Ticketmaster and Live Nation are the nation’s leaders in ticket sales and concert promotions. Both are so big that it is hard to imagine trying to buy tickets for live shows without them.
But are Ticketmaster and Live Nation the reason why some fans are left broken hearted when they can’t get their hands on a concert ticket? Is this what drives concertgoers to purchase tickets from scalpers or on Craigslist?
According to many frustrated music lovers, yes.
“For those who enjoy concerts, sporting events, Broadway shows or even the Ringling Brothers Circus, Ticketmaster is a necessary evil. The company makes it easy to find seats at most major venues in the U.S. (and many abroad) and various events are aggregated on one easy-to-use website,” wrote Kate Pickert of Time in “A Brief History of Ticketmaster.”
“What rankles customers, though, is the fact that Ticketmaster's behemoth status seems to give them the ability to impose expensive fees on top of standard ticket prices,” Pickert wrote.
Ridiculous and extraneous fees make up a significant portion of the cost when buying from Tickmaster or Live Nation.
A convenience fee, facilities fee and printing fee cause an $89 ticket to see Drake at the Ashley Furniture HomeStore Pavillion to jump to $106.45. These fees are a part of every purchase.
A lot of fans can’t afford to dish out money like that just to see their favorite artists.
But it would be unfair to place all of the blame on websites like Ticketmaster and Live Nation.
This year’s Coachella Music Festival (one of the biggest and most widely-attended live music festivals in the world) sold out in a matter of hours.
Sasha Bronner of The Huffington Post wrote about Coachella when the tickets sold out in January: “Perhaps the wildfire rate at which tickets were sold Friday is due to the ever-increasing popularity of the dusty desert fest. Or perhaps it can all be attributed to the killer lineup. But either way, many fans are happy today and many fans are not. Look to Craigslist and other ticket brokers for highly-inflated prices…”
Coachella isn’t the only hot ticket in town though. It isn’t surprising Lady Gaga, U2, Katy Perry and Usher also sell out at such a fast rate.
Attending shows would be much easier on eager concertgoers if ticket prices and their nearly monopolizing and extraneous fees were reduced.
Popular artists also need to understand because these tickets are almost preyed upon by the voracious and overzealous vultures that are their fans, tours should be maximized to their full potential.
Although I ended up doing so anyways, I did not enjoy anxiously hovering over my laptop debit card in hand for an hour and a half before tickets for One Direction went on sale. I was constantly refreshing my browser to make sure that I would be able to purchase them at the exact moment they went on sale.
Solutions aren’t easy to implement, and they are few and far between, but something does need to change in this culture of high prices and high demand. No one wants to have to fight just to get concert tickets.
Reach the columnist at jermac@asu.edu
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