Live Nation CFO on Taylor Swift ticket chaos: Don't blame me, bots made me crazy Live Nation Entertainment's CFO is expected to testify that the breakdown of its Ticketmaster website at the release of Taylor Swift concert tickets last November was caused by a deluge of bots. Joe Berchtold is scheduled to testify on Tuesday in a US Senate Judiciary Committee hearing titled "That's the Ticket: Promoting …
Oh they want it to work, they'd have all the tickets go straight to scalpers if they could. All ticket sellers, in the USA at least, are scaplers and have made entertainment almost exclusively for the wealthy. Taylor Swift in particular is a soulless robot who doesn't care about here fans but only her own royalties. For example, recomposing previous albums but letting Tickmaster and other scaplers screw here fans.
A long time ago a few popular artists try minimizing the damage that's done by these scalpers. Pearl Jam, Neil Young and others I don't remember but, they ultimately failed and the scaplers became even stronger today.
I wouldn't be surprised if these bots are owned by Ticketmaster's own subsidiaries, they've already been proven guilty of collusion in the past. In the late 90's the collusion was a running joke (unless you're a ticket buyer :-/)
No doubt the reason why someone like Amy Klobuchar is involved is profit.
Never underestimate the Swifties. Regardless of what anyone might think of her music, she has a very loyal fanbase. About the only thing you could do worse than keeping them from seeing her, is doing something that they perceive as hurtful to Swift. Just ask Scooter. I suspect that is the reason Congress is taking a look at event ticketing.
I'd rather get slapped by Will Smith than 'Kanye' Taylor.
Wondering how scalping helps line the artist's pockets?
If Ticketmaster sells a seat for $100, and $85 goes to the artist (using a ballpark % from a Guardian article), sure a higher selling price is better for the artist. If the initial sale is to a scalper with a bot farm, and the scalper sells that ticket for $1000, I highly doubt the scalper is going to send a check to the artist for $850.
Now ticketmaster, OTOH, if they own the site where the scalper re-sells the ticket for $1000, they'll take a cut of the sale. In that case, do they pass a portion along to the artist? I don't know, but I doubt it.
In one form or another. My friend and I stood in line starting at 4am for concert tickets that went on sale at 10am on a Sunday morning after a Bowie concert on Saturday! 10 ticket limit per person. We bought our limit. When word got out that we had tickets, and what we went through to get them, we were bombarded with offers much higher than face value. We didn't have to pay for out tickets in the end!
But at least you put some personal effort into it, queuing the night away!
And a ten tickets per person limit at least meant the old-time big-money touts had to employ a few warm bodies, not just keep switching IPs on a few VMs to fool the frontend into letting them get another bite.
They could easily fix it if they wanted to but that would prevent them earning again from the resale.
Take Glastonbury for example. There is almost zero resale market for the tickets as you have to be registered and your photo is printed on the ticket. If you're buying multiple tickets then you have to provide the registration info for everyone getting a ticket in your order. Getting the tickets is a scrum but that's due to being over subscribed, which is a different matter.
I recently went to see the Cure at Wembley Arena and the tickets were virtual and *only available on the arena app. The QR code changed repeatedly so you can't share or sell it on the secondary market, but you could sell the tickets back. The app sucked but that's easy to fix.
There are many ways to fix it if the will were there. Banning a company making the primary sale having any stake or agreement with one supporting the secondary market would be a simple and beneficial step forward.
*this was the only option available to me but there may have been other ways.
The QR code changed repeatedly so you can't share or sell it on the secondary market
That seems like the best balance between shutting down scalpers while not making it hard for actual customers (i.e. I sure as hell don't want to be required to have names and photos of everyone who will be going with me for an event that is months in the future)
Sure if they say "you can't return tickets within 24 hours of the event" to avoid getting stuck with unsold tickets there's a risk that you get screwed out of going in an emergency like a car breakdown on the way there. But that pretty much replicates the situation you were in back in the days of paper tickets, and pretty much everyone would be willing to accept that risk when you gain putting scalper scum out of business.
The plain and simple fact is that unless they break up TicketMaster and pass a law banning cross-ownership in the same way as TicketMaster, they won't ever solve the problem. And they won't do that because TicketMaster is powerful enough to bribe contribute to the re-election funds of the right people.
We can see by the name of the hearing that Congress is taking this really seriously.
Venues that are interested in actual punters in seats are turning to distributors other than Ticketmaster, like EventBrite
And who are the other players?
Cvent
Whova
Hopin
Splash
Bizzabo
Eventzilla
Ticket Tailor
Webex Events
Seriously? If I got an email selling tickets with any of these company names, they'd go straight to the spam folder. These people aren't even making an effort.
Yep — having avoided Ticketmaster for about fifteen years I used to think that See weren't quite as corporate-wanker but haven't used them unless forced to since they double-charged me for tickets a few years ago and refused to budge on refunding me until I gave up on the basis that at least it represented another ticket sale for a smaller artist.
I'm still pissed off that I didn't get tickets for Pulp this year as I've wanted to see them for over a decade. The only place they said you could get tickets in their announcement* was Ticketmaster, and having set several reminders and gotten myself up at whatever ungodly hour they started selling tickets** I proceeded to watch the site crap out until they were all gone. Later found out they were available through Ticketline and others. Seething. Last thing I'd expect from someone like Pulp.
Last time I did use Ticketmaster "successfully" was for NIN, where they were the only choice available. That stung too (including financially), as again it's not what I've necessarily come to expect from Reznor (hell, he likes making money and selling merch and I'm all up for that, but he's consistently banged the drum for music and experiences being available to all). Was charged something like £80 and some ridiculous fee for a "souvenir ticket" which arrived after the gig.
If I'm wanting to buy tickets for anything non-independent, I tend to go down the hierarchy of Dice > venue > Ticketline (this one usually takes priority if I want a physical ticket) > $others. Things seem to have gotten so much worse over time that I barely actually go and see anyone big anymore.
* Pulp haven't had a mailing list for aeons and seem to operate almost exclusively out of an Instagram account (which I can't see) these days. Only reason I found out about the tour in the first place was a Graun article, though I'd been googling every few months to see if they were doing anything. After the article I religiously googled every day for months until tour and sale dates had been announced; I went off the links in their Tweet which I was able to just about see
** probably 0900 or 1000, definitely not a time when my brain is functional
The problem is that tickets are sold at artificially deflated prices. If tickets were sold at market value, i.e., where demand meets supply, all problems with bots and scalpers will disappear.
Keeping supply constant means rising prices. Sure, artists would look like even more greedy bastards if their tickets were $1000 instead of $100.
Keeping prices constant means rising supply, i.e., making 100 tour stops instead of 10, or doing three concerts a day for weeks at a time, you know, like theaters or musicals do.
Not everything has to be managed by market forces, why should ticket prices by managed that way?
If the law was that the secondary market could only charge face value plus (as a random figure) 10% the on;y people to suffer would be the scalpers.
It would reduce the pressure from bots as they could no-longer mark everything up by 1000%, and fans would be more likely to get a ticket to an event they actually want to see.
Venues and artists would lose nothing, and possibly gain as the people at the event might have more money for food/drink and merchandise
Live nation are a joke and add way too much overhead and its pricing genuine fans out of buying tickets. and there customer service actually sucks if you ever need them.
Come on artists wake up and stop using them and bring ticket costs back down to earth.
I understand the complexities and costs involved in putting a show but when a third of face value goes to ticket master thats an overhead too far.
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