Ticketmaster's tech problem isn't a tech problem

https://mattstoller.substack.com/p/dont-make-taylor-swift-fans-angry

by passwordoops • 4 years ago

46 88 4 years ago

mattstoller.substack.com

nells• 4 years ago

Siri, show me the early life section of the Irving Azoff article

mhb• 4 years ago

Taylor Swift has a net worth over $400M. Why can't she rent venues?

passwordoops3• 4 years ago

The venues have a lock-in with the Ticketmaster monopoly, so she - and every other artist, such as Pearl Jam in the 90s (as described in the article) - would still need to go through them

metadat• 4 years ago

She might not have $10-30m liquid sloshing around her couch cushions.

And even if the problem were fixed for TS events, what about all the other ever present ticketmaster rip-offs?

rockostrich• 4 years ago

She might not have $10-30m liquid sloshing around her couch cushions.

I have no doubt that she could equity finance it considering she can guarantee sell-outs at every venue she plays.

And even if the problem were fixed for TS events, what about all the other ever present ticketmaster rip-offs?

This is the real problem. The biggest artists doing this might hurt Ticketmaster's bottom line, but there are a ton of smaller venues that book artists that don't have the guarantee of selling out and can't just decide to self-finance tours on public grounds...

justinator• 4 years ago

She actually could do this. Buy her own PA system and just tour country fair grounds. Her core fans would absolutely adore this.

latchkey2• 4 years ago

Crazy enough, I used to own a nightclub in San Francisco SOMA district.

She can. The issue is that she will overwhelm them and that becomes a public safety issue. Police, fire dept, etc... they all get involved. Fact is that the venues large enough to hold her are ALL owned or at least have some sort of connection to Live Nation.

It goes deeper than that though. One time, `Bone Thugs and Harmony` were in town for a show on Saturday (at a LN venue). Friday night, they wanted to perform to a smaller audience of their core fans, so we agreed to host them at the last minute.

We made a radio spot to let people know. The text that was read got modified at the very end to say "the show has sold out" (I even have a recording of it somewhere on my computer). We didn't put that in there. It was wild, nobody showed up and we were out of $50k. Who modified it? Well, LN owns the radio stations too. They were pissed that BTH would even consider playing at a non-LN club.

I couldn't afford to sue LN, so we just ate the loss. It sucked and did some real damage to my business.

monetus• 4 years ago

Did the radio ad account for most of that cost, if you don't mind my asking? Still pretty expensive despite the changed ad landscape huh

angryasian12• 4 years ago

You're assuming TS cares. She could have easily done a lot to fix this. Restrict resale of tickets. Price tickets higher. Hand out specific codes to only people in her fan club to buy tickets.

She made hundreds of millions on this tour. Its funny you all think that maximizing her profit wasn't the goal here

fatnoah• 4 years ago

Even the old "go to the venue box office" option of avoiding fees is no longer an option in many places.

Here's what the website for my local big venue says:

"Please note the TD Garden Box Office does not sell tickets at the public on sale. All tickets should be purchased via www.ticketmaster.com"

itslennysfault• 4 years ago

Also, some venues box office is operated by ticket master and you still get hit with the fee. I had that happen to me years a go. I haven't tried buying tickets in person in a long long time, but I'd imagine this is still a thing where you can buy them in person.

darkwizard423• 4 years ago

In the Bay Area, you can't even guarantee tickets at the box office! They start the sale online BEFORE the box office opens so when you show up, the show might have already sold out!

Truly annoying.

powera• 4 years ago

The service Ticketmaster provides is largely to have people get angry at Ticketmaster, rather than at the musician involved. And there is simply no way to let 5 million Swift fans each buy one of a million tickets while keeping the tickets cheap. It is a recipe for disaster.

People claim it is “evil scalpers”, but if you got lucky and bought a $400 ticket you can flip for $3000, they probably would be doing so as well.

A lot of the Ticketmaster “fees” people hate are actually part of the ticket price, requested by and paid directly to the artist (or the venue), but charged separately to make the tickets seem cheaper. Don’t blame me, blame human psychology.

triceratops• 4 years ago

Following this whole brouhaha I read that Garth Brooks plays night after night in a city until the shows stop selling out. So there is a way to let all the Swifties buy a ticket.

