by CIDU Bill

OT: Ticketmaster

So… pretty much any ticket you buy for anything has to be bought through Ticketmaster now, with “convenience fees” of about 25%. There’s no competition, usually no option of calling the box office to buy tickets directly, and often no option of GOING TO the box office to buy tickets directly.

Basically, Ticketmaster has a choke-hold on the market and gets their cut on everything.

It’s hard to imagine other fields where this would be even remotely legal.

17 Comments

  2. Unknown's avatar

    I’ve even heard one tale of a “free” public museum requiring a ticket that had to come from TM for a handling fee. Not sure if that’s a true story or not, though.

  4. Unknown's avatar

    I don’t know if Ticketmaster is a presence here in Boston. I get Boston Symphony and Celebrity Series tickets directly from the organizations themselves. I think Massachusetts law forbids reselling tickets at higher than face value and limits the size of service fees.

    Scalping does happen, but so do hitchhiking and speeding.

  5. Unknown's avatar

    I get it. If we refuse to pay outrageous prices for tickets, maybe they will reconsider. But apparently there are those who are willing to pay outrageous prices.

  8. Unknown's avatar

    Stub Hub is an alternative for tickets around here. Lots of sporting events, but also many theatrical events in Chicago, St. Louis and Nashville.

  9. Unknown's avatar

    Lots of people buy up tickets hoping to turn a profit using StubHub.

    Theatres and other venues claim to oppose all these various forms of scalping, but they’re really not putting much effort into stopping them.

    And why would they? They represent a way to sell thousands of tickets in minutes, and what box office wouldn’t want that?

  10. Unknown's avatar

    25%? I bought Disney on Ice tickets where 4 $16 tickets came to $104.08 after ticket master charges! Nearly a 40% markup. You could buy at box office but I think that only avoided about a $5 in charges (per order, not even per ticket).

  11. Unknown's avatar

    Paying to have Windows bundled with your new PC worked this way for a long time. Then Microsoft finally got in trouble. And then I think they went back to doing it again later, but i can’t remember for sure.

  13. Unknown's avatar

    I remember looking at a concert I was interested in and, in addition to the ticket and the Ticketmaster fee and the taxes, they all tacked on a “facilitiy fee”. So, they were going to sell me a ticket but then charge me extra to go in the building…

    In the end, I passed up the $28 ticket that was going to cost $50.

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