TicketMaster and Their Crazy Fees

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Friday is always a day where I always looked like
to do something and to enjoy things in a way
that maybe some others may not. I have Peyton with
me here. Peyton. Have you you're person who likes to
go do things. Have you ever gone onto like a
ticket Master one of these resale ticket websites and bought

(00:22):
yourself some tickets to go to a van, a concert,
a game, or something.

Speaker 2 (00:25):
Absolutely plenty of times. You know, you think a ticket Master,
stub Hub, yep, a couple of different ones out there.

Speaker 1 (00:33):
Yeah, so I looked at this, and I mean, now,
the rules are a little different. If you go on there.
All the fees are built into the price that you're
paying for, which is nice instead of saying, oh cool,
twenty dollars tickets, and then you click on that and
all of a sudden there's fees that are at least
twenty dollars, and you're like, wow, I thought I was
getting a twenty dollars ticket. Now I'm paying forty dollars

(00:53):
for this. Yeah, it's I'm glad that they are adjusting this.
But do you ever feel like you were getting jipped
a bit when you go on like Ticketmaster and realize
that these are not the prices that you expected. These
are prices that people are resailing, Like this is for
resale on Ticketmaster, and it's like three or four times

(01:15):
more than the original price was. If you're run into
that and just been discouraged, and I'm not, I'm not
digging into that.

Speaker 2 (01:23):
You look at some of those closer spots, you know,
to the field or floor, hardwood, whatever, Yeah, stage, maybe
even Okay, if I'm gonna sit somewhere like that, I'm
gonna fork it out. You know. Sure, I'm gonna enjoy
the experience. But if you're just going you want to
have a chance to see what's going on, You're like me,
let me look in those nose bleed see if I

(01:43):
can find a deal.

Speaker 1 (01:44):
Just just get me in the building. At that point, right.

Speaker 2 (01:47):
I just want to see what's going on with everybody
else and have a good time.

Speaker 1 (01:50):
Yeah, I'm hearing that, and I've been there before. My
biggest thing has usually been how important is it to
get good seats, because there are some events that being
in the building isn't good enough for me. I want
to be close, I want to enjoy it, and the
prices just get out of control. I mean, think about

(02:11):
the Taylor Swift situation. Taylor Swift tickets for her tour
were going for thousands of dollars each and those in
some cases, we're just to get into the building. I mean,
if you really needed to go see Taylor Swift, somewhere
in the United States, people were forking over four or
five thousand dollars for their families to go to this concert,
an absolutely absurd amount of money. Well, how did that

(02:35):
all happen? We can try to act dumb that, you know,
like maybe something didn't actually occur that was nefarious. Maybe
the people who got a hold of those tickets early
on had the opportunity just to decide if this was
a money making venture. I want to buy these tickets.
I got in I can buy the tickets and buying

(02:56):
like as many tickets as I can, as many tickets
as they'll allow me to make to buy. And then
I go from buying those tickets to deciding do I
want to go to the show or do I want
to sell these tickets and make like an eight hundred
percent profit because the demand is so high, which is
kind of a slimy thing to do, but capitalism, it

(03:17):
is what it is. There are people who can do
that well. Now, there is a lawsuit from the Federal
Trade Commission and seven different states accusing Ticketmaster and Live Nation,
who also owns a lot of venues and puts a
lot of these shows like concerts on and they say

(03:39):
that those two engaged in three illegal practices that injure artists,
cause consumers to pay significantly more for event tickets and
benefit the defendant's bottom line. The first one allegedly hiding
fees from customers until they check out, which they called
bait and switch, which is what you've dealt with. I've

(04:01):
dealt with that. There's people that have dealt with that.
I think anytime you bought tickets in the last ten years,
you probably dealt with that where you're like, oh, sweet,
fifteen dollars tickets, and then you go and check out
and you're just like, I bought three fifteen dollars tickets
if you cost me forty five bucks plus tax, and
all of a sudden, it's showing me like one hundred bucks.
I what one hundred dollars?

Speaker 2 (04:20):
What the heck?

