September 23, 2025 • 16 mins
On the Tuesday September 23, 2025 edition of The Armstrong & Getty Show features...
- complaints against Ticketmaster are stacking-up, the but reality of the ticket biz is quite complicated.
Stupid Should Hurt: https://www.armstrongandgetty.com/
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Sold both my lungs for Taylor Swift tickets. It's one
more thing.
Speaker 2 (00:10):
I don't know that was. I don't know if that
was good long term thinking you're gonna need those lungs.
Speaker 1 (00:18):
Now, all I've got is a ziplock bag. I in Hell,
I got a ziploc bag attached my trichia.
Speaker 2 (00:24):
I'll tell you what era I'm in, the post lung era.
Speaker 1 (00:30):
So I thought this was so interesting from the folks
at the National Review. Such a great example of policies
that sound good but don't make sense if you think
about them. That's point number one. Point number two, how
a lot of common sense regulations to ensure the safety
(00:52):
of the American people are actually the super giant corporations
knowing we can crush all of our small or innovative
competitors because we'll saddle them with compliance costs they can't handle.
So time honored strategy. Actually, Tim Sanderfer of the Goldwater Institute,
old time friend of the Armstrong and Getty Show, has
(01:13):
written brilliantly about this. All sorts of different scams and
schemes where regulation looks like it's to protect the consumer,
but it's not at all anyway. So Trump signed an
executive order earlier this year directing federal agencies to fix
the seemingly broken live entertainment market, and according to the
(01:36):
National Review, he was standing up for ordinary Americans who've
been priced out of concerts and sporting events by, as
they write, a system riddled with opaque pricing, aggressive automated
bots that buy up and resell tickets, and large quantities
even though that's illegal, and limited options. And so the
order gave the Justice Department, the Federal Trade Commission, and
the Treasury Department until let's see, the twenty seventh of
(01:59):
September would come right up as we record this to
propose reforms. And let's see. This is written by Vance
gin Or Gain, who was.
Speaker 2 (02:09):
The Has concert tickets always been this way? I didn't.
I didn't live in a part of the country where
you could go to concerts, so it was never on
my radar. You did when when you were young, like
in the seventies, could you jump on the phone the
day tickets came out and get really good seats?
Speaker 1 (02:24):
No?
Speaker 2 (02:25):
No, so it's not you.
Speaker 1 (02:26):
Had to buy them in person? One thing?
Speaker 2 (02:28):
Okay, Well, the.
Speaker 1 (02:29):
Only way to buy a ticket was in person for
the concerts I went to as a teenager.
Speaker 2 (02:33):
Could you show up in person and stand in line
and get a really good seater or has it always
been kind of mobbed up to where all the good
seats were already gone.
Speaker 1 (02:42):
Sort of in that the record companies and the big
radio stations and maybe the promoter who ran the hall
would get a bunch of good tickets. Like once I
stayed out overnight, slept in line air supply.
Speaker 2 (02:57):
It was air supply.
Speaker 1 (02:58):
It was air supply for their worsier than ever tour.
Uh No, several buddies and I slept out waiting all
night for rush tickets, and we were I think we
got there like the previous day.
Speaker 2 (03:10):
I think during your school year or in the summer.
I don't remember, you slept for tickets. Yeah, oh yeah,
that was the only way to get really good tickets
and so uh and it was. It was quite the party,
as I recall, though we were very tired.
Speaker 1 (03:24):
In the morning.
Speaker 2 (03:25):
I was wondering where did you urinate?
Speaker 1 (03:28):
I don't remember how that worked exactly. It was one
of those situations where Jesus, what what is wrong with you? So,
as I recall, since you get to know everybody anywhere
near you, because you're there for hours and hours and
hours with remember kids, no screams, right, we're just chatting.
Speaker 2 (03:52):
Right, It's not like, now are you wait in line?
You got all the world's entertainment sitting there in your hand.
Of course you always do.