I don't know how he keeps a venue booked for an indeterminate number of shows. How far ahead does his team plan? But for the road crews and performers it must be easier. They don't have to set up and tear down their gear every 3 days.

On the other hand, Taylor has more fans and more cities she has to visit than Garth. If she did that, it might turn into a perma-tour until her popularity crests.

teratron27• 4 years ago

It would be physically impossible for her to keep doing shows until they stop selling out. Here voice and body would give out way before her popularity did

gbalduzzi2• 4 years ago

The ticket should be assigned to a specific name, so that it can not be sold on a secondary market.

The Ticketing service itself should provide a channel to sell a ticket at its original price if someone wants it.

In Italy that's the method since a similar fiasco happened years ago and it works pretty well

djbebs• 4 years ago

Why should people not be able to sell what they own freely?

danaris• 4 years ago

The problem isn't the existence of the secondary market.

It's the prioritization of the secondary market.

Ticketmaster literally holds back a large number of tickets specifically to sell to scalpers.

This has a vicious cycle effect, making the secondary market more profitable and incentivizing more people to be scalpers. It also takes more tickets out of the hands of people who would otherwise buy them for retail price, meaning they have to buy from the scalpers.

And because Ticketmaster is the only game in town, that takes this from being a problem that could be dealt with by not doing business with them to being a problem that's just unavoidable.

programmer_dude• 4 years ago

Boycott Ticketmaster and its venues. Just don't go to these concerts.

ozzydave• 4 years ago

Life is short, and lots of people want to see these artists live.

neallindsay• 4 years ago

"Consumer harm" from monopolists is very much a trailing indicator. Organizations that have even a smidge of sense will put that off for a long time as they accumulate power. Having all your regulation set up to wait until that point is bad policy.

That said, Ticketmaster has been terrible forever. It's baffling how they've gotten this far while being so blatantly bad.

mikestew• 4 years ago

That said, Ticketmaster has been terrible forever.

That's not true. Granted, one would have to go back at least 35 years, but there was a time that TicketMaster was just the outsource vendor to sell tickets. They'd tack on a few bucks for the privilege, sorted. Don't like it? Go to the box office. I don't recall having any reason to complain.

But that's the trick: no one had reason to complain, and more and more venues used TM while TM gobbled up competitors. Now that there is reason to complain, it's apparently too late.

xhkkffbf• 4 years ago

A monopoly? My event last night was ticketed with EventBrite. There seem to be a dozen or so similar systems out there. And if I were willing to roll my own software, I could probably spin up some version of Drupal pretty quickly with some open source plugins.

The problem isn't that it's a monopoly. It's that the venues don't shop around, probably because they don't pay the price. The consumer does.

spencerflem• 4 years ago

The venues are owned by ticketmaster

Nycto• 4 years ago

I’m guessing the venue you’re talking about is tiny. There are only 1 or 2 major venues in the US that aren’t owned by live nation.

Anecdote != data

Cyber did an episode that covered this in more detail, btw: https://www.vice.com/en/article/z348k3/cyber-why-concert-tic...

francisofascii2• 4 years ago

Eh, it's more of an unprecedented demand problem. You would think 50 shows would be enough. So you can't really blame Swift for the lack of shows. Maybe you can blame her for being so likable that millions of people are willing to spend hundreds of dollars for a ticket. Or blame those fans who can outspend the cash strapped fans. It is almost as if Swift has a monopoly on this genre. Who are her competitors? Maybe go see them? And if she has none, that would be a problem worth solving.

noirbot3• 4 years ago

She's always going to have a monopoly on being Taylor Swift. Sure, you may also like some other musician, but it's not like you can just drop in replace her with a different singer.

Art is, somewhat by definition, a monopoly. There's no way around that, the only thing you can do is have more concerts/supply of it, but that's literally more work for the artist involved.

I think it's Garth Brooks that's notorious for planning his tours where he'll just keep adding more concert dates in a city until they stop selling out at $30 tickets and then move to the next town and repeat it. That works, but you also have to be willing to play the same town 10 days in a row or something, which isn't free for a musician to do in terms of exhaustion and effort.

vanilla_nut• 4 years ago

That's a really interesting solution to the problem! I wonder why Swift keeps planning these giant "big bang" tours instead of trying something similar. Maybe some artists don't like being perpetually on tour? I'm sure living out of an RV or hotel in a random city and playing a concert every night or two feels pretty constraining.

