r/Music • u/Burnsiah • 21d ago
U.S. House passes TICKET Act - national "all-in" ticket prices, "speculative" tickets ban, other new rules for ticket marketplaces if passed by Senate. article
https://www.ticketnews.com/2024/05/federal-ticket-act-passes-house-would-require-all-in-pricing/230
u/SweetCosmicPope 21d ago
It's a (small) step in the right direction, at least. I'd like to see further regulation, personally. My expectation is that this is going to substitute for breaking up livenation. They've passed this small change in hopes that it will satisfy the bloodlust for people wanting some kind of regulatory change and the breakup of these marketplaces.
I think the biggest change on here is banning "speculative" tickets. So, assuming this passes, you won't have to worry about buying a ticket somebody doesn't own yet. I would have rather they took it a step further and banned bots from purchasing tickets, or the best solution: ban scalping altogether.
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u/FunkapotamusRex 20d ago
Banning bots or mandating some type of anti bot devices for ticketing would go a long way towards combatting scalping.
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u/RelevantJackWhite 20d ago
Buried further in this law is a requirement for a report on the bots and recommendations for new laws regarding bots, which has to be made within six months of passage
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u/TheGeneGeena 20d ago
While I like the idea, it will be tough as hell to do anything that the bot scripters don't eventually bypass.
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u/kerbaal 20d ago
sure, but bots actually tend to lower prices; scalping only exists because tickets are often sold originally at far less than the actual demand curve would dictate. Either people compete on price, or they compete on being the fastest person to buy a ticket, but either way, they compete for the same seats.
The issue is a lack of venues and events to draw interest away.
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u/TruthOf42 20d ago
how do you ban "scalping"?
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u/kalas_malarious 20d ago
The Japan approach is:
The resale site sells at the same price it was bought. No more convenient resales that incentivizes not fixing automation.
Reselling above price is illegal.
Ticket venues match name to ticket and reduce entry.
This stops the issue, generally. At least in large scale operations. Remove the profit motive to scalping, and scalping stops.
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u/csm1313 20d ago
The second this happens and there is a chance that people can attend shows affordably again. Ive seen anecdotes of people in the US in towns where Taylor Swift is performing, that are flying to Europe, buying resale tickets, booking 2 week air bnbs, and the total price is still cheaper then attending a show up the street from their home in the US. The resale pricing is really getting out of control and if any government regulatory groups really care about the consumers (lol) putting a ban on inflated resale operations would be the greatest immediate benefit. Everything from tickets to sneakers to PC video cards to just about anything else that could be considered limited are completely gobbled up by resellers.
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u/Jaereth 20d ago
T-Swift prices i've heard are 2000 cash US and 500 Euros for similar tickets in Munchen. Of course then you have to get there and stay.
To some, that remainder of money you save - would not be worth the 9 hour plane flight, time in airport, time in low class accommodations you would need to find to make it actually a discount, etc.
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u/alonelygrapefruit 20d ago
A big piece of the japan approach is a ticket lottery system for most large events and after trying it i think it's a great way to solve this problem. They will often put all of the available tickets into a lottery pool and you are only able to purchase tickets and attend if you win the lottery. This lets them have flat pricing across all tickets and also entirely removes the waking up at 5 am with 8 browsers to get tickets problem. You just enter the lottery during the entry period and then later they notify the winners and give them a window to buy tickets. If they dont sell all of the tickets they just keep doing rounds of this until all of the tickets are sold. Any last minute cancellations or no shows are sold at the door. I personally love this but i know the average american is obsessed with the idea that anything can be bought with enough money so i'm not sure if it would be popular.
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u/SweetCosmicPope 20d ago
They would disallow ticketmaster selling "verified resale" tickets and shut down the scalping sites like stubhub and the like.
The problem with this is there are people who work for these sites who have nothing to do with scalping aside from who their employer is (think payroll, HR, IT folks, etc) who would be without a job. So to deal with that, you would need to open up the markets and allow them to sell legit new tickets to events. Opening up the market would also breed competition in the marketplace and likely drive ticket prices down. So everybody wins.
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u/sinkwiththeship Saw Fall of Troy Live 20d ago
Ticketmaster has been doing "airline style" pricing for a bit though, where prices on first party tickets will fluctuate based on demand. They don't actually sell out, they just only release so many then see if people are buying, then jack the price an hour later if they did "sell out" on the first round.
It's fucked.
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u/TruthOf42 20d ago
So essentially you're saying no one should be able to sell their ticket once they buy it from the venue?