Speaker 1 (03:59):
You would have explain, hey, I got to take a
pie or whatever, and and you'd go and you'd come back,
and the people you've been with for the last eighteen hours,
we're not gonna say lo, no, you just get back
in line. And everybody kind of policed it. But anyway,
so we were, as I recall, sixth in line, and
(04:21):
it was a maximum of four tickets per person, and
we ended up in I think the eighth row.
Speaker 2 (04:27):
That's a pretty good ticket.
Speaker 1 (04:29):
Yeah, it's pretty good tickets, but that's like three hundred
and fifty tickets away from the front of the stage. Anyway,
because you know, the powers that be got the tickets.
But it was a lot better than it is today,
when the only way to buy tickets on resale was
to know somebody who knows a scalper or something like that. Anyway,
so back to the story, So they're supposed to crank
(04:52):
out these proposals to protect consumers, enforce the law and
expand competition, and as gin here rights not reward powerful
incumbents with a regulatory mote. Unfortunately, Ticketmaster is now lobbying
the administration to impose a resale price cap, limiting ticket
resales to just twenty percent above face value, which sounds
(05:16):
like a win for fans.
Speaker 2 (05:18):
How would you enforce that?
Speaker 1 (05:22):
Oh gosh, that would be hard. I mean, it's such
an enormous market and so spread out. Anyway, the writer writes,
it's not a win for fans. It's a clever attempt
to crush rivals under the guise of reform, and it
will only make this system worse. It's fashionable to call
Ticketmaster a monopoly, but the reality is more complex. Yes,
(05:44):
it's dominant in primary ticketing, but there are many resale platforms,
seat geek, stub Hub, vivid Seats, and competition is growing
from direct to fan platforms and decentralized systems. The only
reason Ticketmaster still holds so much power despite the number
of competing options is that government helped it entrench the company.
There are some state laws that mandate consumers can only
(06:05):
resell their tickets on the same website they bought them from,
and this benefits Ticketmaster as the company controls more than
eighty percent of the primary ticketing market place.
Speaker 2 (06:15):
I didn't realize that I used stub hub and seat
geek pretty often. I didn't know Ticketmaster was that big.
Speaker 1 (06:24):
So obviously Ticketmaster earns twice, once on the original sale
and again on the resale. The added business Ticketmaster is
received because of government regulations like these have given its
parent company, Live Nation more capital to spend on a
massing controlling interest in more event venues, with the tally
now being nearly four hundred venues worldwide, and these venues,
(06:46):
many of which receive public subsidies, then lock in exclusive
deals with one ticketing vendor more often than not, its Ticketmaster. Now,
instead of advocating that the Trump administration removed these government
created barriers which, by limited competition, limiting competition raised prices
on fans, Live Nation is proposing that Washington had more
gumment red tape on the ticket industry through resale price controls,
(07:08):
which would push up prices by further reducing overall industry
competition and innovation.
Speaker 2 (07:13):
Does scalping at the site still exist and if so,
why I haven't scalped in the smartphone era. I used
to scalp a lot, like all the time, sporting events mostly,
But why would it exist in the smartphone era where
you can leave your ticket up there for sale, lower
the price as it gets closer to gain time or
(07:35):
first note of the concert, and then sell it that way.
Speaker 1 (07:38):
Go ahead, Kittie, Well noo.
Speaker 3 (07:39):
There was a guy that used to hang out outside
of an AT and T park in San Francisco that
was scalping tickets and they ended up being fake. So
I got totally deterred from that.
Speaker 2 (07:48):
Oh really, I never got burned on scalping somehow, it
never happened to me. But like so, when I took
Henry to his first concert, the Eagles at the Sphere,
pretty and I wanted really good seats, so pretty hard
to get ticket, But I waited until an hour before
the show started before I bought tickets as a little
nerve wracking. As we had flown there stayed in a hotel.