SoftTalker4• 4 years ago

It's better than playing 10 days in a row in 10 different cities. In fact it seems to me to be to be the best way to do it. Roll into town, set up once, do all your shows, and then pack up once. And everyone gets to sleep in a hotel bed instead of a tour bus rolling down the road to the next town.

I would have thought it would be unusual to have a venue with 10 dates in a row available though. I guess if you do this far enough in advance it would work in many places, but I would think most big arenas would have only a few consecutive dates at the most, working around the sports and other artists and conventions and whatever else is going on there.

eatsyourtacos2• 4 years ago

Look it from another angle.

You say unprecedented demand... ok.

Let's say if the tickets were priced at $200 that would be more than enough to cover all the costs and pay people fairly etc.

But because of "unprecedented demand" on a fixed item.. they might say:

"Hey why not charge $300, or $400, or $500! Sure, 90% of the population that doesn't make great money won't be able to afford them, but the top 5-10% of people will still pay because it doesn't matter to them.. and we get to double or triple our profits!"

That is simply greed outweighing.. public interest (for lack of a better word). The problem with this world is so many people want to make as much as they can even if it's not "fair". I know that's just horrible anti-capitalist talk...

Maximizing profits is literally inconsistent with the well being of the population. This situation is the perfect example. Most people go to their econ101 supply & demand bullshit to justify price gouging and wealth inequality.

angryasian12• 4 years ago

lol i don't think seeing a popular music artist is a public interest issue.

francisofascii2• 4 years ago

They have only so many tickets, they need a way to determine who get them, so they use price to solve the scarcity problem. They could use other ways, but that would mean less profits and maybe unfairness somewhere else. It is not fair for everyone but it ranks on the low end of injustices.

But I think I see your larger point. Imagine if this was not concert tickets, but a sudden food shortage. We already see it with housing and medical care. Solving the scarcity problem by price alone can get really unfair and dehumanizing in a hurry.

matai_kolila4• 4 years ago

Maybe I'm the only one who doesn't really see a problem with ticket prices being as high as they are.

There is much more demand for these tickets than there are supply of tickets, so my econ 101 tells me the price should go up until the demand drops to match the supply.

Any other argument just feels like sour grapes from folks who don't have the means to buy this luxury item.

Separately, Ticketmaster's monopoly is concerning, but in this case I don't see that impacting prices. In fact it seems like Ticketmaster did try to do a handful of things to artificially lower ticket prices, those things just were not effective due to technical issues (so the article title may be wrong).

Music fans like to moralize about how they "deserve" to go to concerts, but the reality is nobody deserves to go anywhere; attending a concert is not something you must do in order to survive. It's not even a thing you must do in order to enjoy an artist's music or support that artist. There is absolutely no imperative or necessity to attend this tour, and in cases like that I have no problem with pricing matching demand and supply pretty directly.

jasonjayr• 4 years ago

I think the thing is (a) TM's take of the sales, (b) TM's owning the scalping/auction system post initial sale, (c) TM's exclusive hold on Box Offices at venues & (d) TM's propensity to drop fees as line-items with on-the-nose labels on the tickets they sell.

Basically, they've abused a monopoly position, and painted a target on their backs by trying to nickle and dime folks.

omniglottal• 4 years ago

Given the very nature of a monopoly position, I'd semantically argue that they are not abusing the position, but rather just using it. Much like a murderous criminal simply uses a garotte. That's what they're effectively for!

angryasian12• 4 years ago

Can't scalp in person but scalping online is totally legal. How is that TM's problem.

If people aren't scalping tickets on TM they will do it on the stubhub, seatgeek, vivid, etc.

The overall problem is arbitrage. These tickets are literally worth 1k and are selling for 100.

passwordoops3• 4 years ago

There's a lot more to monopoly harm than just pricing.

The reason ticketmaster can get away with bad tech solutions is there's no alternative. No alternative means no incentive to improve. And though consumer prices may be lower, venues and artists get squeezed, without really seeing an additional benefit and since there is no alternative Ticketmaster can call the shots.

