How to Make Concert Tickets More Accessible

When shopping for live performance tickets, followers of A-list artists like Swifties, the BTS Army, the Beyhive, and others actually cannot catch a break. Fans have fought tooth and nail to land tickets to the most popular excursions of 2023, from Swift’s The Eras Tour and Beyonce’s “Renaissance” Tour to Drake’s It’s All a Blur tour. And regardless of the headline-making, disastrous Ticketmaster presale of Swift’s Eras Tour in November 2022 that resulted in a literal congressional listening to, followers are nonetheless annoyed by the system.

While followers are all the time prepared to pay a premium to see their favourite artist stay, exploitative enterprise practices like inflating prices based mostly on demand and slapping nonsensical service charges on high of the ticket price have despatched costs hovering to an unreasonable excessive for even nosebleed seats.

Ticketmaster has been on the forefront of ticket gross sales controversy because the platform continues to dominate the trade. Since the return of stay music post-lockdown, the demand for stay music has been better than ever.

Ticketmaster has been on the forefront of ticket gross sales controversy because the platform continues to dominate the trade. Since the return of stay music post-lockdown, the demand for stay music has been better than ever. At the tip of 2022, Live Nation reported that occasion attendance elevated 24 % in contrast to 2019 earlier than the COVID-19 shutdowns.

But with the elevated demand, getting tickets to see artists stay has turn into more and more troublesome, particularly with bots and resellers usually gaining entry to tickets earlier than followers. Despite packages like Ticketmaster’s Verified Fan that goal to preserve bots out, the ticket-buying course of nonetheless doesn’t prioritize followers the best way it ought to. Various choices will be explored to preserve bots and resellers out of the buying expertise and provides followers a good shot.

Ahead, we break down how the ticketing market reached this level and implementable modifications that may convey reduction to followers and artists alike.

Is Ticketmaster a Monopoly? How the Platform Dominated the Ticketing Industry

The 2010 merger of Ticketmaster and Live Nation nearly eradicated competitors from different ticket sale platforms by monopolizing venues below the Live Nation entity. While the platform technically solely controls 70 % of the stay occasion ticketing market, Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) stated she nonetheless considers it a monopoly in the course of the January Senate Judiciary Committee listening to titled “That’s the Ticket: Promoting Competition and Protecting Consumers in Live Entertainment,” in accordance to CNBC.

John Oliver devoted an episode of “Last Week Tonight” to Ticketmaster’s exploitative practices, reporting on how the platform withheld a majority of tickets from most of the people to permit resellers the possibility to purchase them and add them to resale platforms, together with Ticketmaster’s personal reselling platform, StubHub, and SeatGeek.

The results of these practices: a 2020 Department of Justice memo stated that almost all of gross sales on the platform had been performed by skilled resellers that may promote tickets between 75 % and seven,000 % over face worth. A 2019 research by Distil Networks additionally discovered that bots made up 40 % of site visitors on ticket-buying platforms between September and December 2018.

The Verified Fan course of was Ticketmaster’s reply to guarantee followers have a good likelihood at securing tickets to their desired present whereas decreasing the possibilities of bots and resellers getting them first. But regardless of these efforts, tickets are nonetheless ending up within the mistaken fingers and are being resold at exorbitantly increased costs on the platform.

Solutions to Prioritize Fans in Live Event Ticketing

One answer that may very well be explored to get tickets into the fingers of followers first is stopping bots and resellers from getting into presale within the first place.

Hype Commerce platforms like EQL, which retains bots out of high-demand gross sales, have been used for on-line retail gross sales just like the Nike x Tiffany & Co. collaboration to handle web site site visitors and be certain that followers have the perfect shot at making a purchase order. These instruments may very well be applied to handle ticket gross sales as nicely.

Andrew Lipp, CEO and co-founder of EQL, informed POPSUGAR that an alternative choice contains utilizing information from social media, newsletters, web sites, or music-streaming platforms to establish followers who recurrently have interaction with an artist and supply precedence entry to them first. Swift used an identical tactic for her 2018 “Reputation” Tour when she supplied “boosts” to followers who watched movies or purchased particular merch for a greater likelihood at scoring tickets at presale. For the Eras Tour, followers who bought tickets for the canceled Lover Fest Tour and anybody who purchased the “Midnights” album or merch had been supplied a lift within the presale. However, the boosts didn’t appear to assist with the ticket-purchasing expertise for the Eras Tour.

Amid the continuing issue with Ticketmaster, extra artists are talking out in opposition to the platform and are even stepping in to prohibit ticket resales. During the Ticketmaster congressional listening to, musician Clyde Lawerence testified that the majority artists had no negotiating energy concerning ticket pricing as a result of the venue and promoter are below Live Nation, in accordance to Time.

While Ticketmaster claims artists management the pricing for a tour, in his testimony, Lawerence alleged that this was not completely true as a result of Ticketmaster controls the exorbitant charges that get tacked onto the costs. “We have absolutely zero say or visibility into how much these fees will be,” he stated. “We find out the same way as everyone else, by logging onto Ticketmaster once the show already goes on sale.”

And merely deciding not to use Ticketmaster is not so easy. The beforehand talked about Department of Justice memo alleged that since Ticketmaster owns lots of the high music venues within the nation by means of Live Nation, the corporate has allegedly compelled venues into utilizing Ticketmaster by retaliating in opposition to venues that refused its providers (by way of The Guardian).

Some artists have efficiently stepped up for his or her followers and made ticketing extra equitable for them, although. In March, English rock band The Cure aimed to make tickets for his or her Shows of a Lost World Tour as reasonably priced for followers as doable. But in the course of the presale, followers ended up paying means over the asking worth due to hidden Ticketmaster charges. Frontman Robert Smith took to X and shared his frustrations on the process, writing, “I am as sickened as you all are by today’s Ticketmaster ‘fees’ debacle. To be very clear: the artist has no way to limit them. I have been asking how they are justified. If I get anything coherent by way of an answer I will let you all know.” Eventually, Ticketmaster conceded and supplied followers a refund for the additional charges.

Before his 2023 Mathematics World Tour, Ed Sheeran introduced that ticket resales would solely be out there by means of verified resale platforms at face worth. Sheeran’s staff used blockchain know-how for his present in France to fight bots and forestall tickets from being offered above face worth on the resale market. To forestall scalpers from accessing tickets altogether, Maggie Rogers and her staff took the old-school route and hosted in-person ticket gross sales for her Summer of ’23 Tour. Rogers even supplied unique merch at an additional price to incentivize followers to buy in particular person.

Live music is a priceless expertise for followers and artists alike, however that does not imply that followers ought to have to break the financial institution or bounce by means of infinite hoops to see their favourite artist in particular person.

Live music is a priceless expertise for followers and artists alike, however that does not imply that followers ought to have to break the financial institution or bounce by means of infinite hoops to see their favourite artist in particular person. Ticketmaster has demonstrated that regardless of their claims, the ticketing mannequin will stay the identical and solely profit the ticketing platform and different insiders.

While there are ongoing efforts by lawmakers to make ticketing extra equitable (President Biden has lengthy been pushing for all sectors — from ticketing to cable and banking — to scrap hidden “junk fees”), artists and their groups have the perfect leverage to enact actual change within the trade. Some artists have already enacted modifications to defend their followers.

Still, it’ll take the most important artists within the trade to stand united in opposition to the ticketing system, very like actors and writers in Hollywood are placing main studios’ ft to the hearth amid the actors’ and writers’ strikes. They maintain the facility to really strain Ticketmaster, SeatGeek, and the like to create a fairer system for the followers who need to expertise the magic of stay music collectively.