(08:10):
I had promised him a concert for his birthday and
I hadn't bought tickets yet. I didn't tell him that,
but I just watching the price for the really good
seats go down down down. They weren't standing outside the
sphere selling them. They had them on. I think it
was a stub hub and the price was just going
down as it got closer because they didn't want to
get stuck with their tickets. And I tickets that started
at like fifteen hundred dollars. I think I bought for
(08:32):
one to eighty wow.
Speaker 1 (08:35):
Wow. And because those sites are so sensitive to anybody
getting ripped off, they've got great so.
Speaker 2 (08:41):
Oh yeah, yeah, I have no worry on those those
big platforms.
Speaker 1 (08:45):
No, yeah, I've never been burned, Michael.
Speaker 4 (08:47):
I remember when I was younger going to buying tickets
from a gas station. I would meet this guy at
the gas station who was a ticket scalper and pay
extravagant prices for the tickets. Looking back, that was pretty foolish.
Speaker 2 (09:00):
I don't know.
Speaker 1 (09:01):
Do you get them too?
Speaker 4 (09:03):
No? No, but I didn't get ripped off, but I
easily could have.
Speaker 1 (09:06):
So. Back to the threat of the article, because I
find this interesting anyway. While independent platforms would collapse if
they had that twenty percent above face value rule, Live
Nation Ticketmaster would survive just fine. Unlike many of its competitors,
its business is not based on resale profits. They make
their money from managing the vast majority of the primary
(09:28):
ticketing marketplace Venu fees, artist management and its exclusive partnerships.
That's why it can call for a cap, because it
knows its rivals can't afford that. Other governments have tried this.
In Ireland, a twenty twenty one resale cap led to
a surgeon ticket fraud by twenty twenty four as criminal
networks filled the void.
Speaker 2 (09:48):
Ahead of the Paris.
Speaker 1 (09:49):
Olympics, France saw hundreds of scam resale sites pop up
due to restricted legitimate options. Twenty top twenty twenty five
UK government study found on fraud rates and regulated resale
markets were four times higher than in open ones. In
other words, price caps don't stop on fair ticket resale practices,
they just limit legitimate competition. Well, you said, you asked
(10:13):
the question, it's a good one. How do you enforce
this over zillions of you know, computers, and you know
everywhere in America people can click and buy tickets. Well,
the answer on stub hub would be, well, we have
to or we would go in a business. So we
use algorithms and security and blah blah blah. I Pea
addresses blah blah blah. Nobody is allowed to use a
(10:35):
VPN and sell tickets, et cetera, et cetera. We make
sure nobody ever gets ripped off. So you're gonna trust them,
or are you gonna trust the Federal Trade Commission to
make sure there's no ticket fraud. The experience of all
these European countries is the government can't hope to regulate
it successfully, and so the criminals move in and say, yes,
(10:55):
snow's the time, and it drives all the legit resellers
out of business. Well, I'm not saying I love the
situation where like t swizzle tickets, for instance, gets snatched up,
and like, what percentage do you suppose of people who
attended the shows bought them from ticket resellers.
Speaker 2 (11:15):
I have only purchased from ticket resellers for quite some
time now, so I don't know. For most people.
Speaker 1 (11:22):
Yeah, I don't know either. I'm you know, super high profile,
super sought after stuff. I tend to go to weirder
shows that only weirdos go to.
Speaker 2 (11:30):
But I've done some pretty big sporting events and concerts,
and yeah it's expensive, but I'm a free market guy,
so that doesn't bother me really, But I love man
the modern like seat geek, where you go on there
and it shows you what your view is going to
be like at the football field from that seat. That's awesome.
Speaker 1 (11:48):
Yeah, final note from this guy writing, fans deserve a
fair shot at tickets and entrepreneurs deserve a fair shot
at competing. That's what a truly free market provides. But
we won't get there by handing Ticketmaster a government enforced
price shield.
Speaker 2 (12:01):
Yeah. My biggest complaint with the way the modern thing
works is the artist doesn't get the money. You know,
don't use Taylor Swift because she has so much money.
But even with all her money, why is some ticket
broker getting five hundred dollars for your eighty dollars ticket
instead of you? You're the demand, you know.
