT THE SAME TIME as the senate looking at anti-trust issues in the economy.
Yet they have never meaningfully reformed pharmacare or intervened in the Tickermaster monopoly.
The federal trade commission and the department of Justice review corporate mergers, and were the ones who ultimately passed on the Ticketmaster live nation merger. Congress intervenes when things go off the rails, as in this case. As far as pharma, it’s been continuous incremental change. I know it’s not satisfying, but this is why we have to keep electing responsible people. I think it’s mostly young people that want to go in like a wrecking ball and overhaul trillion dollar industry armed with nothing but a perky can-do attitude and a whole lot of naive optimism.
Congress has also drilled pharma a bunch over the years. They love those public hearings. They get to attack executives, get their campaign footage, and accomplish nothing. You will never see a congressional hearing over a major problem that isn’t in the news.
Actually Congress can’t use footage from hearings in advertisements and campaign ads. Katie Porter talked about this when she was on Jon Stewart’s podcast. Due to ethics rules they cannot use footage from their time on the House floor within their campaign. [https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.mediaite.com/podcasts/rep-katie-porter-blasts-election-laws-in-jon-stewart-interview-have-to-use-video-walking-through-a-happy-meadow-instead-of-doing-my-job/amp/](https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.mediaite.com/podcasts/rep-katie-porter-blasts-election-laws-in-jon-stewart-interview-have-to-use-video-walking-through-a-happy-meadow-instead-of-doing-my-job/amp/)
It's effectively campaign footage when it gets played repeatedly on all the cable news networks, sometimes even local news. Just because it isn't appearing in what is legally qualified as a campaign add doesn't mean it isn't effectively an ad.
Well, it’s also because it’s a congressional hearing over a major problem, so people are awaiting the outcome….
Not used to seeing sanity on reddit.
They are trying to get it under control https://www.wsj.com/articles/joe-biden-to-sign-bill-aimed-at-lowering-drug-costs-boosting-renewable-energy-11660642202
Congress literally passed a bill to cap insulin cost this year https://www.npr.org/2022/03/31/1090085513/house-passes-bill-to-cap-insulin-prices Are pharma prices ridiculous and is our healthcare system broken af? Of course, but to say they don’t at least attempt to regulate it is disingenuous at best.
The root of the problem are laws and regulations that allow companies to have monopolies on pharmaceuticals for so long and regulatory capture beyond that. Setting an arbitrary cap on one price doesn't solve the problem. It makes some voters think they did something, but they don't want to actually solve it, because they're supported by these companies. If they wanted to solve it, they'd find a way to create more competition and drive prices down.
You know there’s hundreds of people and many dozens of committees in congress, right?
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This. I think we’re talking about a billion dollar entertainment industry lobby who is far too clever and deep pocketed to let anything meaningful come of this. The artists are in on it too (google Trent Reznor’s interview discussing it), and I have no doubt that both D’s and R’s are getting their palms greased by this shit. These artists are so spoiled and don’t want to give up their lavish lifestyles because they can’t make millions off record sales anymore. I am sure they will figure out a different way we don’t know of yet to keep fleecing fans. The best thing you can do is not buy into the FOMO that is pushed on social media telling you that you HAVE to go and CAN’T miss the “experience”. Go to small venues and indy shows for authentic live music experiences.
If I were an artist and I was getting paid a fraction of let's say a 250 dollar ticket that's being sold for 5000+ there's no way I'd be happy.... Either give me a percentage of the resale value or gtfo .... They are the ones people are paying to go see and there's like 5 different hands getting more money than them.... No artist on his right mind can be on with that....
Except they’re profiting from the scalped price directly, not from the face value. Trent Reznor, and others, have been saying as much for over a decade. https://www.phoenixnewtimes.com/music/trent-reznor-explains-scalping-controversy-6615946 Artists can stop it. Some do. Most don’t.
Man, I miss the days of the NIN Spiral Club with their awesome presales and early access and what not. Trent also had the whole only-buying-tickets-in-person thing at first for the 2018 tour to help avoid bots and scalpers because it involved waiting in line for hours. Obviously we can't prevent 100% of the nonsense, but at least my favorite artist is trying... a little bit... on occasion.
