Best Ways To Get Surging Ticketmaster Resale Prices Under Control

Countless fans are frustrated with the concert ticketing process. The primary irritation comes from excessive “extra” fees and the lack of reasonably priced tickets on platforms like Ticketmaster. To exacerbate the situation, dedicated fans become infuriated when they witness resale tickets appearing at exorbitant prices just minutes after the original tickets sell out. In this article I investigate the causes behind these ticketing disappointments and examines potential solutions to get excessive fees and Ticketmaster resale pricing under control.

“Re-sale ticket prices have gotten out of control, and it’s hurting fans who just want to see their favorite artists perform live.”

Taylor Swift

1. For Resale Live Events, Fans Pay Exorbitant Fees Twice.

Ticketmaster has pricing schemes and fees that are a significant source of frustration for concert goers. Furthermore, Ticketmaster is not the only primary ticketing platform charging excess fees. For instance, other primary ticketing outlets include Eventbrite, Tickets.com, AXS, Etix, SeatGeek, Vivid Seats, and StubHub. What is worse is that these fees are increasing and in some cases can be up to 30% of the face value of the ticket.

Worst, fans pay these “extra” fees again when these tickets are re-purchased through a reseller in a secondary ticket market. Remarkably, Ticketmaster, a primary ticket market, is also a player in the secondary market as is other ticket marketplaces such as StubHub and SeatGeek to name a few. What is even worse, these secondary market “extra” fees are almost always higher than when a fan purchased the original ticket on the primary market.

a. Breakout Of These Additional Ticket Fees. 

Ticket marketplaces, like Ticketmaster, usually charge several other fees besides the actual ticket price. Further, these ticketing platforms make a profit off of these fees. However, it is interesting to note that sometimes the venue and their client (the live performer) is also imposing these fees. Below is a recap of these “extra” fees.

• Facility Charge. This charge is added by the venue such as a concert hall or stadium.
• Delivery Fee. Many times this is an optional fee for the fan, depending on which ticket delivery method the fan chooses. Also, the ticketing platform may charge a credit card processing fee if the fan pays by a credit card.
• Service Fee. This is a “catch all fee”. This is the sum of charges added per agreement with each client (artist) as well as an order processing fee.

b. Why Do Resale Ticket Buyers Pay Higher “Extra” Fees the Second Time Around?

Again, ticketing platforms such as Ticketmaster can charge these exorbitant fees twice. First in the primary market and then again in the secondary market when the ticket is resold by a “fan”. Now in reality, the “fan” can be an actual fan that could not attend the concert, but in a lot of cases it is a scalper who is re-selling the ticket for a profit. As an example, see description below of an actual scenario of a complaint against TradeDesk, a Ticketmaster company.

“… on a $209.50 ticket, the company collects a fee of $25.75. If the ticket is then resold through the company for $400, it collects a second fee of $76—much higher than the first fee.” 

ClassActionReporter

For more how these “extra” fees work, see TheHustle’s The Sneaky Economics Of Ticketmaster.

“Just sharing music with each other – that’s cool. It’s the selling that becomes the problem.”

Prince

2. What Are The Reasons That Ticketmaster Resale Gouging Even Happens?

Besides these excessive extra fees, resellers price gouge when they resell tickets on a secondary ticketing platforms. In fact, there are several factors that contribute to Ticketmaster resale gouging as well as other ticketing platforms. First, when fans have a high demand for popular events, they quickly buy all the tickets on the primary market. As a result, resale prices on the secondary market skyrocket. Also in some cases, scalpers will buy and hold tickets until tickets start selling at exorbitant prices on the secondary, re-sell market.

A TicketMaster Resale Perspective: The Reasons For Unscrupulous Ticket Prices

“As an artist, I want my fans to be able to see me perform live without having to pay exorbitant prices on the secondary market.”

Kid Rock

Besides high demand, there are also several factors that limit the supply of affordable tickets on the primary market. For example, ticket brokers and scalpers often use advanced software call bots to purchase large quantities of tickets on the primary market. This further limits availability and inflate prices. Besides web scraping bots, there are several other ways that brokers can obtain tickets to sell on the secondary market. To list, below are reasons that fans cannot get a reasonably priced ticket on Ticketmaster, and thus are forced to buy tickets at exorbitant prices on the secondary markets.

