Entertainment For Lively Minds
Daylight Robbery
This is not a particularly original complaint, and I am sure that it crops up here on a depressingly regular basis but nonetheless I feel so utterly violated by Ticketmaster that I am moved to post my first ever blog entry.
Here is why:
I just bought 3 Bob Dylan tickets (70 Pounds each) - 210 Quid
I paid Ticketmaster 235 pounds 50 for the privilege. That's 7.50 'Booking Fee' (each) or another 22.50. So where is the missing 3 quid you ask? Presumably I took the option of having the tickets posted to me at my house. No. I wanted to pick them up at the venue, despite the fact that picking up tickets at the Apollo is more painful an experience than sitting through Series 2 of 24. I didn't have that choice though, so I decided to print them off from my own computer by following a link which costs Ticketmaster precisely nothing. The additional money is for this privilege. I have to produce my OWN tickets AND I have to pay to do so.
Without even going into the immorality of the ticketing agents abusing their duopoly and charging such ludicrous booking fees, how can they POSSIBLY justify charging for a service which they are not, in effect, even providing?
Can anyone explain how this can be considered in any way defensible? Is every Word subscriber ready to join me in a massive boycott of all live music until the ticket agents stop waving their balls in our face because they know that we will pay no matter what they charge? No, I thought not, on both counts. Maybe it is my impotence in the face of the ball waving that makes me so angry. I have had enough of being bummed by these people, but I know that I will still pay next time I want to see a band because I have no choice. Bastards, bastards, bastards.
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I know...
....damn those evil companies and their necessary turning of a profit. It's really not on.
Monopoly
The fact is that the ticket broker obtains a monopoly for providing that particular service and goes to take the piss. That's when capitalism goes bad.
Monopoly
The fact is that the ticket broker obtains a monopoly for providing that particular service and goes to take the piss. That's when capitalism goes bad.
There's a difference
between profit and profiteering.
But aside from that, the way all these charges are usually hidden until you actually come to pay is sharp practice and a subject for government scrutiny, I feel.
We should start a campaign.
That's totally beside the point
Turning a profit is one thing, and I don't mind paying a booking fee - though more than 10% of face value strikes me as overcharging for the service they actually provide - but charging for a service they actually aren't providing? People should be able to turn a profit, but they should do something to earn it which in the case of 'print at home' tickets is demonstrably not the case.
Other than that your pithy little comment was spot on.
I know...
....it's a total pain in the arse, but what can you do? Like the £6 admin fee charged by Ryanair for paying by debit card - they do so because they can. There's tacit acceptance of it because (particularly in the case of tickets) there's no alternative.
If His Bobness, for example, were to make a stand and dictate the conditions of the sale of tickets for his shows then there may be something blowin' in the wind of change, but it ain't gonna happen, so suck it up, buttercup.
I just wish I'd thought of it!
that's why I'm so annoyed...
...precisely because there is no choice. At least with Ryanair you have an easy choice - get fucked by that utter arsehole O'Leary by paying unavoidable if not actually 'hidden' charges or pay more to fly on a proper aeroplane and avoid that insufferable fanfare when you land only 30 minutes late at an airport 200 miles from where you want to be.
With the tickets there is no choice. The venue charges Bob, he charges us enough to pay that fee, pay Mark Knopfler, pay his band and then put another couple of wings on the house he hasn't spent more than 5 minutes in in the last 30 years. I don't mind paying him. As far as I am concerned he deserves whatever his eventual cut of my 70 quid is. Ticketmaster don't. They send an update to the Apollo's computer to say 'these three seats are now taken'. That's it, and apparently it's worth 25 notes. The ticket production fee is just the salty icing on the cake of my humiliation and I have no alternative way of sourcing a ticket for myself. Fuck it, I might launch my own ticketing website and just undercut the others. 7.49 booking fee and it's free to print your own tickets. Who's with me?
There is an alternative
Don't go. There are any number of terrific little gigs with smaller artists playing small venues you could go to. Great view, easy to get in/out, intimate. the Slaughtered Lamb, for example, has loads of great acts.
Good luck with that!
It obviously doesn't have to be this way, WeGotTickets obviously runs with a few more ethics than most but it doesn't tend to have the major concerts. This can't be due to any sort of cartel operating can it? Of course not because that's not allowed.
Surely ticket selling is one of the most risk free businesses to run, no stock required, no refunds unless the gig is cancelled. The cost these days is in setting up the computer systems which, for the big gigs is clearly a problem when everybody wants to log on at the same time... but that's not the case for the majority of gigs and I often think I'm being made to pay every time because the agency has the infrastructure to be able to sell Take That tickets.
Ryanair...
...to expand on the subject slightly, Ryanair are very clear about their charges and their rules and if you follow them to the letter, and the baggage allowance to the ounce, there's no problem. I had occasion to make multiple visits to Cork this year, flying from Stansted. The cheapest flight I bought was about £17 all-in. In several visits I was never delayed, even arriving home 30 minutes early one time (how that happened I'll never know.)