Speaker 1 (12:20):
I wish we had Alnonymous, the ticket broker who's a
friend of mine, with us right now, because one interesting
thing about the whole ticket broker's thing is they have
contracts to buy X number of tickets. They're like in
how do I explain this? It's like buying futures in commodities,
(12:42):
and so they will buy tickets at face value, lots
of them. That end up not being profitable at all.
They lose money on them because there's less demand than
they thought they would be for whatever tour or what
have you. And so the actual artists and promoters like
them because they limit the opportunity for loss.
Speaker 2 (13:02):
So they buy futures when air supplies on there, what'sier
than ever nostalgia tour? Right, they're happy that Ticketmaster's buying
up all those tickets.
Speaker 1 (13:11):
Uh yeah, yeah, in general, And you know, you also
have to get back to the idea that if you know,
I'm Judy and I are going to see Elvis Costello
before too long, longtime musical hero of mine.
Speaker 2 (13:25):
How old is Elvis Costello? Now?
Speaker 1 (13:27):
Oh golly g h he's got to be seven.
Speaker 2 (13:31):
And I don't bash musicians based on their age because
I've seen some old musicians and they are play and
sound fantastic.
Speaker 3 (13:38):
Right he just turned seventy one.
Speaker 2 (13:40):
Yeah, it'll be fine. I've seen I saw eighty year
old Eagles play like crazy.
Speaker 1 (13:44):
So yeah, I've seen the recent shows and he and
his band sound fantastic. But anyway, if I went on
and saw that, I could not see ec for less
than four hundred and twenty five dollars. If I don't
want to spend that much, I don't go. And if
I do want to spend that much.
Speaker 4 (14:02):
I do.
Speaker 1 (14:03):
It's called supply, and it's delightful. Companion demand, It's fine.
Would I prefer some fantasy land where it was always
face value? And if we had more time and I
had more expertise, I would explain why face value tickets
are often underpriced. But that has to do with a
(14:27):
number of people, including the artists, have every interest in
a sellout or as close to a sellout as they
can get, and they get murdered if they have half
empty arenas. That's the one thing they must avoid.
Speaker 2 (14:43):
Billy Joel famously, when he was setting his record at
Madison Square Garden with sold out shows, he'd buy the
first I forget how many rows, six rows or whatever,
and then give those to people that had the upper
tickets when the concert started, because he wanted real fans
in the front. He said, he did debt for him
because he wanted real fans who are really excited to
(15:04):
be there, not people who are always in the front
row and bored with the thing. I mean, I had
that experience at the Eagles. I was in the front
row with my son. We were seat he was seat one,
a row one, seat one, and but uh, he was
very excited his first concert ever. But there were a
lot of rich people around me who showed up late,
barely paid attention, looking at their phones. I mean, this
(15:25):
is just annoying.
Speaker 3 (15:27):
Yes, that's got to be just a downer for the performance.
Speaker 2 (15:30):
USS. That's what Billy Jonas says. He didn't want to
look out there and see people who have seen it
all and are bored to death. People are screaming and yelling,
and this is the night of their life they're going
to tell people about forever.
Speaker 4 (15:40):
I love it.
Speaker 1 (15:41):
I love that. That's so smart. Yeah, and that does happen.
Speaker 2 (15:47):
I'm yeah, one of the first concerts I've ever went to.
It might have been the first concert I ever went to.
But I had snosebleed seats. I was thrilled to be
up there in those bleeds just because I was seeing
somebody live. I wouldn't do it now sitting up there
having been I'm jaded from being in the radio business.
You get to sit in a lot of cool seats.
But I couldn't get excited about it now. But I
(16:08):
did once in retrospect.
Speaker 1 (16:11):
I should have sold like one lung in one kidney,
but the guy was paying good for lungs, and I thought,
you know, why not double my money.
Speaker 4 (16:22):
I could have given up a toe or two. You
can get by on three or four toes.