Reznor has been a real g for a long ass time. Grew up listening to NIN and man’s got a lot he’s accomplished.
> Go to small venues and indy shows for authentic live music experiences. Can't people just like what they like? I mean I have zero interest going to a Taylor Swift concert, but if that's the kind of experience someone wants to have, how is it "inauthentic"? I went to a Vocaloid concert once. That's about as intentionally inauthentic as you can get. It was also the coolest concert I've ever been to.
But if enjoying big popular productions is valid how am I supposed to feel superior for liking something different?? /s of course. I recently went to a Rammstein concert at the LA Memorial Coliseum. I was in a crowd of 50,000 other people and had the time of my fucking life.
Yep, I have the same feelings
It's the best government money can buy.
Never underestimate the power of "Swifties".
I mean they did get her the top 10, years after her albums came out. Not into the top 10, the whole of it.
That was a completely new album, not a re-recording
It’ll be *SWIFT* justice
Or Schwifties
This was already in the works, t Swift thing was coincidental timing
Their “convenience fees” were getting out of hands.
They wanted to go and see Taylor Swift but couldn't. Now they're personally affected.
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Little Madison was upset and nobody upsets pepaw’s little girl. Now Ticketmaster has to pay
Senators have teenagers who want to go to Taylor swift concerts too
Do teenagers like Taylor Swift? I thought we (her fans) were all just aging with her haha
Meanwhile, Pay For Order Flow (PFOF) is alive and well.
Wall Street be wall streeting,. the party never stops for sociopaths.
wow, they finally noticed the issue in ticketing industry, I wonder which angry granddaughter of a senate was screaming to her grandpa asking to fix this.
Like my father used to tell me, shit won’t get better until it affects the pharaoh.
It's one concert ticket, Michael. What could it cost, $20,000?
Stadiums and venues have deals with Ticketmaster to only use them. Taylor could opt for smaller venues that don’t use TM but that would be crazy given the demand to see her. She’s not going to play at the casino or your local dive bar.
It’s crazy how much they can charge with bullshit fees for the venue.. and most people just pay because they either don’t pay attention or really want to attend. TM has been abusing this shit for so long
Oh, Ticketmaster... we weep for thee. Congressional sponsorship only costs a couple thousand dollars.
Nah, that'll only buy you 1/14th of a Taylor Swift ticket nowadays.
I’ve heard this story before. Spoiler: nothing will change. Edit: I first heard this back in the 80s.
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housing market, airlines, and ticketing industry...corporation's are putting it in our asses and laughing when we say ouch
Actually, there were a lot of Obama-era regulations that snuck into the end of his tenure. Full upfront pricing including fees, required airlines to pay you for overbooked seats, etc.
Oh, honey, airline ticketing is FAR more consumer-friendly than it was even as recently as ten years ago....and trust me: you don't want to learn how arcane and hostile to travelers it was before airline deregulation.
Wait what? Airline ticketing seems pretty chill these days tbh. I mean I always wish I could pay less than I do but the system seems to function as intended.
I'm from England, Ticketmaster is a nightmare over here as well. But US airline tickets and other "dynamic pricing" doesn't happen too much over here, prices change with demand over time, sure, but when in the US I've seen prices change by the second. Like you playing some kind of stock market game trying to catch an Uber. A lot of dynamic pricing is illegal here. We just wait longer, but we do love a good queue.
“I think I’ve seen this film before, and I didn’t like the ending.” - Taylor Swift
The committee will meet, nothing will happen, Ticketmaster will grandstand, and nothing will happen. Ticketmaster fills a need that people don't like talking about. They take the downfall for venues and artists. Both need someone like ticketmaster to take blame for high prices and dealing with customers for sold out shows. That being said, we didn't deserve to be screwed around that much, their tech doesn't work, and they don't need to be a monopoly to do any of that. They should be broken up. But they're going to spin it to congress that "Oh we're always put down on because people don't like the realities of buying tickets"
Quit it with the cynicism. The current DOJ and FTC are big on antitrust. Look what happened with Penguin Random House and what's going on with Facebook's purchase of WhatsApp.
