Ticketmaster: Moneymaker or Monopoly?

Credit: Valeriecabinet on Flickr

On Nov. 15, Taylor Swift fans lucky enough to get presale codes ran to Ticketmaster to buy tickets. Unfortunately, instead of simply selecting their seats and buying them, fans were met with website crashes, obscenely long wait times and ticket prices being scalped into over a thousand dollars. 

Many people who were able to get tickets bought them for prices in the high hundreds, even into the thousands of dollars. Sadly, most were not able to get tickets at all. Those ticketless fans anxiously waited for the general sale that was supposed to be a few days later, but the sale was quickly canceled by Ticketmaster. 

But, why? One would think that a ticket-selling website as experienced as Ticketmaster knows what it’s doing when it comes to selling tickets (it’s literally in its name!). As the Taylor Swift ticket drama reveals, all was not as it seemed.

Before the era of big companies selling tickets, independent venues set the prices for concert tickets. Ticketmaster still lurked as an option for fans, but most avoided it due to its high fees. But, in 1994, Ticketmaster acquired Ticketron, one of the company’s largest competitors. The deal put Ticketmaster in control of 90% of the ticketing market. As if that wasn’t big enough, in 2010, Ticketmaster merged with Live Nation.

So, even though there are many huge trustworthy ticket sales websites like Stubhub, Seatgeek and… well, actually, those are the only other two that are even remotely close in size to Ticketmaster. If you want tickets, you are most likely buying from one of those three sites. That is unless the tickets can only be purchased on Ticketmaster. The site exclusively partners with big artists in some cases. Most recently, artists such as Taylor Swift, Paramore, Joji and Harry Styles. 

With popular events for big artists, Ticketmaster uses their “Verified Fan” presale system. This system has fans verify their phone number, and a few days before the presale, Ticketmaster will randomly select some verified fans. These select few will get the highly desired presale codes.

Even if you are lucky enough to get a presale code, the company’s dynamic pricing system still blocks out fans from buying tickets. Basically, the more people waiting for tickets, the higher the prices go. These high prices can reach into the thousands, as seen with Harry Styles and Taylor Swift.

Ticketmaster’s control of the market, dynamic pricing and all-around outrageous fees have annoyed fans – and now even Congress. The U.S. Senate antitrust panel will hold a hearing on the lack of competition in the industry, Senators Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) and Mike Lee (R-UT) announced on Nov. 22. 

All of this drama regarding Ticketmaster begs the question – what can be done to fix this? One solution would be Ticketmaster and Live Nation breaking up as companies. This would not fix the high fee charges on tickets, but it would at least offer consumers another place to buy tickets without their only option being Ticketmaster.

Additionally, there could be more measures put in place to reduce scalping. For example, not allowing tickets to be transferred or capping the price at which tickets can be resold. If this were to happen, fans who missed out on presales and general sales could buy tickets that are reselling at prices well under one thousand dollars. 

Another solution that I believe would work best is getting rid of the dynamic pricing altogether. Of course, dynamic pricing makes the most money for Ticketmaster, so this option does not look very likely. But, without dynamic pricing, tickets can be sold at the prices that artists and venues originally agreed upon. 

As of right now, though, there is no solution. Fans are left to register for Verified Fan presales only to wait endlessly in presale lines for overpriced and fee-ridden tickets. As grim as this looks, Congress investigating Ticketmaster is sure to restore some hope in concert-loving fans everywhere.