Speaker 2 (16:26):
Nobody has any use for a tow though people need
lungs livers.
Speaker 4 (16:31):
Well, I guess that's it.
Sold both my lungs for Taylor Swift tickets. It's one
more thing.
Speaker 2 (00:10):
I don't know that was. I don't know if that
was good long term thinking you're gonna need those lungs.
Speaker 1 (00:18):
Now, all I've got is a ziplock bag. I in Hell,
I got a ziploc bag attached my trichia.
Speaker 2 (00:24):
I'll tell you what era I'm in, the post lung era.
Speaker 1 (00:30):
So I thought this was so interesting from the folks
at the National Review. Such a great example of policies
that sound good but don't make sense if you think
about them. That's point number one. Point number two, how
a lot of common sense regulations to ensure the safety
(00:52):
of the American people are actually the super giant corporations
knowing we can crush all of our small or innovative
competitors because we'll saddle them with compliance costs they can't handle.
So time honored strategy. Actually, Tim Sanderfer of the Goldwater Institute,
old time friend of the Armstrong and Getty Show, has
(01:13):
written brilliantly about this. All sorts of different scams and
schemes where regulation looks like it's to protect the consumer,
but it's not at all anyway. So Trump signed an
executive order earlier this year directing federal agencies to fix
the seemingly broken live entertainment market, and according to the
(01:36):
National Review, he was standing up for ordinary Americans who've
been priced out of concerts and sporting events by, as
they write, a system riddled with opaque pricing, aggressive automated
bots that buy up and resell tickets, and large quantities
even though that's illegal, and limited options. And so the
order gave the Justice Department, the Federal Trade Commission, and
the Treasury Department until let's see, the twenty seventh of
(01:59):
September would come right up as we record this to
propose reforms. And let's see. This is written by Vance
gin Or Gain, who was.
Speaker 2 (02:09):
The Has concert tickets always been this way? I didn't.
I didn't live in a part of the country where
you could go to concerts, so it was never on
my radar. You did when when you were young, like
in the seventies, could you jump on the phone the
day tickets came out and get really good seats?
Speaker 1 (02:24):
No?
Speaker 2 (02:25):
No, so it's not you.
Speaker 1 (02:26):
Had to buy them in person? One thing?
Speaker 2 (02:28):
Okay, Well, the.
Speaker 1 (02:29):
Only way to buy a ticket was in person for
the concerts I went to as a teenager.
Speaker 2 (02:33):
Could you show up in person and stand in line
and get a really good seater or has it always
been kind of mobbed up to where all the good
seats were already gone.
Speaker 1 (02:42):
Sort of in that the record companies and the big
radio stations and maybe the promoter who ran the hall
would get a bunch of good tickets. Like once I
stayed out overnight, slept in line air supply.
Speaker 2 (02:57):
It was air supply.
Speaker 1 (02:58):
It was air supply for their worsier than ever tour.
Uh No, several buddies and I slept out waiting all
night for rush tickets, and we were I think we
got there like the previous day.
Speaker 2 (03:10):
I think during your school year or in the summer.
I don't remember, you slept for tickets. Yeah, oh yeah,
that was the only way to get really good tickets
and so uh and it was. It was quite the party,
as I recall, though we were very tired.
Speaker 1 (03:24):
In the morning.
Speaker 2 (03:25):
I was wondering where did you urinate?
Speaker 1 (03:28):
I don't remember how that worked exactly. It was one
of those situations where Jesus, what what is wrong with you? So,
as I recall, since you get to know everybody anywhere
near you, because you're there for hours and hours and
hours with remember kids, no screams, right, we're just chatting.
Speaker 2 (03:52):
Right, It's not like, now are you wait in line?
You got all the world's entertainment sitting there in your hand.
Of course you always do.
Speaker 1 (03:59):
You would have explain, hey, I got to take a
pie or whatever, and and you'd go and you'd come back,
and the people you've been with for the last eighteen hours,
we're not gonna say lo, no, you just get back
in line. And everybody kind of policed it. But anyway,
so we were, as I recall, sixth in line, and
(04:21):
it was a maximum of four tickets per person, and
we ended up in I think the eighth row.
