May 1, 2019 • 46 mins
Ticketmaster was founded in 1976, and since that time it's grown to be one of the most powerful forces in the industry -- whether you've gone to symphonies, concerts or plays, odds are you've run into Ticketmaster while trying to get your seats for the show. Yet numerous people allege that this company wields enormous, dangerous influence over artist, venues and fans alike. Tune in to learn more about the rise of Ticketmaster.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to know. A
production of I Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Greetings, welcome
(00:25):
back to the show. My name is Matt, and our
pal Noel is on some adventures, but we'll return in
the future. They called me Ben. We are joined as
always with our super producer Paul, Mission controlled decade. Most importantly,
you are you. You are here that makes this stuff
they don't want you to know. Welcome to the show.
You did not have to buy tickets, that's right. You
(00:47):
did have to buy a phone or a computer or
something that has a microphone and a processor and at
least headphone outputs or some kind of speaker. Let's call
those associated fees. So the show is free. It takes
some doing to get it in you, to get it
(01:08):
in your ear right, all the all the paraphernalia is
not included. I mean, sure, this is a show. This
is a recorded show, right we we do a call
in line. We've taken the show on the road and
probably will do again and then near to mid future.
But nothing, nothing quite beats the experience, right, if you're
(01:30):
in your favorite music or your favorite performance whatever it
is live, right, Like, what are some of the memorable
concerts you've been to? Man, I haven't really been to many.
But Dave Matthews back in the day, oh boy, some
of that DMB baby, Oh it was the best. And
(01:54):
you know what tickets were always like, Okay, they were
not insane back in the early two thousand's doing some
old d m B. Though, you know, you get to
you know, that's a fairly large act, right then you
get to um newer shows nowadays, and you're going to
a much smaller venue with a much smaller band. And
(02:15):
I'm paying more now to see those bands than I
did to pay a big ticket band when I was
you know, coming out of high school in college. So
like you would go see Dave Matthews band in a
in a stadium or something, uh, something that large, and
you would get maybe some reasonable tickets on the lawn
(02:36):
or max thirty bucks with everything, yeah, just to get
into Lakewood Amphitheater, which not called that anymore, but who cares?
And also, you know, inflation, obviously everyone is saying inflation,
matt but inflation, but that's not at all. Let's call
it fflation. Okay, maybe okay, asides from sounding very dr
(02:58):
susy and that that is a word that could work
for today's episode, because you know what bothers me about
buying tickets probably the same thing that bothers everyone they
buy tickets nowadays, when you buy a ticket for something,
you're overwhelmingly going to do it online or else you're
gonna show up at a show the day of, you know,
(03:20):
and it's it's probably sold out, if it's worth anything, perhaps, yeah, yeah,
and it's it's really it's relatively rare for someone to
be walking down the street see tickets for a show
like next week or that weekend, and then say I'm
gonna walk in and buy those now in person. People
(03:41):
don't do that near as often, so most of the
time we buy tickets online. And here in the United
States there's been one game in town for quite a while,
and this game continues in other countries as well, a master,
if you will, of tickets, some sort of ticket master. Yes,
(04:04):
took a while to get to that one, but it's true.
Right since about the late nineteen seventies, it's become increasingly
difficult to get tickets to live events, Broadway plays, uh, symphonies,
the DMB. It's difficult to get these tickets without running
somehow into ticket Master, even if you don't know that
(04:25):
you're running into ticket Master. So what exactly is this thing?
It's been here for for the three of us, for you,
mission control of myself, for our entire lives, yeah and
beyond and before. Yeah. So let's go back to Phoenix, Arizona,
nineteen seventies six. A couple of gentlemen. We got Albert Lefler,
(04:46):
Peter Godwa and another man of businessman named Gordon Gunn.
What a great name. Yeah, seriously, Gordon gun So Leffler.
He comes up with this name, this idea for a thing,
uh uh, and he calls it ticket Master. And it's
this new company that's just gonna control tickets and for
these guys when they founded in nineteen seventy six, really,
(05:09):
all they're trying to do in the beginning is sells
some tickets to an electric light orchestra concert at the
University of New Mexico. That's the first big thing. And
electric light Orchestra is something that my dad told me
about actually that he really enjoyed. Um, look it up,
Google it. If you don't know it, Spotify it. I'm
sure you can find it. Mr. Blues Guy is a
(05:30):
great song. It really is. It really is. Uh. But anyway,
so this one little thing in Albuquerque, New Mexico. I'm
so sorry to interrupt that to say, Turned to Stone
is also a great song in my in my mind,
it's one that I've had stuck in my head. Awesome, right,
Blue Sky, turned to Stone. It's the seventies, it's Albuquerque,
(05:53):
out of college. Awesome, good times rolling, right, Let the
good times roll. And so then uh, they figure out, hey,
this is working. We're just you know, control a hub.
We're controlling the tickets to one thing. We're good at this.
Let's keep doing it. So they keep doing it for
a few years. Then by night they have their first
(06:14):
international clients, um, coming in from Norway, Oslo, Norway. And
that same year they signed their first major venue, this
place called the Louisiana Superdome, along with their first Major
League team, the New Orleans Jazz, which is now the
Utah Jazz, but in the city of New Orleans it
was the Jazz. So they actually have the NBA as
(06:37):
one of their major clients, one one team on the NBA.
But still that's huge for just a couple of guys
starting with a startup, right, Yeah, And it happened so quickly.
It's just a few years. When Leffler and Godwa originally
thought of the company, they were going to be licensing
software for tickets, really, and they've got on from that too,
(07:02):
being the ticket provider for stadiums, which sounds kind of
like maybe a boring business, right it's not as uh,
you know, endlessly fascinating as being a professional uh skydiver,
maybe a podcaster or something like that, you know, an
(07:23):
underwater tattoo artist. But but still, what we have to
realize is they get a cut of every ticket sold,
and when you get to something as large as a superdome,
that's a lot of money in a very one like
in one night other people knew about the game. There
were other things that existed at this time before Ticketmaster.
(07:46):
There was a business called ticket Tron like ticket and
then the movie Tron, and that's nineteen sixty. So it's
difficult to It's hard for me to imagine computerized ticket
sales being organ eyes and enough with software with computers
of that are powerful enough to like do it in
any large scale. But it was happening, Yeah, yeah, it wasn't.
(08:09):
It wasn't necessarily happening on the customer end, but you
would make a phone call to take a tron and
they would have this database. Right, So can I tell
you fun fact about Aron. They were purchased by a
thing called the Lovecraft Investment Group. What's the Lovecraft Investment Group? Had?
(08:33):
All I know is it's Lovecraft. There's a Lovecraft involved,
That's all I know. Oh boy, let's see it's true,
the Hewlett Packard Lovecraft. I don't know what the I
don't know what the Lovecraft Investment coming. This may be
fodder for another podcast. Here's the thing. As you said,
(08:53):
there were other there are other similar creatures around in
this more ticket right, other places that wanted to be
the ticket provider, in the middleman for that. But like
a hungry invading species, Ticketmaster consumed and digested these competitors.
(09:13):
In one it opened its first overseas operation. In two,
they got a new CEO, a guy named Fred Rosen.
Rosen told the l A Times back in that his
competitors were asleep at the switch he said he was
an aggressive businessman and proud of it and got this
American psycho vibe going on. Right. He was so good
(09:36):
at dominating the ticket industry that it became the only
game in town. And other people, other artists, primarily not
just uh wound up consumers, other artists started to take
issue with it. Pearl Jam launched a campaign in that
they called a strong language for some people ticket bastard,
(09:59):
because he's you. Pearl Jam was hearing from their fans
that they literally couldn't afford tickets to a show, or
that they were getting saddled with these egregious hidden fees,
and so they said, well, look man, we we want
to make a living, but we want our fans to
see our music. We don't want to uh milk them
(10:20):
for every penny they're worth, Like what are we kiss?
You know what I mean? They don't want to do that.
They want to be human, They want to stay humans.
So they wanted to offer summer tour tickets to fans
for under twenty bucks, and they asked ticket Mastered, you know, hey, guys,
can you just not charge another twenty bucks and fees?
Can you actually keep the fees around two dollars or
(10:43):
whatever that your cost of doing businesses and they said no, no,
your pearl Jam, and we our ticket Master. Yeah so yeah,
that but it's easy to think about because they really
did say no, and Pearl Jam just decided, well, it's
(11:05):
not worth it. We're not even going to go on tour.