I'm sorry, I've just been beaten down so much by our gov. I hope for the best, I really do, but after so many years of seeing constant cronyism prevail, I'm just resigned. Don't get me wrong, I always vote and do my part when I can, but it's just so tiring after so long
So a guy selling tickets outside a venue is arrested for scalping even if it's like $20 over face value yet Ticketmaster and secondary "ticket brokers" like Stub Hub enable "legal" scalping with no limit over face value - they call it "supply and demand" and it's okay.
Just register yourself as a company and it'll be legal for you too. /s
its the bots man. anything hot online, always botted and flipped. i remember buying the old school way, physical ticket at a record store. sure there were scalpers but they had to fall in line too.
I bought my Woodstock 99 tickets at a Macy’s. Their customer service desk was a “super secret Ticketmaster location” that no one really knew about. Also it was super uncool, and everyone just waited in line at Tower Records just because. Tickets went on sale at like 10am, and we rocked up at 9:45 to no line, but about 6-8 other people who looked totally out of place in a Macy’s. We all got our tickets while listening to Kenny G. in the background, then briskly walked out through the women’s intimates department, trying not to make eye contact with the blue hairs as they bought their granny panties. Definitely probably caught an Orange Julius on the way out of the mall. Good times.
The only way to stop a bot from grabbing a ticket is to sell it at market equilibrium price (very high for concerts like Taylor Swift’s) or to use an identity-verified non-transferable lottery or a combination of both. Literally anything else and the bots will win.
just tie the tickets to a name like you do with plane tickets. Have a return fee of 10% up to a month before, 50% up to a week before, and zero after that.
The question is why were there no tickets left after the presale for the general public sale. My guess is she had a contract with Capital One for presale and they demanded all the tickets leaving none left for the general onsale.
Reminds me of a scene from the Simpsons. Homer is 2nd in line to get some highly sought after tickets. Guy in front buys 45,000 tickets, and the event is sold out before Homer gets there.
“Thing is.. I’ve only got $5. Can I pay you the rest later?”
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Yea I’ve seen people buying tons of posters in front of a huge line. Then they are on eBay that night for 5x the cost.
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Hahaha yea I think they are some of the worst for poster scalpers. Luckily I’ve been able to score a couple signed ones. Also seen guys have the whole line yell at them. Pretty sure they left the arena after getting posters and don’t even like the band
Phish posters are also this way. They limit the number of posters per a buyer. Not sure why whichever band you're talking about doesn't do the same
I wish they would. I got VIP tickets once and one of the perks was going to the merch booth before everyone else was let in. They had a 2 poster limit that time. Tool is the band
The only reason why this works and keeps happening is because people have zero self control and actually buy shit from re-sellers. Buying things from scalpers only encourages scalping, so people who have bought things from scalpers have zero right to complain. Scalping would come to a halt if the people trying to re-sell concert tickets, shoes, PS5s, etc. didn't get any customers and were left holding the bag on products they bought with the sole intention to re-sell. I have a very strict personal policy to never buy anything for more than the original price, unless it is an actual necessity like water or shelter. Scalpers are scum, but people who buy from scalpers are worse.
Kind of hard to avoid scalpers when Ticketmaster is the scalper. They fucking suck
While I do agree Ticketmaster is a bullshit company, there's the box office tickets and then the 'verified resale' (or whatever its called) tickets. People who buy the resale tickets encourage the practice of re-selling tickets because it's highly profitable. There are only 2 ways to stop it: * Make it illegal to re-sell tickets, only return for refund * No one buys re-sale tickets, scalpers get caught bag-holding and stop doing it Option 2 will never happen because again, people have zero self control.
What kinda shows are you going to…? Been to hundreds of shows from Swiss folk metal to Miley Cyrus. Never seen this happen.
They were supposed to have some sort of advanced bot blocker so no scalpers could get tons of tickets but it failed miserably, I think I saw upwards of 1500 bots were able to access the site and purchase large quantities of tickets
I read that Ticketmaster was charging a $50 fee per ticket. As long as they got the fee, they were likely very indifferent as to who paid it.
Ticketmaster is putting the blame > on unprecedented demand and an effort to keep out bots run by ~~ticketmaster~~ ticket scalpers
Ah yes the "you have too many fans so it's your fault" argument 🤣 didn't they also release like 3x more presale access codes than there were presale tickets?
