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Box-Office Giant Ticketmaster Recruits Pros For Secret Scalper Program (www.cbc.ca)
Box-office giant Ticketmaster is recruiting professional scalpers who cheat its own system to expand its resale business and squeeze more money out of fans, a CBC News/Toronto Star investigation reveals. The report adds: In July, the news outlets sent a pair of reporters undercover to Ticket Summit 2018, a ticketing and live entertainment convention at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas. Posing as scalpers and equipped with hidden cameras, the journalists were pitched on Ticketmaster's professional reseller program. Company representatives told them Ticketmaster's resale division turns a blind eye to scalpers who use ticket-buying bots and fake identities to snatch up tickets and then resell them on the site for inflated prices. Those pricey resale tickets include extra fees for Ticketmaster. "I have brokers that have literally a couple of hundred accounts," one sales representative said. "It's not something that we look at or report." CBC shared its findings with Alan Cross, a veteran music journalist and host of the radio program The Ongoing History of New Music, who suspects the ticket-buying public will be far from impressed: "This is going to be a public relations nightmare." He said there have been "whispers of this in the ticket-selling community, but it's never been outlined quite like this before."
Ticketmaster is like the Devil fucked himself, had a child, and that child grew up without any toys reading only out of context Scrooge McDuck comic panels.
If at all possible I try not to buy tickets from them, and don't go to many concerts any more because that is becoming increasingly harder to avoid.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
People need to stop buying tickets over MSRP. Don't support that shit or it'll only continue.
I suppose at the same time they're still busting non-company scalpers and insisting they're prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law?
Seems to me that Ticketmaster should put in for a corporate name change to East India Company. Then they can call their payrolled scalpers 'privateers'.
Isn't this that they're doing illegal? If not it should be. I hope they go bankrupt over this.
then drinking firewater and fuckin squaws in the teepee
Ticketmaster is the reason I never go to concerts.
They need to be gutted by this.
Ticketmaster is an evil monopoly just *begging* to be regulated or broken up.
That they create and monetize the secondary market is hardly surprising.
Yes, the public will not be happy, but what are we going to do? TicketBastard pretty much has a monopoly on concert tickets. It's not like I can go to another ticket vendor to get tickets, if they are selling them they are the only one selling them. And it's not like bands have a lot of options because so many venues are owned by TicketBastard. Unless the government steps in and starts regulating shitty, scammy business practices (not likely, especially not with this administration) there is no consequences to being a shitty company.
"Information wants to be expensive" - Stewart Brand, the same guy who said "Information wants to be free"
..of free markets, corporate greed and (most importantly) lack of accountability.
I wonder what would happen if the Sherman Anti-trust Act was aimed at Ticketmaster. They have a virtual monopoly on their business model.
1. Open bidding
2. Everybody bids what they are willing to pay for tickets
3. Close bidding
4. Starting with highest bid, in descending order:
4a. Collect bid amount
4b. Allow bidder to choose seat or request bid refund
5. Repeat from 4 until all seats are sold
Scalpers? Everybody already bid what they would have paid. By bidding higher, the scalper is pricing themselves out of their own market.
Bots? It's either useless scalping (see previous line), or uselessly holding a spot only to request a bid refund.
Isnt this a textbook case of illegal monopolistic collusion?
Many of the scalpers will likely go to jail, BUT, this was a program being admined by Ticketmaster itself. Nearly all states have anti-scalping laws on the books. As such, Ticketmaster employees that KNEW about this should be going to prison (aiding/abetting or participating). BUT, I am guessing that not a ONE will see prison, esp the executives, even though they were almost certainly in on it.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Why does Ticketmaster have a convention? They control something north of 90% of the ticket market in the US; it is nearly impossible to go to a concert or professional sporting event anywhere in this country without them making money off of you. Who are they having a convention with?
This sounds like just a charade they put on to try to convince people that there is competition in this market or that consumers have choice.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
And that reason is ticketmonster.
It's a model that encourages a perfect mix of the rich and the gullible.
OMG, I better pay $300 a cheapo ticket to see some fat 50 year olds sing songs from my childhood
these people were fun when my mom hated them, now they are just like all other old people
I thought the s-word was as insensitive as the n-word.
But anyway, Ticketmaster is no sensitivity champion.
So when are the reporters going to jail for illegal wiretapping?
.... is rename themselves TicketParent, and all will be forgiven by us, the TicketChildren, I'm sure.
Check your premises.
I'm sure there's some great A/V experiences I'm missing out on by refusing to purchase through Ticketmaster, however... a stand must be taken.
And... there's always Youtube, or the 'official' live recordings online to boot.
To be continued....
While public has very little recourse against this, artists and labels do. TM is effectively selling tickets multiple times, getting their cut multiple times, but paying artists only for the original ticket sale.
Nuke them from orbit. Teach the rest of those fuckers something..
You'll hit puberty soon son.