We're canceling everything. We're not gonna like go and play
a bunch of empty stadiums where nobody can show up
for for this these exorbitant prices. They end up going
to Congress and guess what, Pearl Jam one and everything
was okay and everyone was happy, and ticket sales went
down to twenty dollars for the rest of our lives.
(11:27):
Thanks so much for tuning in, folks. We hope you
enjoyed this episode. Oh wait, nope, nope, that's not what happened.
What happened ticket Master one? Right, And there's one more
sort of detail for this story. The band, the members
of the band Pearl Jam maintained and say to this
day you can ask them today and they'll confirm this
(11:49):
that private investigators were sent to snoop around in their lives,
sent by Ticketmaster and having a p i um sicked
on you by a company, very common occurrence. Unfortunately, what
they were probably trying to do, what the allegation implies
(12:10):
is that Ticketmaster was attempting to find something discrediting to
members of Pearl Jam, not something that had anything to
do with their crusade to get better ticket prices. They
wanted to be able to say, well, this person is
doing heroin and we'll put it in the news if
(12:31):
you guys don't straighten up until the corporate line. But
you know, again, that's a terrible example because this is
the nineties in Seattle grunge, right, So doing heroin may
unfortunately not have been the huge scandal that they would want,
but they wanted something to hold over their heads, and eventually,
(12:53):
probably more so, through just the sheer, ungodly amount of
money Ticketmaster has, they were able to they were able to,
as you say, prevail. So that brings us to the
modern day. A company called Interactive Corps, oddly enough not
a video game company, purchased a majority stake and ticket Master,
(13:14):
and then it bought the rest of the company n
the name changed to Ticketmaster Online. Dash City search doesn't
exactly roll off the tongue, right, So they didn't care
that it didn't roll off the tongue. The company expanded, diversified,
it kept evolving its business model, increasingly going from phones
(13:36):
to online sales, and this constant evolution, the way of
many businesses right uh, unfortunately, did not go in the
direction that critics wanted it to. They didn't see cheaper tickets,
they didn't feel like things were more transparent. These moves
did not quell all of the critics, and today ticket
(13:57):
Master controls and estimate aided of the little more than
of the ticketing market in North America. M So they're
doing something right. But let's get back to the critics.
What are these critics saying. Well, they're saying that we
need to take a quick break to hear from our
(14:18):
sponsor and then we'll find out what ticket Master may
or may not have been getting into. Here's where it
gets crazy. So it turns out that in addition to
be massively successful, Ticketmaster has been accused of numerous abuses,
(14:39):
breaches of law, and shady business practices. There's genuine stuff
they don't want you to know here. It's probably not
gonna stop snow Compellingnipetus to stop it. And yes, ticket
Master has been sued for conspiracy. Oh snap, the big
c all right, stake another time traveling trip here to
(15:03):
two thousand nine. Bruce Springsteen. Oh everybody knows or Bruce
the Boss. Yeah, he's the boss. He's your boss and
my boss. He publicly calls out ticket Master in two
thousand nine for a little um, let's say, misdirection, redirection,
if you will, from from a website. So as fans
(15:25):
were going and trying to buy tickets through ticket Master
to the Springsteen concert, they were getting sent to this
other place called ticket now dot com, completely separate site.
It looks very different. There's no you know, when you're
on that site, you don't understand what's happening. You feel
like a pop up maybe has occurred, or you've gotten
redirected through an ad maybe, or this is your last
(15:48):
chance to get some kind of ticket to see the
Boss live. Well, yeah, there's a certain desperation that's happening
when you are being redirected to this ticket now dot
com because guess what, the tickets are marked up by hundreds,
sometimes thousands of dollars at ticket now versus ticket Master.
(16:08):
So then all these fan complaints are coming through because
of this weird steering to this place called tickets Now. Um,
a New Jersey congressman gets a call and basically this
guy says, Hey, we need a federal antitrust investigation into
whatever the heck is going on between ticket Master and
ticket Now. What is this? Let's figure this out. Yeah,
(16:31):
So here's what they find. They find that ticket Now,
in addition to having a very similar name to ticket Master,
is owned by ticket Master, and when Bruce Springsteen's fans
were going to a website to buy tickets to his show,
they were automatically redirected to ticket Now, which, as he said,
(16:54):
met sells tickets from much higher than their face value.
And it prays on that desperate san Right, that's psychological
fear that someone else will get the thing I want. So,
you know, I may not necessarily think this is a
good financial decision, but I will be gosh darned and
gali ged if I allow somebody else to get that ticket.
(17:16):
You know what I mean, It's an artificial scarcity essentially.
Bruce Springsteen found out about it, and he was he
was righteously indignant. He wrote a public statement about this
because what he found out was that this sort of
second chance or reselling site. Ticket Now was something that
(17:40):
Ticketmaster was sending the audience to when there were still
regular tickets available. So they could have gotten that you know,
thirty or forty or whatever dollar ticket to sit on
the lawn in the back and have a great time.
But instead they were going directly to this place where
it was you know, this huge markup, and that that
(18:00):
that markup goes to Ticketmaster. Man. So Ticketmaster gets a
fifteent cut from tickets Now, which it owns. H So
that's in addition to the fees it already gets as Ticketmaster,
so that that money is already spent and baked into
(18:21):
the price. So uh, a lawsuit comes about, and essentially
what they're doing is making money off the same ticket
two times. Clever, you know, brilliant, very clever, evil, lawful evil,
and so uh. Probably because Friedenstein himself took such a
(18:43):
strong stance against the Ticketmaster issued an apology to the
fans and said, we will refund you the price difference
between the face value of the tickets and those you
got from ticket Now, which is a lot of you know,
it's a lot of scratch. But that's also that's also
like being caught stealing, you know, being caught stealing a
car and then saying I'm I'm gonna drive it back
(19:07):
to your house. Yeah, and then like I feel bad,
I mean some gas money here, just a little bit gas. No,
they didn't they but but it's strange, right, and this
is just one of the allegations against Ticketmaster. We've got
that Pearl Jam example. But let's talk about those fees,
(19:30):
because that's where a lot of this comes back in. Right.
Have you ever bought a twenty dollar ticket only to
find that it becomes more than forty dollars by the
time you get to the actual place your order? No? Never, Never, Tabernacle,
that's a that's a local venue here in Atlanta. What
(19:50):
kind of fees have you run into? Literally twice as much?
I mean, yeah, I've seen I have seen tickets double
when I buy them for just a local You're here
because of ticket Master's weird fees to get me my
ticket somehow that I can print out already. Yeah, there's
like a two to five dollar fee for getting a PDF.
Essentially you can print somebody. I'm paying somebody's salary who's
(20:14):
just on a floor somewhere making calls like I need
three Pearl jam but like no, no, I got four
Radiohead No. And it's like it has to be that
to justify twenty or thirty dollar fees on top of
everything else. Otherwise I do not understand. Yeah, you're absolutely right.
There's a there's a service charge, and that would be
(20:35):
ticket masters charging you for the privilege of giving you
a ticket. And then there's the facility charge, which is
a charge added by the venue. So ticket Master takes
its cut, and then the Tabernacle, for example, takes its cut.
And then there are shipping, convenience and processing charges. So
(20:55):
that's a charge for you know, using your visa American
Express US, that's a charge for having the tickets delivered
to you via post or choosing your own printer. But
then who who pays Cardi b e? Then is what
I'm trying to figure out, Like what's her cut? Everybody
else is taking their cut. Who's where's Cardi B's money?
(21:17):
Unless you're a huge name artist, which I guess Cardi
b is now. Uh, the the amount of money you
get per ticket can be surprisingly alarmingly small because the
label will take some money, you know what I mean,
Your road crew will take some money and all all
this other stuff craft services. Eat that cheese because it's
(21:38):
coming out of your kind of the profits, right. Uh,
but all all this adds up to u to an
unpleasant experience for people when we're buying these tickets. The
problem is there's not really any transparency with this fees
between events, very even at the same venue and pre
(22:00):
princes of the artist as well is some people will
try to buck like Radiohead or Pearl Jam. And the
problem with it is that none of this, none of
this ultimately goes into a situation where and ticket prices
are lower. None of this is meant to nor will
(22:20):
it ever create cannot yes, none, None of this is
meant to create a situation where artists get paid more
and the audience pays less. Absolutely none. If anything. It's
kind of like, you know, nobody talks about this, but
it's pretty weird that you and you know historically can't
buy a car directly from the people who make cars.