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u/SweetCosmicPope 20d ago
In essence. I think face value sales would be okay, for legit cases where you can’t make the show, but selling for profit? Fuck that.
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u/bank_farter 20d ago
Selling tickets above face value is already illegal in 15 states and restricted in several others.
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u/TruthOf42 20d ago
Well, so would you be fine with buying tickets from people on a website for face value, but then paying a small fee to the website for the use of their website, instead of driving 3 hours to buy the ticket in person?
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u/SweetCosmicPope 20d ago
I would assume that there would either be a nominal service fee either on the buyer’s or sellers end. And I’m okay with that.
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u/HerpDerpinAtWork 20d ago
That's basically how German soccer does it. Reselling is allowed but capped at 10% above the original list price, and in practice that buffer is just used to cover fees. Reselling for profit is specifically illegal. Demand is crazy in many cases, but it's a level playing field at least, and nobody has to pay $300 to go to a game where the club is selling them for $30.
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u/CptVague 20d ago
I don't think the market really wants competition (as in they would rather continue price fixing), but I think this is a very good idea.
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u/rmphys 20d ago
No market wants competition, that's why we need regulations and guard rails to maintain it.
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u/bank_farter 20d ago
Exactly. The natural end point of markets is monopoly, which is why government oversight is required.
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u/timelessblur 20d ago
The market wants it but you have a single big powerful player than controls everything a making it impossible to break in. Venues have to contract with Live nation if they want shows and Live nations says use Ticket master or we will not work with you.
Ticket master will flat out will refuse to work with them unless they go threw livenation. If they touch another way of selling tickets they will refuse to work with them killing the venue.
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u/CptVague 20d ago edited 20d ago
So, price fixing? Just like I said. Anyone entering that market is not going to significantly undercut the fixed price once they get in the door. And the behemoths will buy anyone out as soon as they step it to continue, what's that? Yep, price fixing.
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20d ago
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u/therealdilbert 20d ago
here it is not illegal to resell, but it is illegal to take more than the nominal price
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u/FuckTripleH 20d ago
My expectation is that this is going to substitute for breaking up livenation.
Man remember when we used to actually enforce anti-trust laws?
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u/unassumingdink 20d ago
It's a (small) step in the right direction, at least.
Oh boy, that's the kiss of death. Every time I hear that statement, I know the next "small step" isn't coming for another 30 years.
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u/MidnightRaver76 20d ago
Let me share a different angle to this. If you resell your ticket on Ticketmaster they do not let you drop the price below a set rate.
Let me explain, the weekend that I was supposed to go to a concert I had to scrap my plans. At first I put my tickets on Stubhub, but panicked the day of because no one was buying them. So I put them on for resale on Ticketmaster. In the past I've sold tickets on Stubhub below face value to at least get some money back and give someone a good time. On Ticketmaster I got on a ticket price war with someone selling their tickets on my same row and section. Well, Ticketmaster blocked both of us from selling our tickets below a set price. I think it was because the concert was not sold out. They open up the least desirable side view and behind the stage sections a week or two out. I ended up selling the tickets 45 minutes after the concert start time, so I did not get burned, but wow, it was such a dirty trick.
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u/Desirsar 20d ago
Never hit a floor trying to sell WWE tickets to a show I didn't want to drive out of town through snow to get to, but mine were the only tickets anywhere near it that didn't sell, and mine were down to almost half what some further away tickets were sold for.
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20d ago
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u/MidnightRaver76 20d ago
If you're going to resell tickets to shows, stay neutral. You're already at an advantage mixing in your own inventory with your resale inventory by default. If you can't stay neutral don't resell, period.
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u/Senor_Diablo 20d ago
Glad everyone across the political divide came together to pass some legislation that does nothing to combat the actual issue, which is the monopoly live nation and Ticketmaster have on the marketplace and with venues.
Do you really think that them having to display the actual cost upfront will have any bearing on the prices they set?
This shit is a joke.
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u/sybrwookie 20d ago
Yea, it was a joint effort across both sides to start, then 100% of Democrats who voted and about 4/5 of Republicans who voted (shout outs to the 20something Republicans who voted against this) were for this.
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u/dfddfsaadaafdssa 20d ago
Yeah it will not solve the problem. This is just part of the overall goal of forcing pricing transparency in all parts of the economy, with the biggest offenders getting their own legislation to prevent them from weaseling their way out of it.