Speaker 2 (04:27):
That's a pretty good ticket.
Speaker 1 (04:29):
Yeah, it's pretty good tickets, but that's like three hundred
and fifty tickets away from the front of the stage. Anyway,
because you know, the powers that be got the tickets.
But it was a lot better than it is today,
when the only way to buy tickets on resale was
to know somebody who knows a scalper or something like that. Anyway,
so back to the story, So they're supposed to crank
(04:52):
out these proposals to protect consumers, enforce the law and
expand competition, and as gin here rights not reward powerful
incumbents with a regulatory mote. Unfortunately, Ticketmaster is now lobbying
the administration to impose a resale price cap, limiting ticket
resales to just twenty percent above face value, which sounds
(05:16):
like a win for fans.
Speaker 2 (05:18):
How would you enforce that?
Speaker 1 (05:22):
Oh gosh, that would be hard. I mean, it's such
an enormous market and so spread out. Anyway, the writer writes,
it's not a win for fans. It's a clever attempt
to crush rivals under the guise of reform, and it
will only make this system worse. It's fashionable to call
Ticketmaster a monopoly, but the reality is more complex. Yes,
(05:44):
it's dominant in primary ticketing, but there are many resale platforms,
seat geek, stub Hub, vivid Seats, and competition is growing
from direct to fan platforms and decentralized systems. The only
reason Ticketmaster still holds so much power despite the number
of competing options is that government helped it entrench the company.
There are some state laws that mandate consumers can only
(06:05):
resell their tickets on the same website they bought them from,
and this benefits Ticketmaster as the company controls more than
eighty percent of the primary ticketing market place.
Speaker 2 (06:15):
I didn't realize that I used stub hub and seat
geek pretty often. I didn't know Ticketmaster was that big.
Speaker 1 (06:24):
So obviously Ticketmaster earns twice, once on the original sale
and again on the resale. The added business Ticketmaster is
received because of government regulations like these have given its
parent company, Live Nation more capital to spend on a
massing controlling interest in more event venues, with the tally
now being nearly four hundred venues worldwide, and these venues,
(06:46):
many of which receive public subsidies, then lock in exclusive
deals with one ticketing vendor more often than not, its Ticketmaster. Now,
instead of advocating that the Trump administration removed these government
created barriers which, by limited competition, limiting competition raised prices
on fans, Live Nation is proposing that Washington had more
gumment red tape on the ticket industry through resale price controls,
(07:08):
which would push up prices by further reducing overall industry
competition and innovation.
Speaker 2 (07:13):
Does scalping at the site still exist and if so,
why I haven't scalped in the smartphone era. I used
to scalp a lot, like all the time, sporting events mostly,
But why would it exist in the smartphone era where
you can leave your ticket up there for sale, lower
the price as it gets closer to gain time or
(07:35):
first note of the concert, and then sell it that way.
Speaker 1 (07:38):
Go ahead, Kittie, Well noo.
Speaker 3 (07:39):
There was a guy that used to hang out outside
of an AT and T park in San Francisco that
was scalping tickets and they ended up being fake. So
I got totally deterred from that.
Speaker 2 (07:48):
Oh really, I never got burned on scalping somehow, it
never happened to me. But like so, when I took
Henry to his first concert, the Eagles at the Sphere,
pretty and I wanted really good seats, so pretty hard
to get ticket, But I waited until an hour before
the show started before I bought tickets as a little
nerve wracking. As we had flown there stayed in a hotel.
(08:10):
I had promised him a concert for his birthday and
I hadn't bought tickets yet. I didn't tell him that,
but I just watching the price for the really good
seats go down down down. They weren't standing outside the
sphere selling them. They had them on. I think it
was a stub hub and the price was just going
down as it got closer because they didn't want to
get stuck with their tickets. And I tickets that started
at like fifteen hundred dollars. I think I bought for
(08:32):
one to eighty wow.