(22:42):
It's weird. It's a weird thing. It's normalized and you know,
I'm not choosing sides on it, but that that is
something we think about. You know, you can buy almost
you can buy so many other things directly from the
people who make them. Vertical integration is scary though, and
it can it can be highly it can be highly problematic. Yeah,
(23:07):
and it can also be dangerous for the bottom line. Right, So,
the allegation here is that Ticketmaster is sort of a
rent seeker and it's now a middle It's maybe it
needed to be in the process before everybody had a
brilliant computer on their phone, but now maybe it doesn't
(23:30):
have to be right, Maybe that kind of software is
easier to handle. We don't really know. We just know
that they are the largest game in town, and we
know that the the entire operation is exceedingly opaque. We're
going to take a break for a brief word from
(23:51):
our sponsor, and then we'll come back with an investigation
in Canada that that makes this even weirder. All right,
here's where it gets crazier. This is hard for me
(24:12):
to understand that this is real. Okay, what we're gonna
talk about from now mostly through the rest of this episode,
we got from a CBC news um investigation that was
carried out and specifically there's a journalist named Dave Seglins
who actually physically went undercover as a scalper at a
(24:36):
ticket industry convention out there in Las Vegas. And you
can watch video of this online right now. If you
want to take a break, you can. You can search
this up CBC ticket Master. UM segling l I N S.
That's good, you'll find it. Check it out. It's pretty crazy.
(24:57):
Could we set some just some axiomatic beginnings here. Okay, So,
so imagine your ticketmaster. You make money selling tickets. Um,
you want people to buy tickets from you? Definitely? Um,
does it matter who that person is buying a ticket
from you as long as somebody's buying a ticket from you, right, right,
(25:19):
as long as the transaction occurs. But you want to
be on the side of the people in the artists,
and you would probably say hey, at least in public,
you say, hey, I think scalpers are the worst and
they take advantage of people. Yeah, because we want you
to have low prices and see all the stuff you
want to see. Don't be mad at us. Right, So
(25:42):
it's it's established then in the public mind. The axiom
is that uh, ticket distributors or these these middle segments
between the artists and the event and the customer, that
they should not not be down with scalpers, like you
guys making it weird, you're making it worse. I don't
(26:03):
want to be in a situation where, for instance, there are, uh,
what's a great what's a great event that people would
go to today? Like a band or a performance or
alien Con alien Con. They're only, yeah, it's a one
night only, four hundred, four hundred seat event and it's
(26:23):
called alien Con. Who knows what it is. Maybe it's
a mariachi band, and uh they ticket Master, one would assume,
does not care for a situation where one person goes
in and buys all four hundred or whatever those tickets
in one block and then turns around and sells them
through fifty more on you know eBay. Yeah, basically Ticketmaster
(26:48):
is not down with O P t right other people's tickets.
They don't. They're like, look, these these are the people's tickets, right, right, right?
So what that's what we assumed, right, And it turns
right and it turns out that we were very wrong,
like cartoonistly, So they're all they're quite all right with
anyone buying their share of the tickets as long as
(27:12):
those tickets get sold, and especially if ticket Master can
sell the tickets twice. What what are we talking about? Okay, well,
let's go back to Las Vegas at that convention. Um
so ticket Master, he's recording Ticketmaster at least some representatives
from Ticketmaster. Maybe that's the best way to say it. Um,
(27:34):
they are, these representatives are pitching scalpers on their ticket
Masters trademarked professional reseller program that they have established. Okay, now,
according to the investigation that you follow David David segments
through with the CBC News investigation, um Ticketmaster was not
(27:55):
only just deciding that if scalping is happening, we're just
gonna put blinders on and pretend that it's not happening.
They're also literally recruiting people, professional people who have been
scalping for a long time or maybe are very good
at scalping, to cheat the ticket Master system itself, to
(28:16):
expand their ticket Master's resale business, and again to take
more money from the people that are just trying to
go out and see a concert or an event or something.
So just to recap it's Ticketmaster teaching scalpers to scalp
Ticketmaster for their own profit for ticket Masters profits. Yes, yea,
(28:38):
so they have. They've done more than turn a blind eye.
They've gone They've gotten to a win win situation with
scalpers and ticket Master. Right, So this is for the
average concert goer. This is this is the part of
the movie where the bad guys team up and once
(29:00):
sales rep is on camera saying, I have brokers that
have literally a couple of hundred accounts. It's not something
that we look at or report. Because they wanted these
scalpers to feel that they were that they were safe
in this. Ticketmaster, for its part, denied the accusations. And
once again, you can always go back to the idea
(29:21):
that actions by a few people in the organization do
not automatically mean the entire organization condones it, right tail
as old as time. That's what any intelligence agency will
say when it's undeniably caught doing something terrible and be like, well,
that guy decided to topple that country on his own,
and we we always knew that, We always knew that
(29:43):
Jeremy was a little bit off. Yeah, and this is
all compartmentalized anyway, Only a very few from all number
of people knew anything about that. Yeah, Like I'm weirded
out hearing hearing about it today, Congresswoman. This is the
first first I've heard of it, and I've got to
tell you, Frinkly, I am outraged. You know what I
am too, And I hope you get to the bottom
(30:04):
of it. And congratulations on all your work. Thank you,
thank you. I'll be speaking at Georgetown UH this coming Friday.
It's one one night only. You can yeah you can't
get tickets through ticket Master or if those are sold out,
go ahead to Yeah it is sold out, well, go
to ticket noway tickets now, let's so and seen. So
(30:29):
ticket Master developed a toolkit for these scalpers. It is
a professional They don't call them scalpers. They call them resellers.
A professional reseller program that they launched call used tickets,
pre owned tickets, call certified pre owned U called trade Desk.
(30:53):
Trade Desk is a quote web based inventory management system
for scalpers. The company calls it the most powerful ticket
sales tool ever. So here's what it allows you to do.
You can buy a block of tickets from ticket Master
through one of its many faces, and then you can
(31:14):
upload those tickets to this trade Desk thing, and then
you can just list them again for resale. This means
you can hike or drop prices on tons and tons
of tickets based on what you think fans are looking for.
So it turns it into almost a stock market kind
of thing. Uh, neither Trade Desk nor the professional reseller
(31:38):
program are mentioned anywhere on ticket Master's website. You can
go check we looked, it's not there. It's also not
listed on any of its corporate reports. If you want
to find the Trade Desk website, you first have to
send in a registration request. So let's go ahead and
take a look at what happens. If you do get
through that registration process, you do have one of these
(32:01):
things like a an account there, and you are reselling things.
Let's see what Ticketmaster actually gets out of this whole process.
So it just as an example, let's say ticket Master
is going to sell a ticket for a little over
two hundred dollars two d nine dollars and fifty cents.
Okay um, that's just the price of the ticket. Ticket
(32:23):
Master itself is going to collect twenty five dollars and
seventy cents just on that initial sale. Now when the owner, now,
if because we're saying this this is through trade Desk,
the owner who's just purchased it through trade desk, then
puts it back up for resale for roughly twice as
much as it's the original cost, let's say four hundred dollars.
(32:44):
The company, then ticket Master stands to collect an additional
seventy six dollars on that same ticket. So so again
you're looking at over a hundred dollars that you're gonna
make um out of six dars in total of sales.
And at this point that's legal to it's not against law. Yeah,
(33:05):
And it's just a way to make sure that tickets
get sold at least if you're looking at from the
company's perspective, Trade desk basically insures that every ticket is
going to get sold at in some way from that
initial sale, the idea being that, you know, if you
want that, the idea being that the lever moves and
(33:26):
down so you could lower prices. Maybe day of ticket
sales aren't where you want them to be. So someone says,
all right, now this is no longer two it's fifty dollars.
Let's see what happens, right, Yeah, And there are strategies
the kind of line up with that at the like
towards the end of a concert or something, or towards
the end of a big game, people, there will still
(33:48):
be scalpers outside of a well, okay, there will be
resellers outside of a venue selling tickets for you know,
pennies on the dollar if the show is almost over,
something to get people in just to finally make a
tiny bit of money on that thing. And that that
exists throughout these markets. Yeah. Absolutely, we do want to
(34:10):
say that while while we did mention that ticket Master
h denied the allegations brought by this investigative report, maybe
it'll be helpful for us to give the actual language
that they used in denying this allegation. What do you think? Absolutely?
