Guess what? The one platform where you can buy original and verified tickets for an upcoming live event (concerts, sports, etc.) is being sued. It’s Ticketmaster! This now controversial platform has control of over 80% of tickets from venues in the US (reported by the FTC). Obtaining a concert ticket that you know is fully legit without going through Ticketmaster is usually impossible. Ticketmaster is the original source for tickets (80% of the time), and other platforms only offer resell tickets. Purchasing resell tickets from other platforms always has its own risks. Therefore, the best option is for people to comply with Ticketmaster’s system and rules, but not everyone finds this ideal.
There’s a lot of drama to unpack regarding this platform. There are millions of people that are outraged by Ticketmaster’s reselling feature. This feature allows ticket holders to resell their tickets on the platform at their own chosen price. This has caused a lot of issues for fans who genuinely want tickets because scalpers and bots are now determined to get their hands on tickets first. Once they get hold of these tickets, they then sell them to fans for inflated prices. For example, if I sold my Drake tickets for $600 when I purchased them for $250, I could earn $350. If I’m being real, it’s a great way to make money, but evil. Many people are annoyed by this feature because concert ticket prices are now jacked up. It’s not even artists that are doing this, but simply ordinary people setting and inflating those prices. Many artists themself, like Taylor Swift, have also voiced frustrations with Ticketmaster’s reselling system to show their concern for fans who are put at a disadvantage by this feature. So not only are fans upset, but artists themself aren’t too pleased either.
I am in fact a victim of this phenomenon. Recently, Ariana Grande announced a new tour that was in high demand because it would mark her first tour in 7 years. My friend and I really wanted to go, so we waited in the presale queue for 2 hours. Once the queue opened up, all the tickets were sold out within minutes. When our spot in line was 0, everything was gone. Not to worry though! Apparently, 50%+ of the seats are available to buy through resale for 10 times the price. It felt like an odd loss because we didn’t lose tickets to other fans, but we lost them to bots that are impossible to compete with. Now, if we still want to end up going, we’ll have to spend a large amount of money that isn’t worth the experience. This is a pure example of this ongoing issue with Ticketmaster and it’s reselling system.
The FTC has investigated this issue, and an internal review showed that just 5 professional scalpers controlled over 6,000+ Ticketmaster accounts and have purchased over 240,000+ tickets alone. This is an insane statistic! To think that a single person could’ve purchased the entire venue for the Ariana concert I wanted to go to, is crazy (for reference, this is hypothetical and the statistic wasn’t about Ariana’s concert in particular). As a fan of many artists, this is something that I truly hope can get fixed because its unfair to us all who want to participate in these experiences. The FTC also sees an issue in this, and is taking action by pressing charges. They claim this violates the Better Online Ticket Sale Act passed in 2016, which prohibits bots from bypassing security, purchasing tickets in abundance, or selling those tickets.
Although this has hurt the pockets of many music fans, Ticketmaster has been able to profit from reselling. Both the seller and the buyer of a resale ticket have to pay Ticketmaster a fee during the transaction. The more times tickets are being resold, the more times these fees are being paid and going towards Ticketmaster’s profits. The New York Times claims that this is a possibility behind Ticketmaster’s weak security systems around scalpers and bots, who obtain large quantities of tickets.
One thing to note is that this applies to all types of live events that are sponsored by Ticketmaster. However, Ticketmaster is mainly known for selling concert tickets, which is why concerts and artists were the main focus of this article.
We don’t know what the outcome will be, but it’s possible that Ticketmaster may have to alter its system and get rid of reselling entirely. Comment below whether you believe the reselling system should be removed entirely, changed in some way, or kept the way it is right now?
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