I tried reselling some tickets on Ticketmaster for a concert we couldn't make it to because it seemed easier to just do it through their website. They were up there for several weeks without selling. When i tried to drop the price of the tickets the week before the concert to try and get rid of them i discovered the Ticketmaster site wouldn't let me drop them below a certain amount (an amount that i believe was higher than what i'd initially paid for them.) Maybe there was some way to get around the artificial limit, but if so i couldn't figure out how. I'd say that maybe they wanted to insure a minimum level of fees for themselves, but if the ticket is priced too high to sell they're not going to get _any_ fee, so that seems counter-productive.
So i canceled that offer and switched the tickets over to StubHub, which had a much better UI and let me lower the ticket prices to whatever i wanted. (I ended up managing to sell them about an hour before the concert for about $200 less than i originally paid for them after getting into a negative bidding war with someone else =P)
I'd strongly recommend checking out StubHub and any other ticket resellers before resorting to TicketMaster, especially after hearing this news.
This Space Intentionally Left Blank
Various executives from Ticketmaster gangraped me and thousands of other children when I was only five. They also sold tickets to other people who stood in line to rape me. Everyone at the executive at Ticketmaster needs to be jailed for child rape.
This is one of the undocumented features of Capitalism, or its logical conclusion, if you will.
In publicly traded corporations, (and probably privately owned ones too,) the ONLY metrics of success involve MONEY, mostly something called ROI, return on investment, and dividends, stock value, etc.
When it is true, (and it is,) that a company could make more money, both up-front, or near-term, and in the end, (long term,) killing you and your family in broad daylight in front of a hundred witnesses, with cameras rolling, they’d do it unhesitatingly. The ONLY thing that might stop them, (and in practical reality, what DOES stop them,) is the fact that the actual employee pulling the trigger, and probably whoever told him to do it, would risk going to jail.
IF, however, there were no risk of that, the streets would run red with profit.
It is specifically BECAUSE profit, and related things I’ve mentioned above, are the only drivers that this is the case. It’s why companies make and sell cigarettes, loaded with chemicals that are there to addict you hopelessly, and why advertising exists. It’s why companies dump toxic chemicals into your family’s air and drinking water, even when that ends up killing them, (because there’s no one trigger-man who can go to jail,) because doing so makes them more money.
Don’t misunderstand me. I’m not decrying greed, private ownership of the “means of production,” or a completly decentralized approach to resource allocation and industrial decisionmaking regarding what exactly to bring to market. However, the result we see is a natural consequence of the system we have. There’s no need to round up the “filthy rich,” line them up against a wall, and shoot them dead. To fix this, we simply need to find an effective means to make the wellbeing of the people in the community, in the state, the country, and the world, a bigger, more important factor than money, in judging the success of a corporation. Then, implement that.
Social media would SEEM, via public shaming, for example, to be a vehicle for this BUT... it hasn’t, I don't think, lived up to its promise, because of problems with the design. Even WERE this effective, all it would do, through the very same evolutionary processes that made this species (and all others,) is create a new strain that exists without shame, that is impervious to any kind of criticism.
Some would argue that such a breed already, regrettably, exists. Some would argue further that the system did not breed that constellation of personality traits into being, but I’ll tell you... the system sure does seem to reward that kind of person disproportionately, which is sad, when you stop and think about it, because that kind of person often seems to have a disproportionate ability to inflict tremendous damage upon the world around them, and the people who have to live in it.
Our reign has gone on long enough. Indeed. Summon the meteors.
If you don't like Ticketmaster's ways, don't buy from them. Skip the show, tell the artists why. Ticketmaster isn't doing anything wrong other than responding to customer demand. If people want to pay for higher priced tickets, let them. In fact, it might be a good thing to just auction tickets off, similar to how Austin landlords use Rentberry so they keep with the market.
You know, there's a life saving medicine malaria victims can get for free, if they are willing to bare-knuckle fight each other. And, Ticketmaster provides the ticket sales to those events. So, your indignation to this travesty only hurts these poor souls, you uncaring monster!
The venue fees, ticketshafter fees, and I don't remember what other fees, added up to more than the cost of the ticket itself.
There'$ a very good rea$on why that'$ the la$t concert I buy a ticket for.
Ticketmaster isn't doing anything wrong
This is exactly why uber-capitalists and lolbertarians should die a thousand horrible deaths, I'll get started today!
...a MAJOR one in Houston, Texas. Shelves and shelves, hastily constructed, loaded with workstations (this was pre-virtualization, can't imagine what it is now), just sniping tickets from the ticketmaster website one after another. And these people were not smart enough to "game" this system.
Think of tickets to a venue as a physical form of DRM, only ticket holders can get in to see the show. Scalpers just slipped into that place between supply and demand. In that light, Ticketmasters decision to cooperate with the scalpers can be seen as a "can't beat them, might as well join them" sort of thing. Doing it this way allows Ticketmaster (as the article says) to extract a bit more profit from the ticket sales and at no risk to themselves. If the event isn't as popular as expected, it's the scalpers who take it in the teeth in the form of tickets that they can't resell. Ticketmaster not only gets to sell unwanted tickets at full price, they also get to collect that bulk sales fee.
