Ticketmaster and dynamic pricing

Oasis must be the most over rated band in history.

The main issue here is that Ticketmaster have a monopoly and should have been split years ago.

A big issue with this “dynamic pricing” is that it obfuscates the price of the event. A customer doesn’t know how much they will be spending until they commit hours of their morning in unreliable queues and only be given seconds to decide to buy. Ticketmaster know at the checkout stage that they have buy-in from the customer already and can throw any price at them.

Could the customer walk away when they see the inflated prices? Yes, they could. But they probably won’t as ticketmaster has made them commit so much time and effort already into getting the tickets.

Since everyone is given a different price for the tickets, it’s more difficult to complain about the prices as there is no one-figure that everyone can point at and say is too expensive.

It’s anti-competitive as a result.

As an aside, I have a mate who got to the end of the Oasis queue, was shown “dynamically prices “ tickets for 400 and decided not to buy. Out of boredom he refreshed the page and was shown tickets for 175e. More evidence that the system is a shambles.

Again,

What is the alternative?

Oasis say they want 200 million net for the "tour" but only want to play 15 shows.

Budgets are done out and total cost of tour once all bill including artist is paid is circa 400 million which includes a healthy profit for all involved (not least the artis)

But wait maximum number of tickets that can be sold is 1.2 million (15 *80K).

Average ticket price is going to need to be 333 odd euro (lets just forget about the other income streams that maybe available via the concerts, merch, food drinks etc)

So, how to TM get to the point whereby this is the average ticket price - fair enough they cannot use dynamic pricing.

So they go back to tiered ticket prices, so many at 200 euro, more at 300 euro and more circa 400 euro, a more at 500 - with the ultimate average price being 333 Euro.

Everyone is happy in the chain.

So there is a price list on the door - it's expensive but its there - but the punter won't know until they come off the queue what tickets are going to be available to them - no matter how you do it.

That's the reality of what we have here.

At the end of the day the figures have to work for all involved. If they don't work, it doesnt happen, either for the artist, the promoter or ultimately the consumer. They have the ultimate decision on whether to pay that price - no one else, no matter how much regulation you add.

I can see how this might happen - person a few hundred in the queue before your mate gets offered a ticket for 175 euro. The ticket is "locked" to their account until they complete the transaction. Decides 175 bucks is too much and cancels/timesout the transaction. Your mates queue ID is lucky enough to get the offer of that ticket on refresh - or something similiar - this things will happen with tiered pricing and so many folks in a queue - no matter the provider I would add.

Ticketmaster hasn't "Made" them do anything - they've, at every stage, made those decisions themselves.

Oasis could’ve set a price limit, but they don’t care. They are cashing in big time. They want big money for very little shows and this has become the norm it seems. Just look at Adele in Munich.

Didn’t Ed Sheeran make sure prices were decent for his gigs? Garth Brooks tickets were 60 - 80 or something like that (I think). It can be done if the artist wants it to be. The fees need to be looked into though, that is a complete disgrace. Doubling the fees for the in demand tickets, wtf.

Ticketmaster made nearly 4 million from the service fees of the 4 Coldplay shows. That’s some amount of money when it’s just mobile tickets.

It's been a long time since 89 bucks was the average price for a major stadium gig in Ireland.

That said, no matter how many companies are involved in the market - if those were the Oasis demands, those are the Oasis demands…………they came to the party from a position of power.

Your comment makes absolutely no logical sense. If the opportunity to sell tickets online wasn't there in the first place none of this would be relevant either. Capiche??

Nobody saying they were "frogmarched "but their demands/requests were enabled with both parties getting what they want with least effort . And the only one getting screwed is the customer .

Both former parties were aware that this would be the case and they went for it .

Some few alright but pretty soon into it people were getting asked to pay the higher prices .

It will be interesting when / if TM actually give exact numbers alright .

You were lucky . But don't know why you and one or two others keep justifying this unacceptable greed .

If you had been asked to pay 425 for a standing ticket would you still be feeling so positive about it ?

Lol both sport and gig atmospheres would then become sterile borefests. It would do a lot of harm for both industries

Completely agree.

The problem is that these things are all being run by people who's eyes are on the bottom line.

Get as much money as possible. Fück the experience. You can already see it seeping into some events (e.g. International rugby in the Aviva)

No body is 'made' to do anything. At any point you can decide not to partake.

Even with standard tiered pricing, where the prices are published prior to going on sale, the customer doesn't know what they will be presented with until they get to the top of the queue -you get this -right?

At this point, they will see and have the opportunity to accept or not, the various tickets that are left, the is whether you have standard tiered pricing or dynamic pricing.

The customer doesn't just hand over their card details, say 'Ill take whatever you have no matter the price' -the price they are paying os visible to them.....

I am not saying the behaviour of Oasis or Ticketmaster is moral or ethical however the consumer has many opportunities not to engage but unfortunately enough people seem to engage with the process for major gigs here over the past few years that it continues.

Point 2 is a very good one.

A well functioning market is one where a customer can quickly see the prices of a ticket from multiple vendors before deciding on which one to buy.

A failed market is where there is only one vendor. The customer has to sit through an indefinite length of time in a queue just to find out the price of a ticket, and only have a few minutes to make the decision to buy.

Why will you never just let people complain about ticketmaster? 😂

Dynamic pricing is not illegal, but that doesn't mean that it won't be in future for tickets.

Ticket touting was made illegal, and now Ticketmaster can do it right at point of sale.

And the millions of IP addresses is only for the recent massively hyped concerts, Ticketmaster has always had issues crashing for events that were much smaller than this.