Twenty years ago, it used to be possible to see the most popular bands and singers for less than $50. Nowadays, nosebleed tickets are triple the price of an average ticket price for front row or pit from the past two decades. Over the years, enjoying live music has grown to be extremely expensive and difficult due to online ticketing sites such as TicketMaster, which allows resellers and algorithms to inflate ticket prices way beyond the actual value.
Over the past two decades, ticket prices have increased exponentially. From the year 2000 to 2023, the average ticket price has jumped from $40.74 to $152.97, according to ngpf.org.
By today’s standards, the current average ticket price may seem realistic due to inflation and a wider primary market, but the lack of transparency companies like TicketMaster has with their consumers creates a lot of gray area for companies to take advantage and add extra unnecessary additional fees to further increase the pricing.
To allow for these websites to run completely by itself with little to no human interaction, sites like TicketMaster uses built-in algorithms such as “dynamic pricing” to price concert tickets by how much value the algorithm thinks is needed to maximize profit and to shape consumer behavior, according to phys.org.
This poses an ethical question for these companies like Live Nation and Ticketmaster: Is dynamic pricing truly giving consumers the best price, and do these prices really match with its actual value?
Many agree with the fact that these companies are taking advantage of consumers, and abusing market power to make more profit. The way these companies do this is simple: give their consumers short time to make an important financial decision, and make them choose between spending hundreds of dollars, or not being able to see and listen to their favorite artist perform live.
These unethical practices have expanded universally in the online ticketing business, but only a handful of governing nations have decided to take action. More notably in the United States, The U.S. Department of Justice had filed a lawsuit against TicketMaster on May 23. 2024, for TicketMaster’s illegal monopolization, according to an official press release on justice. gov.
TicketMaster’s strategies to keep them an all encompassing monopoly has not only affected businesses in the live music industry, but also avid live music consumers who cannot afford to see their favorite artists perform.
Another strategy that TicketMaster and other online ticketing companies use is allowing tickets to be resold at higher prices.
Resale tickets have been notorious for being the number one reason venues have not been able to fully sell out their allotted seats. For example, tickets being sold at resale may be three times more expensive than the original price, making it more difficult for consumers to buy a seat for a concert that they may have been able to buy earlier.
To ensure that resale tickets get sold, online ticketing sites will enforce engine optimization, so that the inflated resale tickets are seen as the first link of the search engine to maximize consumer profit. This locks consumers into buying tickets at an increased price, because companies play into the desperation of people buying tickets to see their favorite artists perform, and because of this, fans are paying 203% more than the original price, according to cnsmaryland.org.
Resale tickets not only hurt the fans, but also the artists who have planned for an extended period of time on their music and creative directory. With all the hard work these artists do to make sure that their show runs to the best of their ability, the greed of these online ticketing companies overshadows their pure intention with greed, making it extremely difficult to run a successful show and tour.
To combat resellers, there have been two bills that have been moving up in Maryland’s Senate and House: Senate Bill 539 and House Bill 701, which have both been passed up to the Senate, and Senate Bill 539 that has been signed into law on May 9. 2024. These bills were made to regulate the reselling of tickets, and also to regulate the profit companies would make from these resales, according to cnsmaryland.org.
While these bills have only been passed Maryland, it is imperative that other states follow to ensure that fans will not be subject to scams and overcharges these companies allow to happen.
To put it simply, these monopolized companies have taken advantage of fan’s emotions and money to generate a hefty profit for far too long. In this win-lose situation between the online ticketing business and fans, it is important to demand transparency from these companies, and use the bond between an artist and their supporters to fight against greed and corruption.