All right, So, after the story was published there in
(34:32):
CBC News, Ticketmaster issued a statement that went out to
CBC News, but then also went out to other places
that are reported on the stories, such as The Rolling Stone,
saying it was quote categorically untrue the Ticketmaster has any
program in place to enable resellers to acquire large volumes
of tickets. It also said it had already begun an
(34:53):
internal review of professional reseller accounts and employee practices before
the CBC News story came out. So they said, look,
we've already been investigating this internally and we would never
try to game the system in the way that you're describing. Again,
a representative from Ticketmaster is on camera completely completely doing
(35:19):
what they say, what they're denying. Yeah, the biggest, the
biggest thing that Ticketmaster had a problem with was that
that representative acknowledged of of acknowledged the knowledge that one
person essentially would have two hundred accounts, right, or one
entity or one group would have two hundred trade desk accounts.
(35:40):
That's that's where the big problem comes in. Yeah, so
is it is this situation where the money got too good?
Is a situation where we're finally maybe as the public
or the uninitiated scene into a previously murky world, That's
very possible. I would go ahead and just say it
(36:04):
makes me think of something we we discussed at the
very beginning of a competitive marketplace, essentially and having to
always evolve, like consistently evolving to make sure that you're
making more profit so that you can increase your margins
year every year, or you know, your increase your percentage
(36:25):
overall of gross income year every year, Like having to
find new creative ways as a giant company like Ticketmaster,
and it's you know, parent companies and all that. These
kinds of reselling. It's a it's another way to increase
those margins that isn't necessarily illegal. If you take out
the some of the things from the sea, you know,
(36:47):
some of the things were illegal, but not many. Right. Um,
the reselling market, as terrible as it sounds, and as
bad as it is for consumers such as us, it's
just another one of those ways to grab more money.
Allegedly illegal well, definitely illegal, but that they allegedly did. Yes, yes,
(37:08):
apologies because it hasn't been I don't think it's necessary.
This is just we're we're just being as fair as
we can so, as you can tell by the use
of the phrase allegedly and the fact that we're being
fairly careful about how we discussed this. Ticketmaster has been
in and out of court. In they suffered a data breach,
(37:31):
and in twenty nineteen a British law firm launched legal
action against them for effecting up to forty thousand UK customers,
and also in the U s Department of Justice launched
investigation following complaints that Live Nation, an event promoter, had
engaged in anti competitive practices following their merger with Ticketmaster.
(37:53):
There's a organization called End Shouts Entertainment Group, and they
said Live Nation pressured them and choosing Ticketmasters a vendor,
and had they refused, they would have lost out on business.
The allegations of antitrust violations resulted in a reexamination of
the merger between ticket Master and Live Nation. However, this
(38:14):
case is probably going into well, many of these cases
are going into arbitration, private settlements. No need to have
a shameful day in court. And at this point Ticketmasters
very little in the way of real competition. There are
(38:35):
other things in the market, sure, but there they're gnats
two Ticketmasters, Behemoth, right. And the question then is I mean,
clearly there's some stuff they don't want you to know
that's inarguable it's not necessarily criminal. Like for instance, okay,
think of airline tickets depending on which way you go
(38:57):
through an airline, or think of privatized insurance. People don't
want you to know the lowest price you can get.
They want you to get confused and bored and desperate
enough to just take the easiest thing. Yeah, that's that's
that is a very clear and unfortunately disturbing explanation of
how all three of those industries work. Most industries, I guess,
(39:22):
everyone just trying to get you to take the easiest
option for you, and it depends on where you are
in life times ticking. But here's the easiest one for
your social strata. Right. You're not looking for Mr. Wright Price,
You're looking for Mr Right now Price right. Start applying
that to social interactions. And now it's just so we've
(39:44):
gone down a rabbit hole. I should have it, should
have quit while we were ahead with the with the
insurance airplane ticket thing. But yeah, it's It's true, and
there's probably not going to be any anything that really
stops this practice. There will be things that degate it.
The problem is that the established system has caught up
(40:06):
to technological breakthroughs only in the ways that can improve
its profit while maintaining its position. The technology that we
have now to organize, distribute, and track these sorts of
things is amazing. If you if you were from the
nineteen seventies and you've looked at it, you would think
was mind blowing, you know what I mean, unless you
(40:28):
already worked for DARKA or something. It would be like,
how did that get out here? But uh, but but
the problem is that even though we're we have the
potential to democratize the access to these tickets in a
way that would benefit the creators and benefit the customers,
(40:49):
we're not. We're not seeing that. When will that happen?
When will there be some sort of market disruption? I
don't know. And at this point, as Ticketmaster, anything thoroughly illegal. No,
they haven't been convicted. None of the CEOs have ever
gone to jail. The creator has certainly never got in trouble. Yeah,
(41:10):
in two thousand nine, that whole conspiracy suit was out there,
didn't really go anywhere, right, right. So the question then
goes to us, fellow conspiracy realist, is this just how
this business should be run? And what what are other
businesses that you have seen that your that your fellow
(41:32):
listeners may not be aware of, Like we've we've seen
some We've seen some strange things going on in the
funeral service industry. We've seen some strange things going on
here in the event and ticketing industry. But where else,
I wonder, where else is everything just crazy crooked appearing
(41:54):
to be crooked? I have to say so that we
don't get suited to that end to that, and I wanna,
I wanna pick your brain bin about the mechanic big
mechanic industry with some of these bigger companies out there
that that offer repairs to vehicles and automobiles, assuming like, um,
(42:15):
not just straight up garages, but box automotive stores that
are also garages or service centers. Okay, yeah, the big
ones that are nationwide. I'd like to talk about some
of those, see if there are any conspiracies out there.
So maybe maybe if you're listening and you know, if
you heard of anything, let us know what you've heard.
I will that's that's great, I will say on that.
(42:37):
On that note, there is one thing that sounds a
bit curmudgeently for me to say, but I think it's
a good point. It's one thing that bugs me about
modern car repairs. Over the past few years, cars have
increasingly become something that the person who owns it cannot
work on. Have you noticed that there are more and
more black boxes proliferating under the hood. Sure? Perhaps really
(43:00):
and just lack of experience, lack of knowledge. I just
feel like, call me old fashioned, but I feel like
if you if you buy a car, it should be
something that you own that it shouldn't have to be
a service. You know what I mean. We're moving increasingly
into a service economy. It is going to scare your
children listening now when when you say, yeah, people used
(43:22):
to like buy things and then have them, I'm like,
what for how much a month? Yeah? No, no, like
you would just you would just buy one sandwich and
you would eat it. Yeah. Well it goes back to
that superpower thing of money and time. And I don't
have time to work on this vehicle. I'll give it
to you and you fix it. Here's some of my superpower.
(43:44):
Or signing an agreement for instance, it says you are
not allowed to have anybody else work on a thing,
right like Apple has done this very well. Anyhow, story
for another day. Thank you so much. Between you and
we want to hear also your most agree just concert
ticket or event ticket fee story. Did you really go
(44:04):
into some website thinking you were gonna pay eighteen bucks
and then come out like thirty bucks later, bewildered and confused.
Did you try and get into a food Fighters concert
and then you realized, wait, it's four hundred dollars and
then you just said bye, oh man. Yeah, tell us
your stories and share them with your fellow listeners. You
(44:24):
can find us on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter. We highly
recommend Here's where it Gets Crazy on Facebook, which is
our conspiracy group page. You can also follow us conspiracy
Stuff show I believe. We are on Instagram and you
can see some of my bizarre adventures on Instagram at
Ben Bolin. Don't look me up on Instagram. I'm on there,
(44:46):
but you will never find me, so ha. Take that.
If you wanna send us, or if you want to
call us, you could get your story on the air
or whatever you want to talk about. Give us a call.
We are one eight three three e s t d
W y t K. You got three minutes. Tell us
a story in three minutes. If you can't do that,
(45:06):
just call back and leave another three minute one. It
helps to write it down in advance for some people
at least bullet points. For me. Definitely, Yeah, same. Actually
I've done I've done the same. If you don't want
to do any of that stuff, you can still contact
us after you go on iTunes and or Apple podcasts
and leave us a review. Please just leave us any
kind of review. It really does help us out personally
(45:29):
and as a show to have more reviews on those
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Just give us a review and please be positive. Okay,
if you don't want to do any of that stuff,
send us an email. We are conspiracy at how stuff
works dot com. Yeah. Stuff they don't want you to know.