On a related note, it's extraordinarily shameful that the culture of anti trust has centered exclusively on higher prices since the 80s. I'm glad to see enforcers in DC slowly abandoning this misguided reason and we'll hopefully get back to something resembling the trust-busting of the 30s and 40s

hardtke2• 4 years ago

I've read that the artists and promoters prefer that Ticketmaster takes the heat. The top artists get almost all of the ticket face value and the promoter cut comes out of a kickback on the convenience fee. Ticketmaster also does a better job now of reducing the gap between face value and resale value. Bruce Springsteen ran real dynamic pricing for his tickets and the fans are mad at him -- better to do what Taylor Swift did and blame Ticketmaster for the high prices.

angryasian12• 4 years ago

This is just false. Look at Axs and SeatGeek. Are you really trying to say their systems are better.

Even google and Amazon struggle on Black Fridays

amilios• 4 years ago

The concern with Ticketmaster is the monopoly though, you are sidestepping the issue. It's about what kind of value Ticketmaster adds (minimal) to justify the exhorbitant fees they charge and can charge, because they have no competition due to all their exclusive contracts with the venues.

matai_kolila4• 4 years ago

Sure, but that's not why The Eras Tour tickets were so expensive, which is the real reason Taylor Swift fans are upset.

Yes, TM has a concerning amount of control over venues and therefore artists, but in this scenario, that's not very relevant, given the insane demand and the basic physics problem involved with trying to stuff 12 million people into spaces (at a time) that hold a total of maybe 2.

It's just weird to me how we can't separate the issues. TM's main insult to the Swifties were the technical issues, not their potential monopoly. Ticket prices would be insane regardless.

angryasian12• 4 years ago

what kind of value Ticketmaster adds

Not sure if you're being serious, thats like saying what kind of value does Amazon add selling other stores products.

obblekk• 4 years ago

The issue is there is no competition amongst _type of auction_ being used to sell a scarce resource.

Ticketmaster essentially gives tickets to insiders + high spending fans first (this loyalty based prioritization happened in Taylor Swift sales). A new company might say reserve tranches of tickets for different age groups or income groups, etc. to reward more types of fans (not just super spenders).

You're right that it's a scarce resource, but I don't think that justifies a monopoly on the distributor of that scarce resource.

SoftTalker4• 4 years ago

For a given show at a given venue, it probably isn't feasible for more than one ticketing service to handle the initial ticket sales (secondary market is a different matter).

I think the issue is that there is no competition amongst ticketing services. Ticketmaster is by far the biggest (and effectively the only) player, and they abuse that monopoly by demanding exclusive agreements with venues (or outright owning the venues) in order to prevent alternate ticketing services from entering the market.

But no ticketing service is really going to have any motivation to reserve tickets for low income groups or anything like that. They are going to want to sell every ticket to the buyer who is willing to pay the most for it.

eatsyourtacos2• 4 years ago

There is much more demand for these tickets than there are supply of tickets, so my econ 101 tells me the price should go up until the demand drops to match the supply.

Maybe you should open your mind to the possibility that what you were taught in econ 101 is partly (mostly) bullshit. I have an economics degree and I've come to learn more in life that it's so much bs for the most part.

First of all, if there was relatively wealth equality, then it might be more realistic to say "ok, they will increase the price to some level until people want to stop buying it".

The problem is, there is so much wealth inequality that ticket prices just keep rising so only the top 5-10% of people can afford anything. Let's say a family is making $200k a year. A ticket price going from $50 to $100 to $200 isn't that big of a deal, they will still pay it.

But it completely fucks the rest (majority) of the population that isn't making that kind of money. They want to go to a concert as well. They want to go to a football game. But the prices are so outrageous they can't afford it.

However this well off/wealthy part of the population is willing to pay it.. so something like Ticketmaster just keeps pushing prices as much as they can.

This whole supply/demand thing is utter crap when there is wealth inequality. People like you use get this smug look on your face and talk about supply & demand like it's some kind of inherent law of nature. You know what it's based on? GREED. It's literally based on charging AS MUCH AS YOU CAN to people instead of a "fair" price. By fair I mean ensuring that the seller is reasonably compensated and that the majority of the population can still afford. Yes "fair" is not easy to define, I get that. But it's clear that "fair" is not charging as much as you possibly can just because a small majority of the population will still pay for it.

Ticket prices are not "reasonable" by any means. It's literally rich people charging as much as they can because they know rich people will just pay it. Not giving one shit about anyone else because "supply & demand"!

