LiveNation Conspired w Artists to Scalp Their Own Tickets

[CABilly]

Have you tried buying concert tickets lately? It's maddening. For almost ANY show, tickets sell out almost instantly. Then you have to head over to StubHub or some other reselling outfit and pay exorbitant prices there. And the fees? $70 or more per ticket.

Well. It turns out that there may be some chicanery involved. Some shenanigans, if you will. An agent/manager working with Metallica recorded conversations held with ticketing people, plotting to withhold tickets from the direct market and sell them on the band's behalf for crazy marked-up prices on the secondary market.

Shady as fuck, if you ask me. I can see them wanting to capture some of that money from the scalpers, but if you feel you deserve more money, charge more money for your tickets.

Makes me really mad.

https://www.billboard.com/articles/...secretly-recorded-phone-calls-concert-tickets



In February 2017, days before Metallica announced its WorldWired North American stadium tour, Live Nation president of U.S. concerts Bob Roux spoke by phone with a little-known wealth adviser turned event promoter who had been tasked by an associate of the band to sell 88,000 tickets directly on resale sites like StubHub, without giving fans a chance to buy them through normal channels at face value.

"Ticketmaster will not do it," Roux can be heard saying on the 11-minute call that Billboard reviewed in full, explaining that the plan to put the tickets on sites billed for resellers had to be concealed. He suggested that "either a Live Nation employee or a venue box office basically take these and sell them into a singular account," the way tickets are typically allocated to fan clubs or sponsors. Once the tickets were placed there, they would be listed and sold on secondary-market sites.

"When this happens, 4,600 tickets into a single account," said Roux on the call, "there may be some eyebrows that get raised."

In all fairness, the least shitty part of this whole deal is that they ultimately lost money and the dude who orchestrated the plan bailed on them :laughing

In total, Millette spent over six months trying to sell the tickets and ultimately lost money, sources say, even though the tour grossed $111 million in 2017, according to Billboard Boxscore, the ninth-highest-grossing tour that year. At one point, some of the resale tickets had to be discounted: Out of 1 million tickets for the stadium tour, about 10,000, or 1%, were sold for $10 below face value, discounted to $39 from $49, a source says.

Millette didn't return some of the sales revenue he earned, telling the others it was his commission for the under-face-value sales and the monthslong effort, according to multiple sources. DiCioccio and the band sought to reclaim that revenue after the deal came up short, but did not receive it from Millette, the sources added.

 

[KrustyKruser]

Ticketmaster/live nation is why I don't do concerts anymore. Overpriced tickets for shit seats.

 

[FXCLM5]

You should see wtf the warriors do for playoffs, you can't get Tix at all and we're all some form of resales,

Even after signing up for exclusive dubnation first access right blahblahblab

 

[Abacinator]

Ticketfuck has been gouging fans for decades. Every so often there's a big uproar, then nothing happens.

 

[KWeezyXB12]

they do it with every event. i dont go to anything anymore because of the fees. 45$ ticket to supercross turns into a 72$ ticket after fees this last year. used to be 15$ with a monster can for a ticker and free pit passes:laughing

 

[asdfghwy]

livenation is scum and essentially holds a monopoly on every venue I'm pretty sure. fuck them along with tickethub/stubhub

 

[Dubbington]

Ticketmaster and Livenation are one company and they're connect with stubhub somehow. It's all a scam with the 'presale' bs too.

Katy Perry during a tour of hers gets allocated tickets and instead of giving them to her family/friends, they also sell them on the secondary market. It's all gouging.

I tried to get tickets for Adele for my sisters and mom 3 years ago, was on my computer waiting for 10am for them to go on sale, multiple browsers up. 10am hits and it says 'no tickets available'.

Despite the 'I'm not a robot' crap, either there are programs people are using or batches of tickets are given to other agencies.

 

[DReg350]

Pretty depressing. I enjoy seeing live concert entertainment, but getting tickets rivals leaving a show in an endless herd of slow moving cars.

 

[Eldritch]

youtu.be/LeKX2bNP7QM

 

[Brokenlink]

fuck Livenation and fuck Metallica.

 

[Abacinator]

Ticketmaster and Livenation are one company and they're connect with stubhub somehow. It's all a scam with the 'presale' bs too.

Katy Perry during a tour of hers gets allocated tickets and instead of giving them to her family/friends, they also sell them on the secondary market. It's all gouging.

I tried to get tickets for Adele for my sisters and mom 3 years ago, was on my computer waiting for 10am for them to go on sale, multiple browsers up. 10am hits and it says 'no tickets available'.

Despite the 'I'm not a robot' crap, either there are programs people are using or batches of tickets are given to other agencies.

StubHub is owned by eBay

 

[aminalmutha]

This is part of the reason why I am very selective about what shows I attend. Unless I'm getting thrown free tix, it's gotta be something I really, really want to see.

When I saw Primus a couple years back, I bought tix through the Primus website. There are a handful of bands that are trying to cut Ticketbastards/Stubhub et al out of it. It absolutely is a monopoly and the consumer is getting boned.

I laugh/gag at some of the prices I see for shows. GTF out my F face.

 

[mrzuzzo]

Why ya'll hate free markets and capitalism?

 

[aminalmutha]

Damn, that's super original and insightful.

 

[Eldritch]

Why ya'll hate free markets and capitalism?

So, I don't think what you are saying makes sense. The issue is not with free markets or Capitalism, the issue is with transparency.

Free market capitalism fundamentally is built on the idea of the market dictating fair value for a product, for which consumers freely compete to purchase, and product vendors compete to sell.

False presentation of goods, deceitful manipulation of markets, and other failures in transparency fundamentally attack the foundations of free market capitalism.

This is why insider trading is illegal, as is price fixing.

 

[Archimedes]

So, I don't think what you are saying makes sense. The issue is not with free markets or Capitalism, the issue is with transparency.

Free market capitalism fundamentally is built on the idea of the market dictating fair value for a product, for which consumers freely compete to purchase, and product vendors compete to sell.

False presentation of goods, deceitful manipulation of markets, and other failures in transparency fundamentally attack the foundations of free market capitalism.

This is why insider trading is illegal, as is price fixing.

Not even remotely analogous to insider trading or price fixing.

It's the free market. Don't want to pay the price, don't go. If enough people are paying the higher price, it just means the band is pricing the tickets lower than the market clearing price. And if the market isn't there, the scalper goes away.

Truth is, in times like these when money is flowing, the market clearing prices of many assets is above the list price and business people step in to take advantage of that. It ebbs and flows with the economy just like everything else.

Concert and sporting event ticket prices are nuts. I don't understand why people continued to pay them.

 

[Dubbington]

Not even remotely analogous to insider trading or price fixing.

Huh? How not? The stadium holds say 60k seats and are to on sale to public at 10am. Livenation instead sells 2/3 of the tickets to other markets altering the supply and falsely increasing demand. What it sounds like is similar to OPEC and the oil cartel really.

 

[Kurosaki]

Glad most of the shows and events I go to don't go through ticketmaster or stubhub

 

[mrzuzzo]

OPEC and the oil cartel really.

It's nothing like OPEC or the oil cartel at all.

Tickets to Metallica aren't a commodity.

Oil has to be purchased/refined no matter what to keep people moving. Removal of oil would initially cause a fundamental breakdown of the world economy.

I don't think you can say the same about Metallica shows..

 

[Abacinator]

Commoditization is a thing