(46:06):
Is a production of I heart Radio's How Stuff Works.
For more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit the i
heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to
your favorite shows.
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to know. A
production of I Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Greetings, welcome
(00:25):
back to the show. My name is Matt, and our
pal Noel is on some adventures, but we'll return in
the future. They called me Ben. We are joined as
always with our super producer Paul, Mission controlled decade. Most importantly,
you are you. You are here that makes this stuff
they don't want you to know. Welcome to the show.
You did not have to buy tickets, that's right. You
(00:47):
did have to buy a phone or a computer or
something that has a microphone and a processor and at
least headphone outputs or some kind of speaker. Let's call
those associated fees. So the show is free. It takes
some doing to get it in you, to get it
(01:08):
in your ear right, all the all the paraphernalia is
not included. I mean, sure, this is a show. This
is a recorded show, right we we do a call
in line. We've taken the show on the road and
probably will do again and then near to mid future.
But nothing, nothing quite beats the experience, right, if you're
(01:30):
in your favorite music or your favorite performance whatever it
is live, right, Like, what are some of the memorable
concerts you've been to? Man, I haven't really been to many.
But Dave Matthews back in the day, oh boy, some
of that DMB baby, Oh it was the best. And
(01:54):
you know what tickets were always like, Okay, they were
not insane back in the early two thousand's doing some
old d m B. Though, you know, you get to
you know, that's a fairly large act, right then you
get to um newer shows nowadays, and you're going to
a much smaller venue with a much smaller band. And
(02:15):
I'm paying more now to see those bands than I
did to pay a big ticket band when I was
you know, coming out of high school in college. So
like you would go see Dave Matthews band in a
in a stadium or something, uh, something that large, and
you would get maybe some reasonable tickets on the lawn
(02:36):
or max thirty bucks with everything, yeah, just to get
into Lakewood Amphitheater, which not called that anymore, but who cares?
And also, you know, inflation, obviously everyone is saying inflation,
matt but inflation, but that's not at all. Let's call
it fflation. Okay, maybe okay, asides from sounding very dr
(02:58):
susy and that that is a word that could work
for today's episode, because you know what bothers me about
buying tickets probably the same thing that bothers everyone they
buy tickets nowadays, when you buy a ticket for something,
you're overwhelmingly going to do it online or else you're
gonna show up at a show the day of, you know,
(03:20):
and it's it's probably sold out, if it's worth anything, perhaps, yeah, yeah,
and it's it's really it's relatively rare for someone to
be walking down the street see tickets for a show
like next week or that weekend, and then say I'm
gonna walk in and buy those now in person. People
(03:41):
don't do that near as often, so most of the
time we buy tickets online. And here in the United
States there's been one game in town for quite a while,
and this game continues in other countries as well, a master,
if you will, of tickets, some sort of ticket master. Yes,
(04:04):
took a while to get to that one, but it's true.
Right since about the late nineteen seventies, it's become increasingly
difficult to get tickets to live events, Broadway plays, uh, symphonies,
the DMB. It's difficult to get these tickets without running
somehow into ticket Master, even if you don't know that
(04:25):
you're running into ticket Master. So what exactly is this thing?
It's been here for for the three of us, for you,
mission control of myself, for our entire lives, yeah and
beyond and before. Yeah. So let's go back to Phoenix, Arizona,
nineteen seventies six. A couple of gentlemen. We got Albert Lefler,
(04:46):
Peter Godwa and another man of businessman named Gordon Gunn.
What a great name. Yeah, seriously, Gordon gun So Leffler.
He comes up with this name, this idea for a thing,
uh uh, and he calls it ticket Master. And it's
this new company that's just gonna control tickets and for
these guys when they founded in nineteen seventy six, really,
(05:09):
all they're trying to do in the beginning is sells
some tickets to an electric light orchestra concert at the
University of New Mexico. That's the first big thing. And
electric light Orchestra is something that my dad told me
about actually that he really enjoyed. Um, look it up,
Google it. If you don't know it, Spotify it. I'm
sure you can find it. Mr. Blues Guy is a
(05:30):
great song. It really is. It really is. Uh. But anyway,
so this one little thing in Albuquerque, New Mexico. I'm
so sorry to interrupt that to say, Turned to Stone
is also a great song in my in my mind,
it's one that I've had stuck in my head. Awesome, right,
Blue Sky, turned to Stone. It's the seventies, it's Albuquerque,
(05:53):
out of college. Awesome, good times rolling, right, Let the
good times roll. And so then uh, they figure out, hey,
this is working. We're just you know, control a hub.
We're controlling the tickets to one thing. We're good at this.
Let's keep doing it. So they keep doing it for
a few years. Then by night they have their first
(06:14):
international clients, um, coming in from Norway, Oslo, Norway. And
that same year they signed their first major venue, this
place called the Louisiana Superdome, along with their first Major
League team, the New Orleans Jazz, which is now the
Utah Jazz, but in the city of New Orleans it
was the Jazz. So they actually have the NBA as
(06:37):
one of their major clients, one one team on the NBA.
But still that's huge for just a couple of guys
starting with a startup, right, Yeah, And it happened so quickly.
It's just a few years. When Leffler and Godwa originally
thought of the company, they were going to be licensing
software for tickets, really, and they've got on from that too,
(07:02):
being the ticket provider for stadiums, which sounds kind of
like maybe a boring business, right it's not as uh,
you know, endlessly fascinating as being a professional uh skydiver,
maybe a podcaster or something like that, you know, an
(07:23):
underwater tattoo artist. But but still, what we have to
realize is they get a cut of every ticket sold,
and when you get to something as large as a superdome,
that's a lot of money in a very one like
in one night other people knew about the game. There
were other things that existed at this time before Ticketmaster.
(07:46):
There was a business called ticket Tron like ticket and
then the movie Tron, and that's nineteen sixty. So it's
difficult to It's hard for me to imagine computerized ticket
sales being organ eyes and enough with software with computers
of that are powerful enough to like do it in
any large scale. But it was happening, Yeah, yeah, it wasn't.
(08:09):
It wasn't necessarily happening on the customer end, but you
would make a phone call to take a tron and
they would have this database. Right, So can I tell
you fun fact about Aron. They were purchased by a
thing called the Lovecraft Investment Group. What's the Lovecraft Investment Group? Had?
(08:33):
All I know is it's Lovecraft. There's a Lovecraft involved,
That's all I know. Oh boy, let's see it's true,
the Hewlett Packard Lovecraft. I don't know what the I
don't know what the Lovecraft Investment coming. This may be
fodder for another podcast. Here's the thing. As you said,
(08:53):
there were other there are other similar creatures around in
this more ticket right, other places that wanted to be
the ticket provider, in the middleman for that. But like
a hungry invading species, Ticketmaster consumed and digested these competitors.
(09:13):
In one it opened its first overseas operation. In two,
they got a new CEO, a guy named Fred Rosen.
Rosen told the l A Times back in that his
competitors were asleep at the switch he said he was
an aggressive businessman and proud of it and got this
American psycho vibe going on. Right. He was so good
(09:36):
at dominating the ticket industry that it became the only
game in town. And other people, other artists, primarily not
just uh wound up consumers, other artists started to take
issue with it. Pearl Jam launched a campaign in that
they called a strong language for some people ticket bastard,
(09:59):
because he's you. Pearl Jam was hearing from their fans
that they literally couldn't afford tickets to a show, or
that they were getting saddled with these egregious hidden fees,
and so they said, well, look man, we we want
to make a living, but we want our fans to
see our music. We don't want to uh milk them
(10:20):
for every penny they're worth, Like what are we kiss?
You know what I mean? They don't want to do that.
They want to be human, They want to stay humans.
So they wanted to offer summer tour tickets to fans
for under twenty bucks, and they asked ticket Mastered, you know, hey, guys,
can you just not charge another twenty bucks and fees?
Can you actually keep the fees around two dollars or
(10:43):
whatever that your cost of doing businesses and they said no, no,
your pearl Jam, and we our ticket Master. Yeah so yeah,
that but it's easy to think about because they really
did say no, and Pearl Jam just decided, well, it's
(11:05):
not worth it. We're not even going to go on tour.