Yes, the landing fanfare is annoying, but go in with open eyes and it's a terrific service. Most rants about Ryanair will eventually point to something like, 'My bag was half-a-kilo overweight and the bastards charged me £30!' something that is specified over and over on their website.
I hear Bob Dylan swears by them.
I agree...
...people who complain about Ryanair's charges don't have too much of a case because yes, most of the charges can be avoided (even though often not very easily). On the other hand not all charges can be avoided, so they are often mis-advertised, and flying with them means you have to give that total dickhead O'Leary your money.
It is not the same as the ticket example however, because, for all its faults, Ryanair is successful because it realises that people fly on it because it's cheap and so they are careful to stay cheaper than the other options. Ticketmaster, however, sit on top of the pile and shit downhill on everyone who wants to buy tickets.
You arrived half an hour early because, like train companies, Ryanair build delays into their timetables so if by magic you arrive within the amount of time it SHOULD take to get to Cork you end up looking early. Add in a tailwind and you arrive very early.
I believe the companies like these add-ons because...
... should the artist cancel, they're only obliged to refund you the cost of the ticket, as opposed to the "extras" (they also don't need to pay the artist a %age of these add-ons,) which is why there's no all-in-one or "transparent" pricing. It's a real bugbear of mine, especially when booking flights, where the advertised price can be almost doubled by the death-of-a-thousand-cuts extras for luggage, card payment (how else can you pay online?), "convenience of printing your own boarding card" etc. Grrr.
My problem
Is the sliding scale - that they charge a higher fee on a more expensive ticket. One piece of paper costs the same to put in an envelope as another.
Some of this must be at the feet
of the artists and promoters I would say. They are stipulating the terms of the ticket and, I would assume, the face value. If they don't pay the ticket agency anything for selling on their behalf, then the profit for being Ticketmaster must be in booking fees and admin charges. If the ticket price included a margin for the seller, then there would be no need for booking fees etc.
But the artist already pay...
...to use the venue. My understanding (and I would welcome any corrections to my logic here) is that effectively what ends up happening is:
- I pay Bob Dylan 70 quid
- he pays (via promoters, agents, whatever) a fee to hire the venue
- the venue pay Ticketmaster a lease to use their booking software (so this fee is already built into the price they charge Bob to use the hall)
- Ticketmaster then sell the tickets at 'face value' (so the cost Bob charges to appear out of which he (effectively) pays for all expenses) plus a number of additional 'service' charges for services that don't really exist.
- On top of this they only actually release a small number of less desirable tickets to the general public, instead pre-selling the rest to a small group of priority buyers who then pay a fee to use getmein and effectively charge whatever the fuck they like, secure in the knowledge that at some point over the next month and a half, when all the scraps have gone, someone so desperate to see Bob Dylan will shell out the price of a car for a ticket worth (to the artist) the cost of a taxi ride.
Clearly the network of how the original face value gets divvied up is much more complex than this but essentially that's how it works, right? 70 quid is what it actually costs to stage the concert and for the artists and associated agents to all take their cut. Everything on top is just gravy for the shit eating leeches running Ticketmaster.
If the venue pays Ticketmaster
to sell the tickets then are they paying Ticketmaster enough money to cover the cost of selling the tickets and making a profit? The other problem for the venue if this was the only source of fee to Ticketmaster would be that they would pay them regardless of how many they sold.
I do think the current method is annoying because it makes the actual price higher than the face value. I think that if your Bob Dylan ticket cost £76 each and everyone who incurred a cost in the putting on and selling of the gig was reasonably rewarded as part of that cost, it would be much better. The complexity normally gets into pricing as people are trying to offset risks that they have little or no control over (the artist cancelling for example).
Most people are reasonably rewarded...
...it's only the ticketing agent who is unreasonably rewarded. It's basically the same as buying a pavement and then charging people whatever you like to cross it and enter their own house: you don't deserve the money, you have done nothing to earn it, and yet people have no choice but to pay it.
As I say, I believe that Ticketmaster charge both the venue and the punter for the 'service' so they make money on both sides of the transaction without ever really having to do anything. The only way round it would be for the artist or the venue to sell tickets direct and build in a reasonable fee to cover the admin. We would probably end up paying about the same but at least we wouldn't be paying it to Ticketmaster.
Its more like
someone building a bridge and then charging people to cross it.
If venues did it themselves, they would need eCommerce sites, lawyers, people uploading the ticket details, hosting arrangements and a lot of other infrastructure stuff that would be more expensive because every venue would have to do it. Companies like Ticketmaster exist because they supply a need - in this case to the industry more than the end punter. Its just that the industry prefers the punter to pay for it.
The punter always pays in the end
That's the way business works. If you incur costs to provide a service you pass them on.
I should imagine Ticketmaster are in a win-win position because no-one else is in competition at the high end of event ticketing in the UK.
An artist with the pulling power of Bob Dylan who wants to efficiently sell shows in Britain's large venues has no alternative agency with a similar infastructure to reliably distribute tickets as Ticketmaster.