Reasons Why Moderately Priced Live Event Tickets Are Not Available

• Web Scraping Bots: Scalpers Use to Buy Tickets Faster Than Humans.
• The Insiders: Tickets Not Offered on Primary Market and Sold on TicketMaster Resale Markets.
• Pre-Sale Tickets: A Less Likely Way Tickets Could End Up on TicketMaster Resale Markets.
• Ticket Holder Who Cannot Attend Event: Justifiable Reason to Resell Tickets.

For a more detailed explanation of the causes behind reasonable-priced tickets not being available, see this piece, Reasons Why Tickets End Up on TicketMaster Resale Secondary Markets.

3. What Would Happen If Ticketmaster Just Did Dynamic Pricing and Disallowed Resales.

If Ticketmaster implemented dynamic pricing and disallowed resales, this would alter the ticketing landscape. On the one hand, many top artists and venues would maximize revenue by getting market value for their tickets by cutting out scalpers. On the other hand, die-hard fans may become disillusioned with both the performer and the venue as they are just catering to the rich.

Also, dynamic pricing may have other unintended consequences. For instance, many live event venues as well as performers are affiliated with other entities such as city government, a metropolitan area, or venue sponsors. Additionally, many live events are part of a larger tour or theater run where dynamic pricing per event may not make much sense to most stakeholders. For example, to get a flavor of the complexity of live events, take New York City (NYC) where there are a large variety of live events. To list, see below:

Sampling Of Live Events In NYC

• A hit Broadway musical like The Producers
• A two night stint of Yo Yo Ma at Lincoln Center.
• The not-so-hot Mets at Shea.
• A one night only Britney Spears rock concert for preteens.
• A long-running show for tourists.
• A season of the opera for subscribers.
• Meetings with clients at the Giants game.

a. The Unknowns And Possible Fallout Of Dynamic Pricing.

So in these examples, dynamic pricing per event in many cases would not work for the performers, the venue, the promoter, or fans. For example with a long-running Broadway show it might end up not being long running. This is because with dynamic pricing at first the tickets may be highly priced, and then later on they would be too low to support production cost. So in this scenario, the show would probably end up not being long-running. If we use our imagination on most of these scenarios above, going full-throttle on dynamic price per event may not be the best solution.

“The music industry is a matrix that is counter to what is natural and right.”

Prince

b. Experiments With Dynamic Pricing

At the same time, we are seeing ticketing platforms like Ticketmaster starting to experiment with dynamic pricing. For example, during a recent ticket sale for a Springsteen concert, dynamic pricing kicked in where some tickets were selling for $5,000. So we may start seeing more dynamic pricing in the future. In many ways it is up to the performer, the venue, and the promoters on how to price live event tickets. However if a live event goes full-throttle with dynamic pricing, it is likely to alienate their fan base made up of low- and middle-income buyers.

For more on dynamic pricing, see GothamGazette’s Ticket Scalping and Pitchfork’s 6 Ways To Fix The Broken Concert Ticketing System. Also, see Unvarnished Facts’ Capitalism Pros And Cons – More Freedom, Less Security, Not Fair? for more information on capitalism.

Capitalism Pros And Cons – More Freedom, Less Security, Not Fair?

4. Ticketmaster Resale Options To Cut Out The Scalpers And Excess Fees.

There appears to be “no silver bullet” for eliminating scalpers, but there is hope. For example, ticketing platforms like Ticketmaster, could implement resale purchase limits, or use unique identifiers to tie tickets to individual buyers, or require identification upon entry to events. Definitely, the best option to eliminate scalpers is to reduce the ability of scalpers to profit from reselling tickets.

Unquestionably, there needs to be effective strategies that help create a more equitable ticketing marketplace and make attending live events more accessible to fans. On the other hand, even though most stakeholders (live performers, venues, promoters, fans) agreed this is the best approach, scalpers are still scalping tickets en masse with no end in sight.

a. Two Main Issues With Ticketing That Frustrate Fans.