We're canceling everything. We're not gonna like go and play
a bunch of empty stadiums where nobody can show up
for for this these exorbitant prices. They end up going
to Congress and guess what, Pearl Jam one and everything
was okay and everyone was happy, and ticket sales went
down to twenty dollars for the rest of our lives.
(11:27):
Thanks so much for tuning in, folks. We hope you
enjoyed this episode. Oh wait, nope, nope, that's not what happened.
What happened ticket Master one? Right, And there's one more
sort of detail for this story. The band, the members
of the band Pearl Jam maintained and say to this
day you can ask them today and they'll confirm this
(11:49):
that private investigators were sent to snoop around in their lives,
sent by Ticketmaster and having a p i um sicked
on you by a company, very common occurrence. Unfortunately, what
they were probably trying to do, what the allegation implies
(12:10):
is that Ticketmaster was attempting to find something discrediting to
members of Pearl Jam, not something that had anything to
do with their crusade to get better ticket prices. They
wanted to be able to say, well, this person is
doing heroin and we'll put it in the news if
(12:31):
you guys don't straighten up until the corporate line. But
you know, again, that's a terrible example because this is
the nineties in Seattle grunge, right, So doing heroin may
unfortunately not have been the huge scandal that they would want,
but they wanted something to hold over their heads, and eventually,
(12:53):
probably more so, through just the sheer, ungodly amount of
money Ticketmaster has, they were able to they were able to,
as you say, prevail. So that brings us to the
modern day. A company called Interactive Corps, oddly enough not
a video game company, purchased a majority stake and ticket Master,
(13:14):
and then it bought the rest of the company n
the name changed to Ticketmaster Online. Dash City search doesn't
exactly roll off the tongue, right, So they didn't care
that it didn't roll off the tongue. The company expanded, diversified,
it kept evolving its business model, increasingly going from phones
(13:36):
to online sales, and this constant evolution, the way of
many businesses right uh, unfortunately, did not go in the
direction that critics wanted it to. They didn't see cheaper tickets,
they didn't feel like things were more transparent. These moves
did not quell all of the critics, and today ticket
(13:57):
Master controls and estimate aided of the little more than
of the ticketing market in North America. M So they're
doing something right. But let's get back to the critics.
What are these critics saying. Well, they're saying that we
need to take a quick break to hear from our
(14:18):
sponsor and then we'll find out what ticket Master may
or may not have been getting into. Here's where it
gets crazy. So it turns out that in addition to
be massively successful, Ticketmaster has been accused of numerous abuses,
(14:39):
breaches of law, and shady business practices. There's genuine stuff
they don't want you to know here. It's probably not
gonna stop snow Compellingnipetus to stop it. And yes, ticket
Master has been sued for conspiracy. Oh snap, the big
c all right, stake another time traveling trip here to
(15:03):
two thousand nine. Bruce Springsteen. Oh everybody knows or Bruce
the Boss. Yeah, he's the boss. He's your boss and
my boss. He publicly calls out ticket Master in two
thousand nine for a little um, let's say, misdirection, redirection,
if you will, from from a website. So as fans
(15:25):
were going and trying to buy tickets through ticket Master
to the Springsteen concert, they were getting sent to this
other place called ticket now dot com, completely separate site.
It looks very different. There's no you know, when you're
on that site, you don't understand what's happening. You feel
like a pop up maybe has occurred, or you've gotten
redirected through an ad maybe, or this is your last
(15:48):
chance to get some kind of ticket to see the
Boss live. Well, yeah, there's a certain desperation that's happening
when you are being redirected to this ticket now dot
com because guess what, the tickets are marked up by hundreds,
sometimes thousands of dollars at ticket now versus ticket Master.
(16:08):
So then all these fan complaints are coming through because
of this weird steering to this place called tickets Now. Um,
a New Jersey congressman gets a call and basically this
guy says, Hey, we need a federal antitrust investigation into
whatever the heck is going on between ticket Master and
ticket Now. What is this? Let's figure this out. Yeah,
(16:31):
So here's what they find. They find that ticket Now,
in addition to having a very similar name to ticket Master,
is owned by ticket Master, and when Bruce Springsteen's fans
were going to a website to buy tickets to his show,
they were automatically redirected to ticket Now, which, as he said,
(16:54):
met sells tickets from much higher than their face value.
And it prays on that desperate san Right, that's psychological
fear that someone else will get the thing I want. So,
you know, I may not necessarily think this is a
good financial decision, but I will be gosh darned and
gali ged if I allow somebody else to get that ticket.
(17:16):
You know what I mean, It's an artificial scarcity essentially.
Bruce Springsteen found out about it, and he was he
was righteously indignant. He wrote a public statement about this
because what he found out was that this sort of
second chance or reselling site. Ticket Now was something that
(17:40):
Ticketmaster was sending the audience to when there were still
regular tickets available. So they could have gotten that you know,
thirty or forty or whatever dollar ticket to sit on
the lawn in the back and have a great time.
But instead they were going directly to this place where
it was you know, this huge markup, and that that
(18:00):
that markup goes to Ticketmaster. Man. So Ticketmaster gets a
fifteent cut from tickets Now, which it owns. H So
that's in addition to the fees it already gets as Ticketmaster,
so that that money is already spent and baked into
(18:21):
the price. So uh, a lawsuit comes about, and essentially
what they're doing is making money off the same ticket
two times. Clever, you know, brilliant, very clever, evil, lawful evil,
and so uh. Probably because Friedenstein himself took such a
(18:43):
strong stance against the Ticketmaster issued an apology to the
fans and said, we will refund you the price difference
between the face value of the tickets and those you
got from ticket Now, which is a lot of you know,
it's a lot of scratch. But that's also that's also
like being caught stealing, you know, being caught stealing a
car and then saying I'm I'm gonna drive it back
(19:07):
to your house. Yeah, and then like I feel bad,
I mean some gas money here, just a little bit gas. No,
they didn't they but but it's strange, right, and this
is just one of the allegations against Ticketmaster. We've got
that Pearl Jam example. But let's talk about those fees,
(19:30):
because that's where a lot of this comes back in. Right.
Have you ever bought a twenty dollar ticket only to
find that it becomes more than forty dollars by the
time you get to the actual place your order? No? Never, Never, Tabernacle,
that's a that's a local venue here in Atlanta. What
(19:50):
kind of fees have you run into? Literally twice as much?
I mean, yeah, I've seen I have seen tickets double
when I buy them for just a local You're here
because of ticket Master's weird fees to get me my
ticket somehow that I can print out already. Yeah, there's
like a two to five dollar fee for getting a PDF.
Essentially you can print somebody. I'm paying somebody's salary who's
(20:14):
just on a floor somewhere making calls like I need
three Pearl jam but like no, no, I got four
Radiohead No. And it's like it has to be that
to justify twenty or thirty dollar fees on top of
everything else. Otherwise I do not understand. Yeah, you're absolutely right.
There's a there's a service charge, and that would be
(20:35):
ticket masters charging you for the privilege of giving you
a ticket. And then there's the facility charge, which is
a charge added by the venue. So ticket Master takes
its cut, and then the Tabernacle, for example, takes its cut.
And then there are shipping, convenience and processing charges. So
(20:55):
that's a charge for you know, using your visa American
Express US, that's a charge for having the tickets delivered
to you via post or choosing your own printer. But
then who who pays Cardi b e? Then is what
I'm trying to figure out, Like what's her cut? Everybody
else is taking their cut. Who's where's Cardi B's money?
(21:17):
Unless you're a huge name artist, which I guess Cardi
b is now. Uh, the the amount of money you
get per ticket can be surprisingly alarmingly small because the
label will take some money, you know what I mean,
Your road crew will take some money and all all
this other stuff craft services. Eat that cheese because it's
(21:38):
coming out of your kind of the profits, right. Uh,
but all all this adds up to u to an
unpleasant experience for people when we're buying these tickets. The
problem is there's not really any transparency with this fees
between events, very even at the same venue and pre
(22:00):
princes of the artist as well is some people will
try to buck like Radiohead or Pearl Jam. And the
problem with it is that none of this, none of
this ultimately goes into a situation where and ticket prices
are lower. None of this is meant to nor will
(22:20):
it ever create cannot yes, none, None of this is
meant to create a situation where artists get paid more
and the audience pays less. Absolutely none. If anything. It's
kind of like, you know, nobody talks about this, but
it's pretty weird that you and you know historically can't
buy a car directly from the people who make cars.