What I'm going to be interested in finding out is if the contracts with the various acts and performers includes their share of these extra fees. If Ticketmaster and the scalpers can sell tickets over retail price, that means the fans value attending the performance that much. That is a direct expression of the value of the artists in question. If people are willing to pay 150% of the retail price for a floor ticket for The Who, that means The Who is just that much more popular and should be getting paid more as a result. And I think that is the line of argument the fans need to bring to the artists attention: "These middlemen are making more money off you and you're not getting a piece of it." If enough big headliners with enough clout demand all of that extra revenue, you'll see Ticketmaster drop those policies PDQ.
I need a wheelchair van for my son. Help me get the word out. https://www.gofundme.com/wheelchair-van-for-jj
If you don't like Ticketmaster's ways, don't buy from them.
Since Ticket Bastard has a lock on concert tickets, that means don't go to any more concerts.
Good thing that putting profits above all else is limited to the entertainment industry and for profit institutions are not delivering people's basic needs such as housing, education, health care, food, water and defense. Oh wait, you know what? You're just a dipshit. Why are you even commenting on this article then? Apparently you DO care but are just an asshole.
Its way past time to ban scalping completly. And not just penalties for the scalpers but penalties for the sites that allow scalping to take place like Viagogo and others.
AXS, Etix, Eventbrite, and especially Ticketfly. I rarely buy from Ticketmaster, (although, as mentioned above, I did recently buy tickets from them.)
Nearly all states have anti-scalping laws on the books.
His link says...
There is no federal law against scalping, but, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL), 15 states ban the practice in some way, most labeling it as a misdemeanor with penalties including fines and/or up to a year in jail. States that restrict scalping include: Arizona, Arkansas, California, Connecticut, Delaware, Kentucky, Louisiana, Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri, New Mexico, Ohio, Rhode Island, and Wisconsin.
I wonder what would happen if the Sherman Anti-trust Act was aimed at Ticketmaster. They have a virtual monopoly on their business model.
Nothing. Because they control a large swath of the market, that doesn't make them a monopoly. You can (and many have) started their own ticket selling business. It is only when they use their market dominance to run you out of business that you have a case. Until the start doing something like blacklisting artists that use your service, you got nothing on them legally. There aren't any rules against winning the game, only cheating to win.
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
sorry. missed a word:
that doesn't make them an illegal monopoly.
Slashdot, grow the fuck up and add an edit button on posts like every other site on the internet.....
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
I was under impression that it was illegal in nearly all states. I posted the link AFTER to clear up my statement.
Therein lies the difference between you and me.
No, the difference between you and me is I check first.
You pretend you know things. State them as facts, (often when you have already previously been shown you are wrong). And basically just lie constantly.
Even on the occasion you have a valid point, you still exaggerate it and manage to turn it into a lie as well.
You lie, troll, and AC constantly.
You claim that all the time, but have still failed on every occasion to show any. Care to try again?
I make mistakes, but clear them up and admit it.
You posted a link, with absolutely nothing else.
Is that supposed to be an example of you admitting your mistake and clearing it up?
Because it seems to normal people, that you posted a link to show you were right, but were too stupid to actually bother to read it first.
You OTH, continue to lie and just BS upon BS upon BS. Of course, that is what you are paid to do, in china.
Where are the lies?
Where is the BS?
You have never shown a lie, can you even show some BS?
I often point out your lies and lies more lies more lies even more lies lies and lies When you aren't lying, you are just making shit up that is in no way believable, and lying.
Only one time did you ever admit your 'mistake'. And that was after you 'mistakenly' claimed the same thing over and over going back years. Why did you never check?
Anyone who modded this up is a disgrace to the human race.
You should know by now, never trust a Windy post.
They won't go to jail because it is perfectly legal in the vast majority of places.
Hardly any states have anti-scalping laws.
It doesn't matter as it's not illegal.
You guessed one right, but only because you are clueless and were trying to be ironic.
There is nothing to be in on if it's perfectly legal.
What a bunch of dumbfucks.
I was under impression
Where do you get so many wrong impressions? Does your boss email you a talking points list every day? Or do you actively go out searching for the wrong information?
...because it can.
News at 11.
Well, duh. We all knew it. Free market is just "free" for those who have the money. And they are becoming less and less. Until the pitchforks and guillotines come out.
And then, the cycle repeats.
Sigh. If we just could set up a system in which greed (while somehow accepted, because human) doesn't take the first seat, our lives might be a tad more pleasant.
That's exactly what it's going to take--the fan community simply has to walk away from the resale marketplace. On the very morning that public tickets went on sale for Elton John's farewell tour, Ticketmaster was already offering the best seats at 75-100% markup through their reseller program (probably all purchased "legally" through the AmEx presale process). I said thanks but no thanks.
Ticketmaster isn't doing anything wrong other than responding to customer demand.
Wouldn't it at least qualify as false advertising if they're complicit in snatching tickets for low advertised prices and enabling reselling them at much higher prices?
Ezekiel 23:20
It's Pronounced "TicketBastard"