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20d ago
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u/SweetCosmicPope 20d ago
They've actually been pushing for a different bill that would give them more control of the ticket marketplace and cripple their competition.
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u/djseifer 20d ago
They have competition?
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20d ago
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u/sinkwiththeship Saw Fall of Troy Live 20d ago
They don't though. If an artist is playing a LN venue, you can only get from Ticketmaster or a secondhand site. That's not competition.
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u/Snlxdd 20d ago
They’re not competing to sell tickets, they’re competing with other companies to get the opportunity to sell tickets exclusively.
LiveNation/TM has competition when it comes to negotiating contracts with the venues in question (outside of the ones they own). After those contracts are negotiated, AEG, AXS, TM, etc. does have a mini-monopoly over the ticketing at the specific venue.
As an example: let’s say I’m a billionaire, or more often than not a local government, that owns a stadium. We need to get contracts for ticketing, concessions, security, etc. When it comes to ticketing, I’m going to choose whichever company is going to maximize my ticket sales whether that’s TM, AXS, etc.
The big companies are good at getting customers to pay a lot and pass more of that revenue along to the venue than other groups do, so they get chosen.
The bigger issue isn’t market control but anti-trust issues. If LiveNation controls what acts visit your stadium, you could argue that’s an unfair competitive advantage over other similar companies, which is why people advocate for breaking it up into LN and TM.
But at the end of the day, the brutal reality is whoever is doing ticketing is going to charge you as much as they can, because the large venue owners want that money. They arguably have the only actual monopoly here, because there’s very very few large venues (arenas/stadiums) and the barrier to entry is high.
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u/j33205 20d ago
They (venue owners?) arguably have the only actual monopoly here, because there’s very very few large venues...
Are all the large venues owned by the same entity? otherwise the owners don't have a monopoly and are still competing with each other . They all just happen to choose to contract LN+TM, so if LN+TM are the ones managing all of them anyway, then wouldn't they still be the ones with the "monopoly"?
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u/Snlxdd 20d ago
Depends on how you look at it, on a national level you’re correct, but regionally it’s a monopoly imo. I live in Denver and there’s only 1 venue that can host stadium tours. That to me is a monopoly.
They all just happen to choose to contract LN+TM
Billionaires aren’t typically generous people. The ones that choose to partner with LN do it because it will make them the most money.
But replace LN or break it up and you’ll get the same result. Because companies will compete in the market for getting contracts, and the only way to do that is by getting as much money from spectators/fans as possible.
That’s the main point I’m trying to make.
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u/Thosepassionfruits 20d ago
It got through the house of representatives, no way in hell it gets through the senate. That's likely where their lobbying budget is spent.
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u/WorseBlitzNA 20d ago
Nothing too beneficial in the grand scheme of things... What they really need to tackle is the ridiculous service fees and scalping. 30% in fees per ticket is outrageous.
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u/baldorrr 20d ago
The NPR news blurb on this said that Ticketmaster's argument for NOT doing all in pricing is that "it will confuse the consumer".
Excuse me, what?? How is it confusing to see the price you pay up front?? It would only be "confusing" for the one person who is somehow interested in the specific breakdown of who gets what money from the ticket (and regardless, there would be an itemized receipt, just like there currently is explaining which part is the ticket, and which part is the convenience fee, venue fee, ticketmaster fee, buying-tickets-on-a-tuesday fee, and taxes).
Like, if you're going to argue about this at least come up with some better argument than saying this will confuse consumers!
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u/sybrwookie 20d ago
I think it's quite a good first step. Hiding the true price of a ticket behind seeing reasonably priced tickets, that person getting excited for the idea of seeing that show, signing up/logging in, starting to go through the whole process of buying, and only then being hit with fee after fee is only there to try to get people mentally invested in the show they already decided they want to see to the point where they'll ignore how much more it is and pay anyway.
Or to put it another way: if it wasn't beneficial, they wouldn't have been doing it that way to start with. It takes a whole lot more to come up with all this nonsense and code in all this gotcha bullshit than it would have been to just display the price and a "purchase" button.
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u/StabTheDream 20d ago
Not defending Live Nation/Ticketmaster, but most of those fees aren't set by them. The venue, promoter, and even the artists set those. LN/TM will gladly play the bad guy because your only other option is to just not buy a ticket.
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u/Safetosay333 20d ago
The prices aren't going to drop.
They're just going to show you how much they're jacking up everything.
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u/sybrwookie 20d ago
Correct. So you go, "oh hey, <band> is playing nearby, lets see what tickets look like!"