Speaker 1 (08:35):
Wow. And because those sites are so sensitive to anybody
getting ripped off, they've got great so.
Speaker 2 (08:41):
Oh yeah, yeah, I have no worry on those those
big platforms.
Speaker 1 (08:45):
No, yeah, I've never been burned, Michael.
Speaker 4 (08:47):
I remember when I was younger going to buying tickets
from a gas station. I would meet this guy at
the gas station who was a ticket scalper and pay
extravagant prices for the tickets. Looking back, that was pretty foolish.
Speaker 2 (09:00):
I don't know.
Speaker 1 (09:01):
Do you get them too?
Speaker 4 (09:03):
No? No, but I didn't get ripped off, but I
easily could have.
Speaker 1 (09:06):
So. Back to the threat of the article, because I
find this interesting anyway. While independent platforms would collapse if
they had that twenty percent above face value rule, Live
Nation Ticketmaster would survive just fine. Unlike many of its competitors,
its business is not based on resale profits. They make
their money from managing the vast majority of the primary
(09:28):
ticketing marketplace Venu fees, artist management and its exclusive partnerships.
That's why it can call for a cap, because it
knows its rivals can't afford that. Other governments have tried this.
In Ireland, a twenty twenty one resale cap led to
a surgeon ticket fraud by twenty twenty four as criminal
networks filled the void.
Speaker 2 (09:48):
Ahead of the Paris.
Speaker 1 (09:49):
Olympics, France saw hundreds of scam resale sites pop up
due to restricted legitimate options. Twenty top twenty twenty five
UK government study found on fraud rates and regulated resale
markets were four times higher than in open ones. In
other words, price caps don't stop on fair ticket resale practices,
they just limit legitimate competition. Well, you said, you asked
(10:13):
the question, it's a good one. How do you enforce
this over zillions of you know, computers, and you know
everywhere in America people can click and buy tickets. Well,
the answer on stub hub would be, well, we have
to or we would go in a business. So we
use algorithms and security and blah blah blah. I Pea
addresses blah blah blah. Nobody is allowed to use a
(10:35):
VPN and sell tickets, et cetera, et cetera. We make
sure nobody ever gets ripped off. So you're gonna trust them,
or are you gonna trust the Federal Trade Commission to
make sure there's no ticket fraud. The experience of all
these European countries is the government can't hope to regulate
it successfully, and so the criminals move in and say, yes,
(10:55):
snow's the time, and it drives all the legit resellers
out of business. Well, I'm not saying I love the
situation where like t swizzle tickets, for instance, gets snatched up,
and like, what percentage do you suppose of people who
attended the shows bought them from ticket resellers.
Speaker 2 (11:15):
I have only purchased from ticket resellers for quite some
time now, so I don't know. For most people.
Speaker 1 (11:22):
Yeah, I don't know either. I'm you know, super high profile,
super sought after stuff. I tend to go to weirder
shows that only weirdos go to.
Speaker 2 (11:30):
But I've done some pretty big sporting events and concerts,
and yeah it's expensive, but I'm a free market guy,
so that doesn't bother me really, But I love man
the modern like seat geek, where you go on there
and it shows you what your view is going to
be like at the football field from that seat. That's awesome.
Speaker 1 (11:48):
Yeah, final note from this guy writing, fans deserve a
fair shot at tickets and entrepreneurs deserve a fair shot
at competing. That's what a truly free market provides. But
we won't get there by handing Ticketmaster a government enforced
price shield.
Speaker 2 (12:01):
Yeah. My biggest complaint with the way the modern thing
works is the artist doesn't get the money. You know,
don't use Taylor Swift because she has so much money.
But even with all her money, why is some ticket
broker getting five hundred dollars for your eighty dollars ticket
instead of you? You're the demand, you know.
