Category: News Desk

On the March 13 episode of Last Week Tonight, host John Oliver broke down a myriad of issues with concert tickets, namely, Ticketmaster and its near monopoly on ticket sales for major artists and bands.

While some information presented in the episode is public knowledge, the writers at Last Week Tonight deftly threaded the details together, offering a clear path from fan frustration when faced with exorbitant prices and a lack of tickets (not to mention insanely long wait times to acquire tickets), to the root causes, namely Ticketmaster.

Ticketmaster, while disliked by the public, serves as the main platform for ticket sales around the country, accounting for 80% of ticket sales prior to their merger with Live Nation in 2010. Since the merger, there have been complaints, as noted in the New York Times regarding Live Nation pressuring venues into contracting with its subsidiary, Ticketmaster.

Following the merger, Ticketmaster acquired Front Gate Tickets, which handles ticket sales for music festivals including Lollapalooza and Austin City Limits, and that same year, acquired a DIY ticketing platform, Universe. TicketWeb, the self-service ticketing platform owned by Ticketmaster, acquired the marketing platform Strobe Labs, building a social media network in the process. Most recently, Ticketmaster has looked to convert physical tickets into digital ones using blockchain technology, and did so by acquiring UPGRADED in 2018.

John Oliver pointed out that Ticketmaster absorbs much of the hatred for ticket sales, while artists, promoters, and venues all have a hand in raising ticket sales. This is where drawbacks to boycotting Ticketmaster begin, despite being popularized by Pearl Jam in the 1990s. Oliver noted that when Pearl Jam sought to perform at non-Ticketmaster venues, their manager at the time said the band would need “to play at weird places like a ski resort in Lake Tahoe and a fairground in San Diego.” If Pearl Jam can’t walk away from Ticketmaster, how can other bands, especially smaller artists with no leverage and limited options for venues, expect to avoid Ticketmaster?

The answer is – they can’t, and now it is even more difficult to do so.

Where do the tickets go?

You’ve likely been there – logging in early, watching the clock for the on-sale time, then waiting in the virtual Ticketmaster queue (with 2000 other people in front of you) waiting for your turn to purchase tickets. Then you get to the end of the line, and if the show isn’t sold out already, the seats left available are typically not the best – behind the stage, upper levels, if any at all.

Using the example of a pair of 2012 Justin Bieber concerts at Madison Square Garden, both of which sold out in 30 seconds, John Oliver points out the details of where the 20,000 tickets for that show went. Noting a NY Attorney General report, fewer that 2,000 tickets (10%) to each show were on sale.

Where are the rest of the tickets sold? Some are given to credit card companies who partner with Ticketmaster for pre-sale on-sales and private passes that exclusive to credit card holders.

Then there are the ticket brokers (a rebranded name) who buy them in advance. Even the ‘Are you a robot tests’ are still circumvented by bots via the ticket broker. These brokers/resellers include SeatGeek, StubHub and Ticketmaster itself (Platinum seating) who represent a majority or overwhelming majority of ticket sales, per a 2018 GAO study. They then mark up tickets by 49% on average, and sometimes as high as 1000%.

The average music fan can login to one account at a time, per device, with a phone number attached to the account to prevent multiple accounts vying for the same tickets. While this seems to present itself as leveling the playing field, John Oliver notes that some brokers have 200 accounts, and Ticketmaster does not make any effort to restrict these ticket brokers.

Showing video from the Ticket Summit conference in Las Vegas in 2018, undercover reporters discovered via a Ticketmaster representative that ‘damn near every one of them’ is using multiple accounts.

The system of ticket brokers/resellers is designed to be opaque, providing brokers with anonymity. Resell sites have additional fees built in too, with John Oliver citing a ticket for a January 21, 2022 Adele performing in Las Vegas, resold on SeatGeek, at a cost of $1690 for the tickets, with $538 in SeatGeek fees (a 32% markup), for a total of $2,228. For a single ticket to see Adele.

Blame is shared among Ticketmaster and ticket brokers – some artists are to blame as well. Justin Bieber’s tour resold tickets on resale sites, with an entire row that had gone to the tour, resold on the secondary market instead of direct to fans at on sale. Metallica did this as well, along with many other artists as well. Restricted resale has been experimented by Pearl Jam without extra fees or profit, but this effort was postponed in 2020 by COVID-19.

What can live music fans do?

Typically, Last Week Tonight offers a call to action for the audience, something that has made the Peabody Award winning show stand head and shoulders above their competition (with 23 Emmy Awards, including 8 consecutive Emmys for Outstanding Variety Talk Show, beating out The Daily Show, where Oliver got his start). In past episodes, Oliver has encouraged the use of the FCC public comments website during a Net Neutrality episode, to motivating viewers in taking to the streets to protest the killing of unarmed African-Americans by police.

This week, however, there was no call to action, simply because beyond a trust-buster in the vein of Teddy Roosevelt taking Ticketmaster and other ticket brokers to task, there is not much that can be done by fans.

There is one alternative for live music fans in the short term – avoid resale sites by using CashorTrade. Since 2009, CashorTrade has been the only website dedicated to helping face value tickets get into the hands of fans, devoid of the ticket brokers and scammers, and offering protection on purchases. This healthy alternative to Ticketmaster continues to build a base of users that allows a great deal of tickets to be resold at face value, or traded amongst fanbases. If there is one solution fans seek after watching this week’s episode of Last Week Tonight, CashorTrade is that solution, providing anti-reseller technology allowing real fans with a profile and trusted reviews to trade with one another.