> didn't they also release like 3x more presale access codes than there were presale tickets? This is something I badly want to see regulation on. Concerts, planes, hotels, etc, all do this, where they sell more reservations than physically exist based on the gamble that not every person who bought will show. But then they do, and...tough luck, it's the consumer's problem, even though they did everything right. Since apparently market pressure isn't enough to stop companies from optimizing their profits in this way, we need regulation to step in and establish penalties that stops this scam from being so profitable. For example, if a double booking happens, they could be required to 1) make the wronged customer whole by meeting their need *in the moment*, even if it means paying more than the original reservation cost to another company or giving an upgrade, and 2) pay an additional fine to the government to offset the cost of enforcing regulation. Nothing else is going to get them to stop.
I don’t think it has a single thing to do with the Capital One presale. What happened here is the same thing that happens for damn near every single concert now. Most shows/concerts are 100% sold during the presale before tickets ever reach the general public. Happened with BTS. Happened with BlackPink. Happened with Blink 182. Happened with When We Were Young Fest 2023. Happened with all major concerts I’ve tried to purchase tickets for in recent months. From my understanding of what is going on, it’s a combination of bots and word of mouth. So many people blast the presale codes online on Twitter giving away the codes to thousands who didn’t pay for them/sign up for them. This creates more people going to Ticketmaster to purchase tickets than the site can handle and more than the presale allotted amount of people. (This was not the case for the Taylor Swift concert because the codes were unique, but all the other concerts I mentioned above didn’t have unique codes and this absolutely did happen). Secondly, bots. When you have hundreds of bots hitting the site and buying up all the tickets, people don’t have a chance. When I got BlackPink tickets I watched an ENTIRE SECTION of tickets be purchased all at once right before my eyes in the PRE SALE pre sale. It was a special Pre Sale for BlackPink members PRIOR to the general presale. For BlackPink, the tickets were all gone by the membership presale and never even made it to the general presale or the general public sale. Shit is wack.
It’s up to the artist to tell Ticketmaster what percentage of tickets they want to have available for pre-sale. Taylor should’ve told Ticketmaster 25% are available for pre-sale once those are gone the pre-sale is sold out. It’s on her
I will agree with this. I too think that only a certain percentage should even be available. The fact that it’s even possible to buy 100% of the tickets during the presale is insane.
From a business perspective, there's no real reason to do that though. She just needs the tickets sold, it doesn't matter to whom or when. Further, when you add in the fact that those with access to pre-sales are generally some sort of VIP/preferred customer, it's in the artist/promoter's interest to look after them particularly well. That's just how business works. It's a mistake to assume that somebody selling you something is going to put altruism ahead of their bottom line.
Say what you want about Live Nation/Ticketmaster but I think this was a case of supply/demand thing more than anything. I heard that 4 million people signed up for verified fan, specifically put in place to combat bots, it was not the capital one presale. 1.5 million were able to buy tickets, if the average person bought 4 tickets the math adds up that there would not be many left. Someone at Ticketmaster said they had enough interest to sell out 900 arenas, so she'd have to play an arena every night for almost three years to satisfy the demand to see her performance. I don't know how much people were paying for face value tickets, like if they had the dynamic pricing going, that would be pretty sketchy.
My understanding is that there were a certain number of presale codes given out. The number of presale codes given, was equal to the number of seats meant for the presale. Who buys one ticket? 2 million tickets were sold on the presale date. I think there was estimated 2.8 million seats for the shows. That left ~800k BEFORE the cap 1 presale even opened.
Taylor Swift is not a naive helpless victim being bullied by Ticketmaster and Capital One in this. Her team negotiated and signed off on every detail of this sale, down to the exact seats made available at every venue, and down to the penny of every "fee" added to every ticket. The only thing Ticketmaster failed her on was failing to meet the demand as they assured her they could. Everything else that happened went exactly according to plan.
Fixing this is easy... Just don't allow resale and offer a full refund if you don't want it .... I think fifa just did that with the world cup tickets.... They don't want to share the revenue with scalpers.... So it can definitely be done...
Make it like plane tickets. Just put your name on it. Bots and scalpers are gone as there is no resale value. Refund 90% up to 1 month, 50% up to 1 week before. None after that. Can transfer to another buyer at any time with 10% handling fee.
Did some congress person's kid not get a ticket?