Music fans like to moralize about how they "deserve" to go to concerts, but the reality is nobody deserves to go anywhere; attending a concert is not something you must do in order to survive

Ah, so the well off / rich "deserve" to go to concerts because they make more money. But people struggling don't "deserve" similar forms of entertainment. Glad you cleared that up. Seriously, that sentiment pisses me off to no end and it's literally one of the biggest problem in the world.

I make good money so I'm not coming at this from the struggling perspective. But every year that goes by this whole world pisses me off even more because there is no compassion. It's all about money. It's all about making more money. It's all about maximizing profits and squeezing as much as you can from everyone else so you get yours. It's all about getting what you want and not someone else.

Yeah I'm ranting here, but I'm not sure how one could sit back and read this "supply & demand" and "people don't deserve X because they don't make Y" without going bonkers.

jemmyw• 4 years ago

If the tickets were sold in an open market where they were priced for demand, thus putting them out of reach of many of the fans, maybe those fans would defocus on this one woman/act and go do something else. There could be other concerts.

It's not just about price and wealth inequality. If everyone decides they want to go to the same event then some will be disappointed and they'll complain bitterly.

I've been to large concerts and big stadium events. It's not worth it. The events actually seared into my mind are the tiny ones, like seeing a band I'd followed for years in a small bar in Copenhagen and being within arm's reach. What am I trying to say here? Those tickets that everyone is clamouring to get probably have a very low experience value if people would only seek out other things to fill the same hole they purport to have.

cameronh90• 4 years ago

There is much more demand for these tickets than there are supply of tickets, so my econ 101 tells me the price should go up until the demand drops to match the supply.

Economically, completely true. Though there's a social argument that when only comparatively rich people can access live entertainment, society suffers. I think that's a bit contrived, but it's worth considering.

Ultimately this falls on the artists to solve. If they don't want their concertgoers to be exclusively trust fund babies, it's on them to distribute their tickets better rather than everyone getting annoyed at TM and scalpers. This could be lottery and strict ID checks (e.g. Glastonbury) or it could be some way of rewarding loyal fans with reduced price tickets.

Maybe ABBA Voyage type shows are the future for improving accessibility of popular bands. Japan has the Hatsune/vocaloid concerts. Or maybe people need to consider supporting their local small bands over fighting each other for Taylor Swift tickets. I've been to plenty of small gigs for less than £20 and it's much more fun than spending £200 to sit half a mile away.

hardtke2• 4 years ago

Prince did it right. His fan club members could buy tickets, with some sort of frequent flyer benefits (better tickets for more loyal fans). The genius was that you did not get the tickets or know where they were in the venue until you were literally walking into the venue. Most of the front row was reserved for fan club members, and the people sitting there didn't know they were going to be there on that night.

angryasian12• 4 years ago

This is exactly the problem. You need to gate keep by price or exclusivity.

rnk• 4 years ago

Because of the monopoly of ticketmaster, it is literally impossible for artists to sell their own tickets in any sizable venues. They have locked up basically all of the sizeable places in the us.

pwinnski• 4 years ago

As the article mentions, Pearl Jam tried to solve this one way, and it did not go well.

Taylor Swift could theoretically do more shows, assuming she's physically capable, but she's already doing 2-3 shows in every venue on this tour[0].

There are weird incentives for artists, especially pop artists. They want young fans to be able to attend the shows, because that makes them fans for life. Conversely, young fans being shut out leads to them losing interest. But it's not feasible to means-test people buying tickets, so no matter what price you set them at, you can't be sure that the trust fund babies and scalpers won't get there first. In fact, you can be guaranteed the scalpers will get there first, this is what they do!

Strict ID checks are frustrating for everyone and still don't always seem to work. Fan club ticket windows are great in theory, and I've taken advantage of that myself to get U2 tickets, but all that's really doing is adding additional expense, as scalpers learn quickly that they must pay $20 to join the fan club for every four tickets they intend to scalp.

It's a tough problem, and perhaps one without a real solution. There's only so much TSwift to go around.

0. https://www.taylorswift.com/events/

whateveracct• 4 years ago

Musicians don't want to maximize profit, so they would have an issue with pure supply and demand setting their prices. Which is what really matters. So other methods besides that for distributing tickets (for some definition of) "fairly" are very desirable to the musicians.

abigail952• 4 years ago

Is there consumer harm from ticketmaster?