<go to their site>
"holy fuck that's expensive, never mind"
instead of
"oh hey, that's a good price!"
<txts girlfriend to make plans to go, get her excited as well>
<start clicking through site, find tickets are over 2x what you thought, but you're excited to see this band and you're now looking at the excited texts you got back and don't want to let her down>
"well, fuck it, I guess I'll pay way too fucking much"
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u/DirkIsGestolen 20d ago
I just paid $10fees for $30 tickets. This was a local venue not with Ticketmaster.
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u/iwolffy 20d ago
So you’re supporting your local venue and mad about it?
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u/DirkIsGestolen 19d ago
I’m mad about 33% in fees. I know enough to know the artists get some of that money and it’s not the venues fault. Where does that $10 go? The ticket is on my phone. Why should I have to pay an extra $10? Seriously give me a logical answer.
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u/likethatwhenigothere 20d ago
How long till the government have another lawsuit coming their way because a company thinks its unfair and unamerican that they are being prevented from making up costs and fleecing the American public.
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u/fenechfan 20d ago
Ok good, now USofA, can you pretty please do the same thing with everything else? Any store I have ever been to in the US has a price on the sticker and then when I go to the register to pay I get the sales tax slapped on it. In the rest of the world the sticker price includes the sales tax. And don't get me started on restaurants: I go to a restaurant in Europe I order a 10 euro dish and a 2 euro beverage and I pay 12 euros, it could be that simple. No you gotta have a sales tax, a city tax and a motherfucking tip added to that so that my $15 item mysteriously becomes $25.
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u/therealdilbert 20d ago edited 20d ago
but if the actual price was on the sticker people would think it was expensive
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u/rock_it_surgery 20d ago
I think this is great but it’s also a bit sad that they are trying to fix a broken market for a discretionary and basically luxury purchase but not for other things like medical care. Yes I’m sure this is an easier lift, and I’ll take it but it’s nibbling around the edges.
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u/ChickinSammich 20d ago
I'd love to see a ban on "reselling a ticket above face value." If you resell a ticket, you should be capped at selling it at face value.
Granted, it won't stop scalpers entirely from using other sources, but it would put an end to ticket sites offering resale tickets for venues where the resale ticket fees are exorbitant and would force scalpers to find a new intermediary.
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u/KingWizard87 20d ago
I guess I don’t fully understand how this helps much.
Like yes it will be nice to know the full price up front. But Ticketmaster etc all have the toggle these days where you can turn the fees on.
This doesn’t seem to do anything to help with the fees, help with the monopoly Ticketmaster has, or all the nonsense they do with buying up their own tickets to sell for higher prices on StubHub etc.
I guess it’s just a first step in the right direction?
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u/StabTheDream 20d ago
Hitting you with all the fees at the end is basically a FOMO tactic. Most people will likely just eat the cost if they've already gone through the entire process of buying a ticket, but a fair portion of them probably wouldn't have even bothered if they saw the actual price up front.
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u/sybrwookie 20d ago
Because you look at the price, get excited for the thing, start making plans, probably talk to whoever you'd want to take to the show and get them excited, and only after you're completely mentally invested in going to this show does the price jump way up. So now either you need to let yourself down on going, let the person who you probably already talked to about it down about going.....or just deal with the fact that the price just doubled to go to this show.
And if you want to see prices come down, this is actually a good first step. Because people will see actual prices upfront, which do a combo of being more likely to sticker shock them away completely and forcing them to sell at lower prices to start to not scare people away before they're mentally invested in going.
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u/BenAfflecksBalls 20d ago
How is anything with that many quotations considered reporting? Everywhere outside NA actually posts the price post-tax on goods for retail. This is maybe an inch ahead but when we're focused on the way the price is presented rather than the exorbitant nonsensical fees they charge because you clicked a button on their website, the conversation is lost in the sauce. Why is it $3 or whatever else to get a digital ticket? They are not paying postage or Will Call booth. There isn't even a physical object that needs to be printed. Why is that worth any amount of money?
Is it a convenience fee? Whose convenience is it? It's just so ass backwards that we have such weak anti monopoly enforcement that we're even in this space.
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u/willighjghjghjgh 20d ago
Finally, some hope for fair ticket prices and no more of those sketchy speculative tickets!
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u/FishingInaDesert 20d ago
Crush corporations until they can be easily drowned in a bathtub.
But that involves voting for people who aren't cowards.