(22:42):
It's weird. It's a weird thing. It's normalized and you know,
I'm not choosing sides on it, but that that is
something we think about. You know, you can buy almost
you can buy so many other things directly from the
people who make them. Vertical integration is scary though, and
it can it can be highly it can be highly problematic. Yeah,
(23:07):
and it can also be dangerous for the bottom line. Right, So,
the allegation here is that Ticketmaster is sort of a
rent seeker and it's now a middle It's maybe it
needed to be in the process before everybody had a
brilliant computer on their phone, but now maybe it doesn't
(23:30):
have to be right, Maybe that kind of software is
easier to handle. We don't really know. We just know
that they are the largest game in town, and we
know that the the entire operation is exceedingly opaque. We're
going to take a break for a brief word from
(23:51):
our sponsor, and then we'll come back with an investigation
in Canada that that makes this even weirder. All right,
here's where it gets crazier. This is hard for me
(24:12):
to understand that this is real. Okay, what we're gonna
talk about from now mostly through the rest of this episode,
we got from a CBC news um investigation that was
carried out and specifically there's a journalist named Dave Seglins
who actually physically went undercover as a scalper at a
(24:36):
ticket industry convention out there in Las Vegas. And you
can watch video of this online right now. If you
want to take a break, you can. You can search
this up CBC ticket Master. UM segling l I N S.
That's good, you'll find it. Check it out. It's pretty crazy.
(24:57):
Could we set some just some axiomatic beginnings here. Okay, So,
so imagine your ticketmaster. You make money selling tickets. Um,
you want people to buy tickets from you? Definitely? Um,
does it matter who that person is buying a ticket
from you as long as somebody's buying a ticket from you, right, right,
(25:19):
as long as the transaction occurs. But you want to
be on the side of the people in the artists,
and you would probably say hey, at least in public,
you say, hey, I think scalpers are the worst and
they take advantage of people. Yeah, because we want you
to have low prices and see all the stuff you
want to see. Don't be mad at us. Right, So
(25:42):
it's it's established then in the public mind. The axiom
is that uh, ticket distributors or these these middle segments
between the artists and the event and the customer, that
they should not not be down with scalpers, like you
guys making it weird, you're making it worse. I don't
(26:03):
want to be in a situation where, for instance, there are, uh,
what's a great what's a great event that people would
go to today? Like a band or a performance or
alien Con alien Con. They're only, yeah, it's a one
night only, four hundred, four hundred seat event and it's
(26:23):
called alien Con. Who knows what it is. Maybe it's
a mariachi band, and uh they ticket Master, one would assume,
does not care for a situation where one person goes
in and buys all four hundred or whatever those tickets
in one block and then turns around and sells them
through fifty more on you know eBay. Yeah, basically Ticketmaster
(26:48):
is not down with O P t right other people's tickets.
They don't. They're like, look, these these are the people's tickets, right, right, right?
So what that's what we assumed, right, And it turns
right and it turns out that we were very wrong,
like cartoonistly, So they're all they're quite all right with
anyone buying their share of the tickets as long as
(27:12):
those tickets get sold, and especially if ticket Master can
sell the tickets twice. What what are we talking about? Okay, well,
let's go back to Las Vegas at that convention. Um
so ticket Master, he's recording Ticketmaster at least some representatives
from Ticketmaster. Maybe that's the best way to say it. Um,
(27:34):
they are, these representatives are pitching scalpers on their ticket
Masters trademarked professional reseller program that they have established. Okay, now,
according to the investigation that you follow David David segments
through with the CBC News investigation, um Ticketmaster was not
(27:55):
only just deciding that if scalping is happening, we're just
gonna put blinders on and pretend that it's not happening.
They're also literally recruiting people, professional people who have been
scalping for a long time or maybe are very good
at scalping, to cheat the ticket Master system itself, to
(28:16):
expand their ticket Master's resale business, and again to take
more money from the people that are just trying to
go out and see a concert or an event or something.
So just to recap it's Ticketmaster teaching scalpers to scalp
Ticketmaster for their own profit for ticket Masters profits. Yes, yea,
(28:38):
so they have. They've done more than turn a blind eye.
They've gone They've gotten to a win win situation with
scalpers and ticket Master. Right, So this is for the
average concert goer. This is this is the part of
the movie where the bad guys team up and once
(29:00):
sales rep is on camera saying, I have brokers that
have literally a couple of hundred accounts. It's not something
that we look at or report. Because they wanted these
scalpers to feel that they were that they were safe
in this. Ticketmaster, for its part, denied the accusations. And
once again, you can always go back to the idea
(29:21):
that actions by a few people in the organization do
not automatically mean the entire organization condones it, right tail
as old as time. That's what any intelligence agency will
say when it's undeniably caught doing something terrible and be like, well,
that guy decided to topple that country on his own,
and we we always knew that, We always knew that
(29:43):
Jeremy was a little bit off. Yeah, and this is
all compartmentalized anyway, Only a very few from all number
of people knew anything about that. Yeah, Like I'm weirded
out hearing hearing about it today, Congresswoman. This is the
first first I've heard of it, and I've got to
tell you, Frinkly, I am outraged. You know what I
am too, And I hope you get to the bottom
(30:04):
of it. And congratulations on all your work. Thank you,
thank you. I'll be speaking at Georgetown UH this coming Friday.
It's one one night only. You can yeah you can't
get tickets through ticket Master or if those are sold out,
go ahead to Yeah it is sold out, well, go
to ticket noway tickets now, let's so and seen. So
(30:29):
ticket Master developed a toolkit for these scalpers. It is
a professional They don't call them scalpers. They call them resellers.
A professional reseller program that they launched call used tickets,
pre owned tickets, call certified pre owned U called trade Desk.
(30:53):
Trade Desk is a quote web based inventory management system
for scalpers. The company calls it the most powerful ticket
sales tool ever. So here's what it allows you to do.
You can buy a block of tickets from ticket Master
through one of its many faces, and then you can
(31:14):
upload those tickets to this trade Desk thing, and then
you can just list them again for resale. This means
you can hike or drop prices on tons and tons
of tickets based on what you think fans are looking for.
So it turns it into almost a stock market kind
of thing. Uh, neither Trade Desk nor the professional reseller
(31:38):
program are mentioned anywhere on ticket Master's website. You can
go check we looked, it's not there. It's also not
listed on any of its corporate reports. If you want
to find the Trade Desk website, you first have to
send in a registration request. So let's go ahead and
take a look at what happens. If you do get
through that registration process, you do have one of these
(32:01):
things like a an account there, and you are reselling things.
Let's see what Ticketmaster actually gets out of this whole process.
So it just as an example, let's say ticket Master
is going to sell a ticket for a little over
two hundred dollars two d nine dollars and fifty cents.
Okay um, that's just the price of the ticket. Ticket
(32:23):
Master itself is going to collect twenty five dollars and
seventy cents just on that initial sale. Now when the owner, now,
if because we're saying this this is through trade Desk,
the owner who's just purchased it through trade desk, then
puts it back up for resale for roughly twice as
much as it's the original cost, let's say four hundred dollars.
(32:44):
The company, then ticket Master stands to collect an additional
seventy six dollars on that same ticket. So so again
you're looking at over a hundred dollars that you're gonna
make um out of six dars in total of sales.
And at this point that's legal to it's not against law. Yeah,
(33:05):
And it's just a way to make sure that tickets
get sold at least if you're looking at from the
company's perspective, Trade desk basically insures that every ticket is
going to get sold at in some way from that
initial sale, the idea being that, you know, if you
want that, the idea being that the lever moves and
(33:26):
down so you could lower prices. Maybe day of ticket
sales aren't where you want them to be. So someone says,
all right, now this is no longer two it's fifty dollars.
Let's see what happens, right, Yeah, And there are strategies
the kind of line up with that at the like
towards the end of a concert or something, or towards
the end of a big game, people, there will still
(33:48):
be scalpers outside of a well, okay, there will be
resellers outside of a venue selling tickets for you know,
pennies on the dollar if the show is almost over,
something to get people in just to finally make a
tiny bit of money on that thing. And that that
exists throughout these markets. Yeah. Absolutely, we do want to
(34:10):
say that while while we did mention that ticket Master
h denied the allegations brought by this investigative report, maybe
it'll be helpful for us to give the actual language
that they used in denying this allegation. What do you think? Absolutely?