Speaker 1 (04:21):
But you're already like all the way in at the
very end, and potentially some people may not even notice
until actually they hit pay, right, which, by the way,
you should read everything before you actually hit pay. So
that's the first allegation. And it's kind of like if
the gas station advertised like one dollar and eighty cent gas,

(04:42):
and all of a sudden you got to the pump
and it's like, well, with all this other stuff in
the overhead that we need, it's actually gonna end up
being two eighty a gallon after you've already like gassed
up your car. It's kind it's kind of the same
thing that would be illegal. They can't do that. Why
should ticket Master and lived Nation be able to do that?

Speaker 2 (05:00):
Now?

Speaker 1 (05:00):
Obviously the rules have changed and now the fees have
to be listed into the price of the ticket up front.
The second allegation allowing ticket brokers to exceed the limits
artists placed on the number of tickets people who are
allowed to purchase at once. And then another thing that
they put in here, right because there are certain people

(05:21):
as like, oh yeah, this person can get ten tickets
instead of the four that were supposed to be allotted
per person. This accusation, the FTC says Ticketmaster and Live
Nation earned hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue by
systematically violating the Better Online Ticket Sales Act. The law,

(05:41):
as the suit notes, makes it illegal to sell tickets
purchased and circumvention of measures to enforce ticket purchase limits
or other purchasing rules. What does that mean, Well, the
lawsuit says both Live Nation and Ticketmaster knowingly allow and
in courage brokers to use multiple Ticketmaster accounts to circumvent

(06:05):
Ticketmaster security measures and access control systems, so those brokers
can then list the unlawfully purchased tickets onto resale marketplaces. Essentially,
it says, hey, you guys or you bots? Which Better
Online Ticket Sales stands for bots? Because we're talking about
bots getting in on all this stuff. Well, these bots

(06:27):
are enabled, they create a bunch of different email addresses
and accounts they're able to go around and instead of
a four ticket limit, a bunch of different email addresses
which are operated by either bots or these brokers can
infiltrate the system right when the tickets go on sale.
They can circumvent the ticket limit, purchase as many as

(06:49):
they can with as many different webs or email addresses
they can, and then they take that and resell the
same tickets for a higher price on the same platform.
If this isn't the shadiest stuff that you've heard. I
know that a lot of us have expected something like
this to happen, and it's just not fair for the
regular consumer. But if this actually lands and the Federal

(07:13):
Trade Commission is able to get this lawsuit and have
this become a big thing where it gets a ton
of it needs a lot more publicity than it's already
getting here in the first couple of days. But it's
going like this is going to change fundamentally, hopefully the
pricing that we notice for shows. That's not to say

(07:34):
that stuff still isn't going to feel a lot more
expensive than it once did, but at least regular people
are going to have the chance to get in be
able to purchase these things, and it should I would
hope fundamentally change the way that we buy tickets online.
I know a lot of people that just go to
box offices try to avoid stuff like that, and I
get it, totally get it. But you have to be
careful out there. There are so many different ticket scalping areas,

(07:58):
ticket scalping companies and people out there that just all
they want to do is use your interest in going
to a show for yourself or your family against you
in some way, and it's honestly kind of sad, kind
of sad. Indeed, there's a big issue I think here

(08:18):
with ticket sales and ticket pricing, but it's all about demand.
I've had a few people text in and talking about
the College World Series and how College World Series tickets
are interesting. They absolutely are. This year, I had some
friends kind of work their way in and I use
a ton of different sites. I don't just rely on Ticketmaster.

(08:38):
I know Ticketmaster is where you're supposed to start with
that conversation, but if there was ever a you know,
specific situation that we would have lined up as far
as you know, a you know, whether Ticketmaster is reselling tickets,

(08:59):
or whether you can go to seat geek or stub
Hub or vivid seats or tick pick or all these
different I mean, there's a ton of different websites that
you can post these things for now, it's not a
matter of trying to line yourself up with a you know,
the best possible deal right away. You understand that there's

(09:22):
going to be some sort of capitalism or competition for that.
And when I was looking for College World Series tickets.
It got pretty hairy a couple of years ago. When
I bought tickets, it was it depended on obviously the
game and who was playing in the game, and if
you waited just long enough, you could kind of figure
out who might be playing in what game and what
kind of demand that would be. And if you're trying

(09:43):
to save as much money as possible, you'd find the
window of time which the game would be as you know,
cheap as possible. But also you have a you know
scenario in some cases, as it relates to this topic
of conversation, where the game that you're wanting to go