As far as the divvying up of the money goes, I imagine it's more like this:
An artist lets it be known that he/she'll play UK venues on his/her tour between certain dates. Promoters submit tenders to the artist's company to organise venues the tour can use. The artist picks the best deal from a reliable promoter who can a) secure the venues required within the timeslot b) guarantee to pay them the amount they want to do the shows and c) ensure the punters know the shows are taking place and when. A ticket agency is contracted to deal with the sales, ensuring the artist and promoter can make their money. It would not surprise me if in some instances the ticket agent pays the promoter for the right to sell tickets, where there is a choice of agency for the promoter.
You're right
The punter always pays. I just think its a little unfair on ticket companies to single them out. They are providing a service to the artist and the venue and if the artist or venue felt strongly enough about it, they could set up an alternative. They clearly don't feel strongly enough about it in the main.
Major artists don't care about their fans as much as they might
they are cocooned from the real world of doing shit jobs to pay bills and having the odd night out where they are all-too-often milked for their money and then sent back home feeling stitched-up.
I heard Meat Loaf interviewed yesterday
He said that on a recent tour he was doing, he found out what the ticket prices were and... "I got mad - I got very angry". He didn't specify whether he did anything about it - but this stood out. The last time I heard about an artist actually caring about how much fans have to pay was Billy Bragg.
They are criminals...
...the same seats I just paid 70 quid (plus ridiculous fees) for are already up on Getmein.com (which as far as I can see is another Ticketmaster site) for between 110 pounds (in the row behind the one I got which is right up in the Gods) and 1,362 pounds (in the good seats 15 rows in front). I WANTED to sit in those seats myself (they were originally 75 pounds) but couldn't because 20 minutes after the tickets went on sale all of them had already gone.
About three hours after general release a sister site to Ticketmaster is selling the best seats for an 1800% increase PLUS whatever Getmein.com's charges are. And they still have the cheek to pretend they are trying to combat scalping with their wanky little automation-prevention boxes. These people are absolute fuckers and what they are doing is at best hugely immoral and has every appearance of also being illegal.
You think you're pissed off now?
Just wait until you've seen him.
An Office of Fair Trading report on same:
http://www.oft.gov.uk/shared_oft/reports/consumer_protection/oft762.pdf
Apart from the blatant profiteering
presales are also one of the reasons gig tickets sell out so quickly and prices go up. I noticed that Dylan tickets were listed for sale LAST NIGHT on Getmein. So I searched online and there was a presale (with password) listed. So either people have bought them in the pre-sale just to resell or ... (am I being too cynical here?) some tickets are 'held back' by the ticket agencies. I went to see James Taylor at the O2 recently - it was sold out but I bought a ticket from Getmein a couple of days beforehand (close to the front/lower level) - I noticed there were blocks of seats close to me ie in good areas - unoccupied - and I'm convinced the reason is that the agencies hold tickets back to sell at inflated prices. I was lucky that demand mustn't have been that great for last minute seats and I got mine for just over face value but it did make me wonder ....
One aspect I find really annoying
is that I can remember the time you could queue at a venue (or just stroll up for less popular artists) hand over your money and walk away tickets in hand. No booking fee, no credit card fee and obviously no extortionate postage, even though it probably cost the venue more to provide this service than it costs Ticketmaster and their ilk to provide their "service" today.
Now the box office staff at most venues are out of a job and we get shafted by the agencies.
Remember those
days well and the tickets were worth keeping as well, bit like paying at the turnstiles to watch Leeds United hammer the opposition, a long long time ago.
You pays your money.......
......you take your choice.
It strikes me that the enlarged price and added hassle for such events (all seating, poor views, terrible stewarding, added on extras) are in direct contrast to how worthwhile/memorable they are going to be.
I mean, how much was Dylan to see in London in 1962, 1965 or 1966 compared to now?
Which era would you prefer to see him?!
Similarly, football.
How much was the 1966 World Cup Final compared to the most mundane 'Champions' League fixture today?
In real terms, I suspect that it must have been considerably cheaper.
And in all cases, not only is the product not as good but you're meant to pay through the nose for it.
'The man' won.
Still at least you end up with a T-shirt.
An expensive T-shirt!
1983
In 1983 I sent a blank, signed cheque with a covering letter and an SAE to the Hammersmith Odeon box office. They sent me four good tickets back for the show I was wanting to attend. Good, eh?
In 2009 I went to a venue to buy 8 tickets for a forthcoming kids show. The box office was run by a ticket agency. They charged me an extra $2 booking fee. For each ticket, separately. Even though I bought them all at once in one transaction. Bastards.
"How much was the 1966 World Cup Final?"
Ooh, intriguing! My first Google came up with this ticket at 10/- (50p)
That's about £16.00 in today's money. The cheapest Champions League final tickets this May on general sale cost £176 each (including booking fee!) Lordy...
Only £7
According to Measuring Worth, 10s is only about £7.00 now according to the RPI.... mind you, it may have said 10s on the ticket but how much were they going for on Ebay?
Sorry.
Sorry, I know what I am about to say is not likely to be what you want to hear/ read, but I really should tell you.
I saw his Bobness in 2009. It was totally pants, easily the most disapointing concert I have ever been to.
I'll trump your 2009
He was just as disappointing in 1981. And that cost me £7.50!