Feisty Underdog TicketMaster To Beat Scalpers At Own Game!

I seem to recall that sort of outcome being the straw that broke Pearl Jam's back, that after months of fighting they were only able to shave off something like $5.

i'm not even invested in this specific instance with the cure personally, but it's very emblematic of why i stopped making big live shows a priority in life. when i think of the main "general amorphous villains" of my life, along with concepts like `people who steal` and `people who are rude to service workers`, i always think of the entity "TICKETMASTER" itself as a manifested evildoer. yes i can attend shows with no affiliations, but man. it's been over the line for years.

pure speculative pontification from this point forward, feel free to skip

wondering about 2 things:

1- rs wasn't given details about how much "fees" would be, saw results and threatened to cancel or something. that's why he referred to the refund as being done in "good faith." i'm hoping the refund will be a simple debit back to the customer's card/account. knowing those assholes, it may end up coming back to everyone in the form of like an arby's gift card that you need to take a day off from in order to simply acquire the fucking thing.
2- the whole thing's a ruse to get the crowd on the band's side, i.e. buy more tickets. tickmaster know they're heels anyway. wouldn't put it past them.

I think Robert Smith got out ahead of this early enough that no one blamed him or the band. The bigger question is, if Robert Smith of the Cure can sway Ticketmaster, even $10/$5, why can't Taylor Fucking Swift or Bruce Springsteen?

I assume they could if they wanted to

That's my assumption.

Robert still roasting them today over some other ticket screwup. You love to see it.

there's this show a buddy and I wanna go to in about 10 days (its Dan Deacon in Milwaukee). not sure when it was announced, I think it was actually a holdover from some Covid-era dates. anyway face is $20, I went to buy tickets today and holy hell the only options are on resale sites for $110 or $170 (!!!). that may even be before fees. it's nuts.

anyone got some advice on what to do here? do I keep scanning online for a better price? or just show up on the day and hope someone's trying to sell? I wanna see the show but no way am I paying 5-8x face for it. and I really doubt anyone else is willing to either.

One of those sites shows an all-in price. TickPick? Another one, maybe Stubhub, allows you to toggle it to show all-in as well, though the prices end up the same pretty much across all the sites. Sometimes it pays to wait until the day-of, but honestly this shit is so maddening and opaque, as prices don't always drop at all, which makes me think it's just an inside job.

I've had luck just waiting outside the venue and seeing if people want to sell, sometimes there are scalpers or people whose friends couldn't show up. But that's pretty risky.

Looks like a show in a very small club? I assume just one or two ppl are offering up tix (across those different sites), and they're pricing them high for whatever reason... (and yeah, maybe they'll drop at the last minute if no one bites).

I don't know if this is comparable, but there was a sold out Johnny Marr show I wanted to attend at a small venue (I think in 2018), but I didn't go for tickets because I wasn't sure I could make it in time due to prior commitments. Luckily it was on the way home, so I figured, if I can get there before he goes on, I'll see if anyone's selling. If not, l'll keep walking and go home.

I got there at like 8:50pm, and passed a guy with several tickets. He asked if I wanted one, and I asked "did Johnny go on yet?" "Nope! I'll see you one for $20!" Well below face, I took it and I got inside with maybe a few minutes to spare.

*sell you one

I have a similar story with LCD Soundsystem, show was sold out but we figured we'd just show up and see if someone wanted to sell outside the venue. I was about to give up hope but we found someone at the last second, they took the stage right as we got in. This is a much smaller show though so I'm a bit less confident.

decided to post on Reddit to see if anyone had any and within 10 minutes got 6 messages saying they had tickets available. none of the accounts had much history and they all had a bunch of numbers at the end of the usernames...safe to assume these are all scams right?

I'd say don't trust anything that transfers digital tickets without any sort of guarantee, like via credit card or PayPal. I seem to recall reading that a lot of these online scammers get cagey about those kinds of payment methods and steer you toward methods like Venmo, where they can do some sort of reverse charge. I think?

yeah they want me to use CashApp or Zelle, which I don't even have. PayPal they are pointing me towards "family and friends" which I think is the one you can't charge back. also I believe this is a 300 person venue so it seems very unlikely these are legit. think I'll just take my chances outside the venue. or maybe just sneak in somehow. there's like 10 tickets on Stubhub which after fees will be $160-200 apiece and I'll bet anything not a single one of those is gonna sell.

Don't do any CashApp. You will never see that money again if you get scammed.

Venmo or PayPal under goods and services only

well guess what. I called the box office and they had a few tickets left. even though online they said they were sold out. $44 for the 2, as opposed to $350 after fees on Stubhub. I guess the old fashioned method of "just call them and see if they can help" actually works sometimes.