I thought the tickets were selling well below a normal market clearing price.

darkwizard423• 4 years ago

The consumer harm is they have a monopoly on the entire experience...I have less concern about how expensive tickets are (just simple demand >> supply)

I have issues with how they are profiting from the entire chain of custody of the ticket (with little alternative for customers). They own the ticketing of certain artists' tours, they own the rights to ticketing many venues (so there is no way for any artist to play certain places without signing to be ticketed by them), and they own the reseller platform. They have end to end control on the pricing and fees across the music ticketing ecosystem and continue to nickel and dime consumers.

There is nothing convenient about their convenience fees and they aren't innovating to benefit customers (or artists to be honest).

abigail952• 4 years ago

What's the dollar harm to all of that, to the consumer?

I will be pretty annoyed if they break up ticketmaster and the avg price paid by concertgoers increases due to competition between ticket sellers, done under the guise of "consumer harm".

I can see people purchased taylor swift tickets from ticketmaster at an 80% discount compared to resellers. That goes away in a competitive market.

angryasian12• 4 years ago

they own the reseller platform

They don't own the reseller platform. Stubhub is the largest in this category.

There is nothing convenient about their convenience fees and they aren't innovating to benefit customers (or artists to be honest)

You're pretending the goal here is not to maximize artist profit. Theres a lot that the artist could demand to fix all of these problems. They don't

shmatt• 4 years ago

An artist can demand no resale of tickets, and ID check at the door (TM tickets have the buyers name printed on them), LCD Soundsystem has done this when their fans got angry at a similar scenario.

Swift hasn't. And probably won't in the future, thats the gist of it.

TM claimed (and I have no reason to not believe them) they got 5 billion requests when tickets went live. So you break up the monopoly and Swift can now sign with a different ticket seller next tour. Which other website will handle the 5 billion requests properly? Without hours of queues or random raffles? Fans are lucky the TM website didn't completely shut down for 2 days because of the traffic

As long as the tickets are sellable, as long as people will pay more for a ticket than a new car, people (even diehard fans) will resell

justinlkarr2• 4 years ago

This varies by US state. In some states - including New York - it is illegal to prohibit transfer of tickets and therefore illegal to prohibit resale.

lostgame• 4 years ago

Makes sense. What if someone close to you passes away or you get COVID or something and you can't go? That money is just wasted? :/

ticviking• 4 years ago

The lure of being the competitor who can handle that traffic will bring some competition. In the meantime some entry level competitors who we could use for local scene ticketing and give a better share to the artists would open breathing room in the market for early career artists and smaller venues to put performances on in 3rd and 4th tier cities.

Altaer• 4 years ago

Thinking of solutions for this, couldn't you stagger when tickets go on sale at each venue? Seattle goes on sale at 10am, Portland on sale at 2pm, and Denver the following day? This spreads the demand over time and you don't have 5 billion requests all at once.

angryasian12• 4 years ago

They can but it has to be at the artist request. She wants the headlines. lets not be naive

feoren2• 4 years ago

TM claimed (and I have no reason to not believe them) they got 5 billion requests when tickets went live.

I absolutely have a reason to not believe them: that is 63% of the world's population. They are claiming that 63% of everyone on Earth was waiting to buy tickets to Taylor Swift's show? How do we not have reason to disbelieve them!?

Unless by "request" they mean individual HTTP requests and their site is such garbage that one person trying to grab some tickets induces thousands upon thousands of HTTP requests, which is still their fault.

angryasian12• 4 years ago

Swift hasn't. And probably won't in the future, thats the gist of it.

She probably made several hundred million on this tour. She could fix all the problems but she doesn't want to.

Its TM's job to take this bad press

orangecat• 4 years ago

She could fix all the problems but she doesn't want to.

No, she can't. At best, she can exchange one set of problems for a different set. When there are X tickets available and Y people want to attend and Y>>X, a lot of people are going to be disappointed and angry no matter what you do.

ineedasername• 4 years ago

Am I the only one who took it as a potential publicity stunt? Plenty of lukewarm fans on the bubble probably saw all this and are drawn into the whole vapid drama of it all.

Even if it was purely accidental, the incentives that ensuing PR brings when it happens mean there’s not going to be much concern about fixing things.