Indeed, live event ticketing is complicated with many stakeholders and many pain points. However, not all these pain points are important as important as others. In many cases, it is something that is hard to solve such as supply and demand. In these cases, it is up to the artist or organizer on how many performances are feasible. On the other hand, there are two problems that are solvable, and are restated below:

• Excessive “Extra” Fees That Can Easily Exceed Over 20% Of The Original Ticket Price.
• The Number Of Exorbitantly Priced Tickets Available For Resale.

b. Options To Eliminate Excess Fees and Exorbitant Priced Resale Tickets.

Below are some options to eliminate excess fees and especially exorbitant priced resale tickets. My take is two-fold to tackle these problems. First, to make ticketing transparent, ticketing platforms should identify the numbers of tickets that went to insiders, pre-sales, and that were resold. Not sure how to implement it, but it would help to minimize excesses. Second, put a cap on the amount of “extra” fees and a cap on resale ticket prices. For example, this could be 20% for both the extra fees and on the face value of the original ticketed price. In this case, implementation would need to be centralized.

Now, there are a lot of other options, but many options have previously been implemented and have not effectively stopped ticketing excesses. Below are different options that have or can be implemented to minimize the excesses of “extra” fees and resale tickets.

1) Strengthen AntiTrust Laws To Eliminate Monopolistic Behavior. 

When you look at the whole ecosystem of ticketing, it is not necessarily anti-competitive behavior that is the root cause of the problem. There are other primary ticketing platforms like Eventbrite, Tickets.com, AXS, Etix, and they also can have excessive fees and exorbitant resale ticket prices. Now, anti-monopolistic laws can always be further optimized in regard to exclusive ticketing rights at specific venues, excessive fees, and primary ticketing platforms benefiting from secondary market re-sales. For example, Ticketmaster’s resale business had over $1 billion in revenue in the third quarter of 2022. Here Ticketmaster would have no incentive to eliminate excess resale fees or exorbitant resale pricing.

2) Limit Ticket Scalpers From Buying Tickets. 

This is a noble cause, and can be of some benefit. However, ticketing platforms have attempted to limit ticket scalping for years with limited results. In the end, there are a large amount of tickets that still get on the secondary resale market. There are many reasons for this. First, anti-bot measures to prevent web scraping quickly become obsolete as scalpers’ bots find new ways to get tickets. Additionally, there are cases where tickets allocated to insiders are never available on the primary market Thus, they first become available on the secondary market at exorbitant prices.

3) For a Given Event, Resale Tickets Can Only Be Available At Same Price As Primary Ticket Price. 

This approach was taken on Beyonce’s Renaissance World Tour. In this case, it looks like it helped more fans to get reasonably-priced tickets. Issues with this approach is this approach was driven only for one artist instead of for all live events. Additionally, where is the transparency? How many tickets were given directly to insiders, and how many tickets were re-sold on non-official Ticketmaster resale channels?

“I think it’s really unfortunate when people buy tickets just to resell them at a higher price.”

Beyoncé

4) Transparency Of Ticket Purchase And Attendance. 

This approach has merits, but how to implement. Here the ticketing platform would specifically identify how many tickets went to insiders, to pre-sales, and to the general public. Additionally, it would be key to identify how many tickets were resold.  As a minimum, this would keep everything above board. Additionally, it would probably limit the number of tickets allocated to insiders and maybe resellers.

5) Universal Cap On The Resale Price Of A Ticket.  

If it could be enforced, this approach would take away the incentive for scalpers to obtain tickets for resale. Additionally, this approach would maximize revenue for the artists, the venues, the promoters, and make more primary market tickets available to the general public. This question is how would this be enforced? Government? Promoters? Event Association? Live Performers Group?

“Music is meant to be shared and enjoyed by everyone, not just those who can afford it.”

Prince

For more on options to eliminate excess fees and resale tickets, see Netacea’s Ticket Scalping and Vice’s Why Ticket Brokers Can Get Taylor Swift Tickets.