Speaker 1 (12:20):
I wish we had Alnonymous, the ticket broker who's a
friend of mine, with us right now, because one interesting
thing about the whole ticket broker's thing is they have
contracts to buy X number of tickets. They're like in
how do I explain this? It's like buying futures in commodities,
(12:42):
and so they will buy tickets at face value, lots
of them. That end up not being profitable at all.
They lose money on them because there's less demand than
they thought they would be for whatever tour or what
have you. And so the actual artists and promoters like
them because they limit the opportunity for loss.
Speaker 2 (13:02):
So they buy futures when air supplies on there, what'sier
than ever nostalgia tour? Right, they're happy that Ticketmaster's buying
up all those tickets.
Speaker 1 (13:11):
Uh yeah, yeah, in general, And you know, you also
have to get back to the idea that if you know,
I'm Judy and I are going to see Elvis Costello
before too long, longtime musical hero of mine.
Speaker 2 (13:25):
How old is Elvis Costello? Now?
Speaker 1 (13:27):
Oh golly g h he's got to be seven.
Speaker 2 (13:31):
And I don't bash musicians based on their age because
I've seen some old musicians and they are play and
sound fantastic.
Speaker 3 (13:38):
Right he just turned seventy one.
Speaker 2 (13:40):
Yeah, it'll be fine. I've seen I saw eighty year
old Eagles play like crazy.
Speaker 1 (13:44):
So yeah, I've seen the recent shows and he and
his band sound fantastic. But anyway, if I went on
and saw that, I could not see ec for less
than four hundred and twenty five dollars. If I don't
want to spend that much, I don't go. And if
I do want to spend that much.
Speaker 4 (14:02):
I do.
Speaker 1 (14:03):
It's called supply, and it's delightful. Companion demand, It's fine.
Would I prefer some fantasy land where it was always
face value? And if we had more time and I
had more expertise, I would explain why face value tickets
are often underpriced. But that has to do with a
(14:27):
number of people, including the artists, have every interest in
a sellout or as close to a sellout as they
can get, and they get murdered if they have half
empty arenas. That's the one thing they must avoid.
Speaker 2 (14:43):
Billy Joel famously, when he was setting his record at
Madison Square Garden with sold out shows, he'd buy the
first I forget how many rows, six rows or whatever,
and then give those to people that had the upper
tickets when the concert started, because he wanted real fans
in the front. He said, he did debt for him
because he wanted real fans who are really excited to
(15:04):
be there, not people who are always in the front
row and bored with the thing. I mean, I had
that experience at the Eagles. I was in the front
row with my son. We were seat he was seat one,
a row one, seat one, and but uh, he was
very excited his first concert ever. But there were a
lot of rich people around me who showed up late,
barely paid attention, looking at their phones. I mean, this
(15:25):
is just annoying.
Speaker 3 (15:27):
Yes, that's got to be just a downer for the performance.
Speaker 2 (15:30):
USS. That's what Billy Jonas says. He didn't want to
look out there and see people who have seen it
all and are bored to death. People are screaming and yelling,
and this is the night of their life they're going
to tell people about forever.
Speaker 4 (15:40):
I love it.
Speaker 1 (15:41):
I love that. That's so smart. Yeah, and that does happen.
Speaker 2 (15:47):
I'm yeah, one of the first concerts I've ever went to.
It might have been the first concert I ever went to.
But I had snosebleed seats. I was thrilled to be
up there in those bleeds just because I was seeing
somebody live. I wouldn't do it now sitting up there
having been I'm jaded from being in the radio business.
You get to sit in a lot of cool seats.
But I couldn't get excited about it now. But I
(16:08):
did once in retrospect.
Speaker 1 (16:11):
I should have sold like one lung in one kidney,
but the guy was paying good for lungs, and I thought,
you know, why not double my money.
Speaker 4 (16:22):
I could have given up a toe or two. You
can get by on three or four toes.
Speaker 2 (16:26):
Nobody has any use for a tow though people need
lungs livers.
Speaker 4 (16:31):
Well, I guess that's it.
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Joe Getty
Jack Armstrong
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