Sure you could argue that antitrust attention is bad for them, but what’s the realistic outcome there? Lip service punditry, maybe even a congressional hearing! And nothing. Not many politicians are going to wast limited political capital against a fleeting issue their base won’t care about in a month from now.

vlad• 4 years ago

The problem, as this new generation of fans is learning, isn’t just that Ticketmaster is a bad system. The problem is Ticketmaster is the only system. It’s a monopoly.

More competition might reduce fees, but won't turn ticketing sites into state lotteries. Just like some domain name registrars, these sites provide a service but also benefit from powering the technology.

justinlkarr2• 4 years ago

At the risk of being obvious, I don't think that is what Stoller is saying.

I think he is saying it is a tech problem whose root cause is a monopoly problem (leading to long-term underinvestment).

This one caught TM sideways, clearly, and something scaled badly. I'm hoping we get a good technical post-mortem at some point.

But nailing on-sales is one of Ticketmaster's main value props for clients.

As they say, nobody got fired for having Ticketmaster sell their tickets.

I've been on the inside for very successful high-demand on-sales run by the TM VerifiedFan team. They worked.

angryasian12• 4 years ago

(leading to long-term underinvestment).

Even Google and Amazon struggle on huge black friday events. This is ridiculous.

passwordoops3• 4 years ago

General comment on the "I don't see consumer harm because prices aren't that high" argument. It fails to capture the true danger of monopoly, namely:

-lack of competition leads to lack of innovation (Stoller's argument)

-lack of innovation results in less spending on R&D

-less innovation means the most efficient way to maximize profit is to find "efficiencies" in the business

-those "efficiencies" manifest as: -less spending on R&D because there is no need; -lower salaries to employees; -fewer employees overall; -worse quality: -Squeeze suppliers and contractors, putting more pressure across the board to consolidate and reinforcing the Cycle across the entire chain

If left unchecked (as the "consumer harm" doctrine has for the past 40 years or so), the results are:

-overall concentration of power and wealth

-greater wealth disparities

-less investment and innovation

-fewer choices that provide worse consumer experience

This pattern has been pretty well documented across many industries, from shipping to cheerleading

TheRealPomax• 4 years ago

This is one of those examples where we all know how bad it is, we all know they run a scam, have a monopoly, etc. etc. and yet we keep letting them do what they do because the US stopped caring about its antitrust laws pretty much after the whole AT&T thing. In fact, if anything the idea of each market segment having one top player buying up anyone who gets big enough to cut into revenue has become aspirational and admired as much if not more than it was in the Gekko days.

masukomi• 4 years ago

speaking as someone who literally worked on a bot mitigation project for Ticketmaster:

They have an effing HUGE tech problem.

The site crashing isn't because of "demand for the tickets" at least not by normal people's definition.

It's not that there's really "There is much more demand for these tickets than there are supply of tickets" as matai_kolila suggested here.

Ticketmaster's problem is very much that there are huge bot swarms attacking it for every popular ticket sale, because reselling tickets is WAY more profitable, than pointing a few thousand bots at it for a few hours.

Anyone who's tried to order tickets from ticketmaster in the past decade knows that it's a massive pain in the ass of hurdle jumping. That hurdle jumping has nothing to do with the humans attempting to buy tickets. It's bot mitigation.

It is not in ticketmaster's interest to facilitate scalping.

1. they don't profit from it. (no $) 2. humans blame them for it. (bad pr) 3. artists blame them for it (potential loss of $)

now, they've got a bunch of stadiums lock in to literal hundred year contracts so, to some degree they're safe financially as far as big performances go because those artists can't go anywhere _other_ than the stadiums they have locked down. Practically speaking Taylor Swift can't perform at your local bar and announce it. A) there'd be a mob. B) it wouldn't be profitable enough for anything other than just testing out songs.

Why was Ticketmaster’s system so poorly structured?

I can't say that it is or is not poorly structured. I can say, that regardless of how good of a job Ticketmaster's devs do, they are fighting an unwinnable war. All they can do is gain and loose a little ground against the bot makers every round.

This post was obviously written by someone with no clue of the existence, or significance, of the technological warfare Ticketmaster is constantly involved it.

To be clear, I am, in no way, commenting on the practices of the company, or their business decisions.

I am ONLY saying that they have a HUGE tech problem and when the site goes down or is otherwise effed, it is a _very_ safe bet, that it has nothing to do with the humans trying to buy tickets.

Ticketmaster's tech problem isn't a tech problem

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