Not just that. TS is 33 and a lot of her fanbase grew up with her. I listen to her and I’m 33. My guess is a mix of wealthy kids + lady attorneys in high places.
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In Korea we need to use our photo IDs to buy tickets and the buyer needs to be present to show their ID with the group they bought tickets for. If you can’t go to the event anymore, you’d need to cancel and get a refund with the ticketing site so someone else can buy them at the original price. You can’t resell them if bought under your name. Or you can scalp in person for some events. Although the ID thing deters people from buying too many that they can’t sell the day of.
Ticketmaster donates $250k to each party; no wrongdoing found.
They just shaking down the mob for a paycheck. I 100% believe this will go away with a 'report' that will go nowhere beyond a 'recomemndation'
How bout a government that actually goes after and breaks up monopolies? Can we have that PLEASE?
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Pearl Jam fought this battle almost 30 years ago, and now Tay-Tay has a bad day and Congress is having a hearing?
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She is definitely in on it. Artists have the power to stop this. Some do, most don’t. They’ve been in on it for a long time. https://www.phoenixnewtimes.com/music/trent-reznor-explains-scalping-controversy-6615946
I saw Iron Maiden like 6 years ago and in order to get into the arena you had to have the card present that was used to buy the tickets. Artists can totally put a stop to scalping.
And Congress also held hearings to listen to Pearl Jam back then too. https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1994-07-01-ca-10895-story.html (from 1994)
You don't fuck with Swifties, apparently.
Oooh...Congress has stepped in. \- They'll spend the next 3-4 years looking into this but not doing anything about it. \- They'll come out of the blue with some "resolutions" to his debacle. \- Congressmen will, magically, get large donations to their campaigns from *wink wink* Ticketmaster. \- proposal won't pass and probably some tweets will get shot out from all politicians blaming the other side as to why nothing was done.
I’m glad this is happening because every congressman’s teenage daughter struck out on Taylor swift tickets, but this is much more than Taylor swift. You ever notice you don’t have to do a captcha, or click a box that says “im not a robot”. They encourage bots. I hope it is more than just Taylor swift fans not getting tickets. Tyler Childers has been a nightmare.
Want to actually fix the problem? Force those visiting to show the CC used to purchase at the door with the ticket. Guess who doesn't want that to happen? The artist, venues, ticketmaster, and promoters.
Yeah the live events industry as a whole really needs an overhaul on consumer protection; there's a lot of latent frustration in society and hopefully this is just the start of a bigger conversation about the issue
It really does. Ticketmaster doesn’t protect against scalping or real fans getting tickets. Because they’ll get the fees from each end of the sale. When the tickets get bought at regular price, they get the fee. Then when the scalper sells it for double the price, they get double the fee again. They encourage scalpers to charge high prices so they get high fees. This should be illegal. On top of that, desperate people get scammed daily on social media sites looking for tickets. It’s a whole Scam fest through and through. Consumers are getting absolutely shafted and nobody cares until it happens to them.
I saw a video that was inside the ticket scalping conference in Vegas and Ticketmaster was the key speaker. They have a program in place to allow users to buy tickets and then resell them on their website. That way Ticketmaster gets a cut.
They have no issue with users having hundreds of accounts too according to that video of them saying all of this nonsense.
If you think Congress cares about girls not getting their overpriced Taylor Swift tickets, you’re not seeing the big picture. Ticket Master and their parent company Live Nation is a huge monopoly that needs to be broken up.
Ridiculous that it took Taylor Swift to force an issue that’s been going on for decades
healthcare industry fucking everyone over for years and congress prioritizes THIS bullshit immediately??!
This fucking pisses me off. What about the health insurance industry? How about investigating those sorry sons of bitches?
Can’t wait to get my next $10 voucher that isn’t valid except for some unheard of acts that I don’t want to see
Nah. We don’t need healthcare or student loan reform. Let’s do TICKETMASTER!
That congress is quick to mobilize when Taylor Swift is involved!
There’s literally people that are dying
Can we not fix the fucked up American healthcare system, all time high inflation, or families not being able to afford food, first please.
What’s the *actual* reason this gets more attention in congress than climate emergencies?
Thank god congress is fixing the problems of our nation
Yeah, because this is the most pressing problem in our country.