Ticketmaster and dynamic pricing

Who is saying ticketmaster are great?

For some reason people think they have no option but to buy something if its there in front of them - that seems to be the issue here.

Yeah totally - it will short term I guess but come next year? Yeah some will remember and shy away from the Oasis overpriced sho1e merchandise tent but it will still be tempting for many

The way I see it is that dynamic pricing is a creation of consumerism and lacks definition as it's a open-ended profiteering strategy.

If you take any hypothetical reasonably popular band who are touring, the vast majority of their gigs are going to be desirable to the average punter and would be reasonably expected to sell out in a short time. A marketing strategy therefore would try match the availability to the demand, but this creates a three-fold opportunity to the gougers such as ticketmaster:

1. What defines when a gig is "in demand" and therefore subject to dynamic pricing; and how is the level of demand measured and respective pricing increases applied? It can't be left down to Ticketmaster to define as they have been proven to be dishonest in this respect.
2. What then happens in a case where a gig is sold as a one-night event and the ticket prices are highly desirable and therefore dynamically priced on that basis - but then a second night is later announced. Ticketmaster have then modified the marketplace by later increasing the availability of a limited commodity. This is commonly called market manipulation.
3. Irish legislation has made it illegal to sell tickets at a value inflated from their face-value, but if you control the face-valve (through dynamic pricing) and also control all of the resale opportunities, then you're defined as a monopoly within a closed marketplace.

So this absolutely needs to be tackled at a European level and not just an a national level, but the end result should require the separation of Ticketmaster from Live Nation and then also from the resale websites at a minimum.

Interested for that... Not sure I've seen one poster claim that they're great or even good yet.

so make it illegal

this maximum monetization method escalates greed, the consumer gets gamed and screwed while big business highfives

and yet again with all things that go digital it becomes a 1 or 0, winners and losers, haves vs have nots

also the Gallagher gobshites can stfu now with any claims they're of the working classes because they're 100% in on it

pure profit and greed

that's my opinion

True, but it pisses on that marketing model and disrupts it. It will probably end up akin to fuel pricing but in this case you'll get to see the ticket pricing and availability in advance, ie:

7,000 standing at 80 EUR
500 standing at 180 EUR
20,000 seated at 120 EUR
25,000 seated at 170 EUR
3,000 seated at 210 EUR

…and so on. It's then still stinks but at least it's up-front.

Dynamic pricing for gigs such as Oasis is a complete joke. You can have someone at their computer 10 hours before the sale paying multiples of what someone who was at their computer 1 hour beforehans(which doesn’t happen with airlines and hotels for whoever insists it’s the same thing).

Its meaningless and not based on demand, ultimately its Ticketmasters algorithm deciding that you’re simply going to have to pay more because of where you were assigned in the queue.

Hopefully the EU do something about it. Can’t stop bands demanding ridiculous amounts of cash, but don’t force someone to pay way more than they should. Have the ticket prices posted 48 hours before sale so people know what they should expect.

When Mary Lou McDonald came out with an idea to set house prices at €300K the outrage from the shysters in government was off the scale. Now it's outrage because concert ticket prices are not set in stone.

People keep saying 'concerts' like they're all the same. It's doing my head in. It's like saying 'football matches' when you're talking about Champions league finals. There'll be 20 great gigs in Dublin this week, great acts in lovely, small venues with crowds made up of sound people who love music. I don't give a **** if Coldplay become an act only accessible to the rich. Actual music is there whenever people want it.

The in demand algorithm is really quite simple. A range will be set by the promoter and as tickets sell the price creeps up. If too many people reject a particular price, then the demand price starts to fall. Demand pricing tries to find the correct market value for a ticket at a particular time.

So for example, we will say during a sale demand pricing is triggered, and prices rise to €300. All of a sudden people at the top of the queue stop buying and pull out. The price will then fall back to a level to where the ratio of buys to fails becomes acceptable.

As tickets continue to be sold, the market becomes aware of the scarcity and the price rises. The purchase to fail ratio changes too and also reflects the size of the queue remaining.

The only way to defeat demand pricing is a collective refusal to engage with it. That requires a level of organising which I doubt is possible these days

But the consumer is spending hours of their time and being kept in the dark as to what they’ll actually have to pay. If they do manage to get through the queue then they’re presented with obscenely high priced tickets and given a few minutes to decide whether or not to pull the trigger. Between the stress of it all, hype and fomo, it all seems designed to prey on fans and bleed them dry.

It’s a completely scummy practice that people shouldn’t be subjected to.

I think it is unfair that price information is withheld from the queue. All people have to go on regarding the state of the ticket market during a sale is social media, which really isn't good enough.

I think dynamic prices should be required to be provided in real time to the queue. I think this is something that promoters and acts would strongly resist. If the queue starts to collapse as prices increase then that takes away much of the pressure of making the purchase when presented with it.

Yes, quench the instantaneous demand would be a good idea, except there's a massive hole in this plan, and that's the bot accounts which is buying up tickets. Even if you could get the humans to agree to back-off, the bots would just attempt to snap up the tickets.

The solution here is probably the blockchain as a means of controlling all of this mayhem.

No matter what "system" there is, the consumer won't know until they get to the top of the queue what price options are availabe (because lower priced tickets may no longer be available). They might know the tiered prices that MIGHT be available to them and MAY have had the chance to decide before hand how much they were willing to pay.

And again, the consumer is not forced into anything - they have the opportunity to decide/chose.