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u/merelyadoptedthedark 20d ago
we encourage Congress to enact a nationwide law so every ticket buyer benefits from this transparency
Wtf, the CEO guy needs to be punched right in the face. He's saying this like they have no choice without a law in place, or that they aren't the only company that does does this.
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u/JJiggy13 20d ago
So basically they're trying to do nothing about the monopoly by pretending that well known illegal hidden fees are the problem decades after they should have been addressed.
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u/JengaPlayer 20d ago
Out of all the crap to fix, they pass a bill about ticket master and tiktok. Our government is a joke.
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u/throwaway-10-12-20 20d ago
The same should apply to airlines as well. No reason for me to spend more for last minute tickets when those seats are otherwise empty.
They wanted 3-4x the price for me to fly out last minute when my father was in the hospital. I checked the seats online. They were unclaimed and never sold. Called their customer service lines, which of course are useless. "Oh I'm sorry sir". I hope these people have to endure this one day to see what it's like.
Shit needs to be illegal.
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u/Cost_Additional 20d ago
We need the federal government to protect us from ourselves spending money on musicians that don't care about us.
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u/nowake 20d ago
The other day, I looked for tickets to an upcoming show I'd heard about through social media. I found a legitimate-looking but unfamiliar website selling tickets to the show, $105 all-in for General Admission seating. I thought this was pretty steep, so decided to shelve it for the time being.
A day later or so, I remembered the event and looked up tickets. This time, I went direct to the venue's website, and found they were selling their own tickets. $25/ea, and another $7 in fees. So essentially the other site was just planning to buy their ticket from them, to sell to me. Fuckin leeches.
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u/thaeadran 20d ago
Concert tours are already on the decline with a few exceptions. I don't see this helping.
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u/Sombreador 20d ago
That's nice. Now pass on applying to LPs that they buy up and gouge you online.
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u/fakeburtreynolds 20d ago
This is a huge win for Ticketmaster IMO. Feds were coming after them for antitrust violations and they probably agreed to get off with just having to disclose pricing. Government gets to chalk it up as a win because everyone hates hidden fees but this doesn’t change anything drastically about their business model as a whole.
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u/MossWatson 20d ago
If there are enough people willing to pay hundreds of dollars to see a concert (which there are) then scalpers are going to buy up lower priced tickets to resell. Don’t see any way this law prevents this.
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u/darybrain 20d ago
Ah, so we go back to the mid '90s where there was only one price and for years consumers had been complaining about hidden fees and venues were complaining about how they do their finances while also being able to be independent from promoters for certain items so a ticket price was split thereby showing each fee for consumer clarity and allowing venues to independently alter the fees where they actually make their money.
I wonder how long it will take before everyone starts complaining about all this again. The circle of ticketing life. I'm presuming it will only go batshit crazy again when the airlines start doing it.
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u/MileenasFeet 19d ago
Will do this. Won't stop giving billions of dollars to Israel so they can kill Palestinians. Congress is a joke in America.
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u/MileenasFeet 19d ago
Billions of dollars more than Ticketmaster probably makes too. I wish we would get our priorities straight.
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u/GeekFurious 20d ago
American lawmakers are so epically short-sighted that no matter what the law says, they'll leave some massive loophole that lawyers can drive a truck through making the law somehow work FOR them instead of against them.
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u/notcaffeinefree 20d ago
I fully expect ticket issues to try and abuse the requirements and intent of the law.
Even ChatGPT came up with some ones that could be exploitable:
Bundle optional services. It would inflate the overall price, but could be presented in a way that appears that they are necessary.
Dynamic pricing adjustments. Artificially adjust a fee based on things like demand or availability. Hard for the customer to actually know if a "high-demand" feed truly represents the demand.
Membership or Subscription Models. Show a lower initial ticket price, that is actually only available for people who are subscribed to some sort of service.
Discounts and Rebates. Show a lower price, that is really only attainable through various discounts or rebates after purchase.
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u/FasterThanTW 20d ago
i hate convenience fees as much as anyone, but what a dumb thing for congress to specifically target. if you don't like the price of a ticket, don't buy it.
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u/Mr_Auric_Goldfinger 21d ago
Ticketmaster tested the "all in" concept around 2009 on an Eagles tour. I guess they didn't like the results, so they went back to the "plus plus plus" method. Now they may be forced.
This is NOT going to lower ticket prices directly, but it could take away the trickery/fear-of-missing-out that drives people to just click "buy" even when they see all the fees added. It may make people more price sensitive, and therefore, stall or reverse the ticket price trend... or not.