Unfortunately the Junk Fee Prevention Act lacks input from musicians, and it shows. It contains provisions around “holdback transparency” that have nothing to do with fees but would be a giveaway to predatory bulk resellers; not a single musician organization supports it. https://t.co/ZXMHu4Qoiq

— Future of Music Coalition (@future_of_music) June 15, 2023

Ticketmaster's "concession" (announced 5 months ago but reiterated yesterday) to disclose their junk fees up front is an effort to stave off antitrust enforcement, writes @lukewgoldstein in today's BASED.https://t.co/LFIGGgix6U

— David Dayen (@ddayen) June 16, 2023

lol what a toothless resolution.

what a joke

It's total bullshit and not at all transparent. As far as I can tell, only Tickpick and Stubhub on secondary show all-in prices, which at least gives you an idea of what you are in for before you start jumping through hoops, but Ticketmaster's model and operation is so fucked up I can only assume it's on purpose. To what end, I don't know. I tried to buy last minute Cure tickets last week, and the entire time I felt like I was pointlessly battling bots designed to beat me to the prize. Like, why should someone else be able to snag tickets that I literally have in my shopping cart, as I attempt to check out? Because that's what kept happening, in the rare instances when I even made it through the tech morass and was able to even try. And then a few minutes later those same tickets would be live on the site again. Very Lucy with the football.

Pricing is one thing, but the entire process has become such a stressful, joyless headache. Sure, I'm getting older, and I've been lucky enough to see so many shows over the years for free. But the excitement of even favorite acts hitting the road immediately fades knowing what it will take to even get a shot at tickets, let alone how much they will cost. I just count my blessings that I've seen everyone before and try not to think that I'll likely never see some of them again.

Informative deep-dive on how scalpers exploit the "Verified Fan" ticketing system: https://www.404media.co/why-scalpers-can-get-olivia-rodrigo-tickets-and-fans-cannot/

Wow, informative article about how scalpers do it.

Multiple accounts and browsers and more

The problem with this is that normal people have one Ticketmaster account tied to one email address and can therefore enter this lottery one time for one specific show. Serious ticket scalpers have many accounts (hundreds or thousands) tied to many different email addresses, with credit cards all over the country and can enter the lottery as many times as they want

that scalpers have multiple accounts is something those geniuses at Ticketmaster never saw coming!

(most likely they did see it coming and don't give a fuck because it's beneficial to them)

Yeah, they love it.

Someone at work said they got Beyoncé tix by using 3 accounts with 3 different phone nos./credit cards, and registering for presales in 3 different cities ("I had 27 opportunities and 3 of them succeeded").

Does this help? I’m not sure this helps:
https://variety.com/2023/music/news/ticketmaster-block-olivia-rodrigo-scalpers-72-hour-1235732837/

I'm sure nothing will really help, because for decades Ticketmaster has been the constant and Ticketmaster is not operating in good faith. They're in mild CYA mode, but they've admitted in the past their role is mostly just to take the abuse while they rake in money. They're like that Eric Andre meme, of Eric Andre shooting fair ticket prices or whatever and then asking who did such a thing.

https://i.imgflip.com/805ge3.jpg

Never saw that one; I guess this recent meme sensation would also fit:

https://i.kym-cdn.com/entries/icons/facebook/000/037/873/We

ain't gonna work. third-party reseller websites already make accommodations for stuff like this - Stubhub asks you if you have tickets in hand, or if not, when you will. People will frequently sell tickets they don't actually have in hand.

sometimes people sell tickets they haven't even PURCHASED yet on the open market - they'll give an estimated seating location, charge a fee upfront, and then get the ticket later, or refund the money if they can't get it.

yeah, they're called speculative tickets and you might as well pay a stranger on the street for a guarantee that you won't get cancer

that's kinda what Billy McFarlane was doing in his pre-Fyre venture, right?

*McFarland

Never saw that one

I just made it with a generator!

There's something uniquely shitty about the law in Illinois that makes it hard to thwart scalpers. For example, this was from the press release for the most recent Pearl Jam tour:

Tickets on this tour will continue to be non-transferable in all states except Illinois where it is prohibited by law. We apologize in advance to Illinois fans who may be subject to increased ticket prices on the secondary market.

And from Robert Smith's statement in his fight against scalpers:

Unfortunately, despite our desire to protect our low ticket prices for fans, the states of NY, IL and CO make this very difficult – they actually have laws in place that protect scalpers!

Tickets being non-transferable is pretty anti-consumer too tbh.

Fights scalpers but also inhibits people who can't go at the 11th hour

Which I assume is why it's pretty protected places.

Was it the Black Keys back when that tried to link tickets to the person that purchased them only to have it backfire?

Meanwhile:

https://www.wsj.com/arts-culture/music/irs-taylor-swift-eras-tickets-beyonce-lionel-messi-tax-480d346c

If you cashed in this summer by reselling tickets to Taylor Swift’s “Eras Tour” or Lionel Messi’s first games in a bubblegum-pink jersey, brace yourself to pay taxes.

A new law requires ticketing platforms like Ticketmaster and StubHub to give the Internal Revenue Service information on users who sold more than $600 worth of tickets this year.

The new requirements are taking hold amid a banner year for live events in which Swifties, soccer buffs and members of Beyoncé’s BeyHive paid sky-high prices for a chance to see their favorite stars in the flesh. That drove huge markups in the secondary ticket market—and delivered hefty profits to anyone hawking hot tickets.

The average price for Taylor Swift tickets sold in the U.S. on StubHub was $1,095, with the best seats going for thousands of dollars, according to the company, which operates an online market for people to resell and buy tickets. Averages for Beyoncé and Harry Styles clocked in at $380 and $400, respectively. After Lionel Messi joined Major League Soccer, the price of tickets to Inter Miami CF matches shot up to $255 apiece, from $30.