All right, So, after the story was published there in
(34:32):
CBC News, Ticketmaster issued a statement that went out to
CBC News, but then also went out to other places
that are reported on the stories, such as The Rolling Stone,
saying it was quote categorically untrue the Ticketmaster has any
program in place to enable resellers to acquire large volumes
of tickets. It also said it had already begun an
(34:53):
internal review of professional reseller accounts and employee practices before
the CBC News story came out. So they said, look,
we've already been investigating this internally and we would never
try to game the system in the way that you're describing. Again,
a representative from Ticketmaster is on camera completely completely doing
(35:19):
what they say, what they're denying. Yeah, the biggest, the
biggest thing that Ticketmaster had a problem with was that
that representative acknowledged of of acknowledged the knowledge that one
person essentially would have two hundred accounts, right, or one
entity or one group would have two hundred trade desk accounts.
(35:40):
That's that's where the big problem comes in. Yeah, so
is it is this situation where the money got too good?
Is a situation where we're finally maybe as the public
or the uninitiated scene into a previously murky world, That's
very possible. I would go ahead and just say it
(36:04):
makes me think of something we we discussed at the
very beginning of a competitive marketplace, essentially and having to
always evolve, like consistently evolving to make sure that you're
making more profit so that you can increase your margins
year every year, or you know, your increase your percentage
(36:25):
overall of gross income year every year, Like having to
find new creative ways as a giant company like Ticketmaster,
and it's you know, parent companies and all that. These
kinds of reselling. It's a it's another way to increase
those margins that isn't necessarily illegal. If you take out
the some of the things from the sea, you know,
(36:47):
some of the things were illegal, but not many. Right. Um,
the reselling market, as terrible as it sounds, and as
bad as it is for consumers such as us, it's
just another one of those ways to grab more money.
Allegedly illegal well, definitely illegal, but that they allegedly did. Yes, yes,
(37:08):
apologies because it hasn't been I don't think it's necessary.
This is just we're we're just being as fair as
we can so, as you can tell by the use
of the phrase allegedly and the fact that we're being
fairly careful about how we discussed this. Ticketmaster has been
in and out of court. In they suffered a data breach,
(37:31):
and in twenty nineteen a British law firm launched legal
action against them for effecting up to forty thousand UK customers,
and also in the U s Department of Justice launched
investigation following complaints that Live Nation, an event promoter, had
engaged in anti competitive practices following their merger with Ticketmaster.
(37:53):
There's a organization called End Shouts Entertainment Group, and they
said Live Nation pressured them and choosing Ticketmasters a vendor,
and had they refused, they would have lost out on business.
The allegations of antitrust violations resulted in a reexamination of
the merger between ticket Master and Live Nation. However, this
(38:14):
case is probably going into well, many of these cases
are going into arbitration, private settlements. No need to have
a shameful day in court. And at this point Ticketmasters
very little in the way of real competition. There are
(38:35):
other things in the market, sure, but there they're gnats
two Ticketmasters, Behemoth, right. And the question then is I mean,
clearly there's some stuff they don't want you to know
that's inarguable it's not necessarily criminal. Like for instance, okay,
think of airline tickets depending on which way you go
(38:57):
through an airline, or think of privatized insurance. People don't
want you to know the lowest price you can get.
They want you to get confused and bored and desperate
enough to just take the easiest thing. Yeah, that's that's
that is a very clear and unfortunately disturbing explanation of
how all three of those industries work. Most industries, I guess,
(39:22):
everyone just trying to get you to take the easiest
option for you, and it depends on where you are
in life times ticking. But here's the easiest one for
your social strata. Right. You're not looking for Mr. Wright Price,
You're looking for Mr Right now Price right. Start applying
that to social interactions. And now it's just so we've
(39:44):
gone down a rabbit hole. I should have it, should
have quit while we were ahead with the with the
insurance airplane ticket thing. But yeah, it's It's true, and
there's probably not going to be any anything that really
stops this practice. There will be things that degate it.
The problem is that the established system has caught up
(40:06):
to technological breakthroughs only in the ways that can improve
its profit while maintaining its position. The technology that we
have now to organize, distribute, and track these sorts of
things is amazing. If you if you were from the
nineteen seventies and you've looked at it, you would think
was mind blowing, you know what I mean, unless you
(40:28):
already worked for DARKA or something. It would be like,
how did that get out here? But uh, but but
the problem is that even though we're we have the
potential to democratize the access to these tickets in a
way that would benefit the creators and benefit the customers,
(40:49):
we're not. We're not seeing that. When will that happen?
When will there be some sort of market disruption? I
don't know. And at this point, as Ticketmaster, anything thoroughly illegal. No,
they haven't been convicted. None of the CEOs have ever
gone to jail. The creator has certainly never got in trouble. Yeah,
(41:10):
in two thousand nine, that whole conspiracy suit was out there,
didn't really go anywhere, right, right. So the question then
goes to us, fellow conspiracy realist, is this just how
this business should be run? And what what are other
businesses that you have seen that your that your fellow
(41:32):
listeners may not be aware of, Like we've we've seen
some We've seen some strange things going on in the
funeral service industry. We've seen some strange things going on
here in the event and ticketing industry. But where else,
I wonder, where else is everything just crazy crooked appearing
(41:54):
to be crooked? I have to say so that we
don't get suited to that end to that, and I wanna,
I wanna pick your brain bin about the mechanic big
mechanic industry with some of these bigger companies out there
that that offer repairs to vehicles and automobiles, assuming like, um,
(42:15):
not just straight up garages, but box automotive stores that
are also garages or service centers. Okay, yeah, the big
ones that are nationwide. I'd like to talk about some
of those, see if there are any conspiracies out there.
So maybe maybe if you're listening and you know, if
you heard of anything, let us know what you've heard.
I will that's that's great, I will say on that.
(42:37):
On that note, there is one thing that sounds a
bit curmudgeently for me to say, but I think it's
a good point. It's one thing that bugs me about
modern car repairs. Over the past few years, cars have
increasingly become something that the person who owns it cannot
work on. Have you noticed that there are more and
more black boxes proliferating under the hood. Sure? Perhaps really
(43:00):
and just lack of experience, lack of knowledge. I just
feel like, call me old fashioned, but I feel like
if you if you buy a car, it should be
something that you own that it shouldn't have to be
a service. You know what I mean. We're moving increasingly
into a service economy. It is going to scare your
children listening now when when you say, yeah, people used
(43:22):
to like buy things and then have them, I'm like,
what for how much a month? Yeah? No, no, like
you would just you would just buy one sandwich and
you would eat it. Yeah. Well it goes back to
that superpower thing of money and time. And I don't
have time to work on this vehicle. I'll give it
to you and you fix it. Here's some of my superpower.
(43:44):
Or signing an agreement for instance, it says you are
not allowed to have anybody else work on a thing,
right like Apple has done this very well. Anyhow, story
for another day. Thank you so much. Between you and
we want to hear also your most agree just concert
ticket or event ticket fee story. Did you really go
(44:04):
into some website thinking you were gonna pay eighteen bucks
and then come out like thirty bucks later, bewildered and confused.
Did you try and get into a food Fighters concert
and then you realized, wait, it's four hundred dollars and
then you just said bye, oh man. Yeah, tell us
your stories and share them with your fellow listeners. You
(44:24):
can find us on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter. We highly
recommend Here's where it Gets Crazy on Facebook, which is
our conspiracy group page. You can also follow us conspiracy
Stuff show I believe. We are on Instagram and you
can see some of my bizarre adventures on Instagram at
Ben Bolin. Don't look me up on Instagram. I'm on there,
(44:46):
but you will never find me, so ha. Take that.
If you wanna send us, or if you want to
call us, you could get your story on the air
or whatever you want to talk about. Give us a call.
We are one eight three three e s t d
W y t K. You got three minutes. Tell us
a story in three minutes. If you can't do that,
(45:06):
just call back and leave another three minute one. It
helps to write it down in advance for some people
at least bullet points. For me. Definitely, Yeah, same. Actually
I've done I've done the same. If you don't want
to do any of that stuff, you can still contact
us after you go on iTunes and or Apple podcasts
and leave us a review. Please just leave us any
kind of review. It really does help us out personally
(45:29):
and as a show to have more reviews on those
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Just give us a review and please be positive. Okay,
if you don't want to do any of that stuff,
send us an email. We are conspiracy at how stuff
works dot com. Yeah. Stuff they don't want you to know.
(46:06):
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