(10:07):
to might be happening in like an hour or two
if you wait till the very last moment. That is
something that has indeed happened to me, And unfortunately for
my wife and I, I bought a ticket while I
was basically standing outside, and I needed that person to
then release the tickets to allow me to go into

(10:29):
the game. So as I went into the game and
I stood there outside security waiting for these tickets to land,
they never did land, and thankfully, I think it was
stub Hub. I called them and got on the phone
with their customer service and said, hey, I paid you know,
fifty bucks or sixty bucks or whatever it was. And

(10:49):
a lot of that was last minute, and there were
plenty of feess was not yet when the fees we
were wrapped up into the price, and I just really
wanted to go into the game. And when they didn't
really least the tickets and the game had already started,
then I started to panic, and so I called their
customer service and said, I did not receive these tickets.
Is there a way I can get a refund? And
they set me up with a refund, which was great,

(11:10):
and I was happy about that. But still it's just
kind of the wild West of ticket sales now and
you have to be really careful about that. You know,
we do our ticket giveaways on the station. There are different,
you know, ticket situations where sometimes the people that we
have they send it via email and we can just
forward an email with like the QR code or the

(11:32):
scan sometimes it is something that is legitimate paper tickets.
Sometimes they need like a text number so they can
text the ticket scanner link to the people. It's always
a little bit different. Back in the day it was
pretty simple. You've had the tickets in hand, or you
didn't have tickets at all, and then ticket scalping it
was a little bit easier to worry about. You If

(11:52):
you wanted to go to a game and you wanted
to catch up with a ticket scalper, you could really
do that right outside the gate for one reason or another,
and you know that's fine. Depends on kind of how
secure you want to be with the transaction. I tend
to want to be a bit more secure and know
ahead of time that I'm going there. But it's always
a bit of a crapshoot when we're talking about the

(12:15):
way that resale values have fluctuated. So for the College
World Series in and of itself, if you're trying to
go through Ticketmaster and you waited for the ebbs and
the flows and all that stuff, you may have felt
like you did it right. My hope is that with
this lawsuit from the Federal Trade Commission that if Ticketmaster

(12:36):
and Live Nation have been found guilty of doing this stuff,
that is greatly going to change how bots are enabled
or people who are circumventing the rules or enabled to
drive prices up with fake demand. Almost and if you
wanted to go to shows. You might be saying yourself,

(12:56):
this show looks like it's more empty than usual. Well,
it's because people who are buying some of these tickets
aren't even trying to get into the show. They're literally
existing in people or robots or you know, just software
that gobbles the tickets up and then resells them at
a ridiculous price. And it might lower a little bit
by the time you get to showtime, but you've been

(13:18):
priced out of a show that you thought was going
to be affordable for yourself, for your family. That's not
how things should operate in this country. Even if capitalism
is king, there are rules in place that are supposed
to protect this. And if Live Nation and ticket Master
are essentially enabling brokers to break their own rules just
for profit's sake, that is a complete violation not just

(13:40):
of the Better Online Ticket Sales Act, but it's also
a complete violation of the trust of the American people.
And I don't even know if these entities, I mean,
both of them are far too powerful just to you know,
go belly up, but the way they do business, they're
going to have to do. If this gets the kind
of publicity that I think it should, they're going to
have to do some major adjusting to their image. They're

(14:01):
going to have to do a lot to talk people
into the idea of, hey, you know what, we kind
of mess this up. It's our fault. We apologize, We
are completely different. We're very transparent now and you can,
you know, be trustworthy in this. You know, Ticketmaster got
sued by Taylor Swift if you remember the Taylor Swift

(14:22):
sued them because of the way that they were handling
the ticket sales of her tours and whatnot. So it
is an uncommon and I feel bad for everybody out
there that have spent way more than they feel like
they should have to go to a show and have
great experiences. And trust me, the experiences are worth way
more than the money ever is going to be. But
if there's ever a moment where you've always thought like

(14:45):
it doesn't seem like it's on the level, and I
feel like I've been priced out of something unfairly. It
seems as far as this lawsuit out alleges that you
have been unfairly priced out of some of this stuff.
So we'll see how it goes. We'll keep you updated
on how that lawsuit goes and what it looks like
and how things may change for the consumers moving forward.