Thread started to avoid specific gig threads being inundated with comments about this. Please only use this thread to discuss the issues we have seen with Oasis and other events
but that won’t work. Promoters often hold extra dates and then deciding on how well the sales are going then announce the second night. promoters need the flexibility cause what if the first night is actually a slower seller. They decide not to do the second night as demand ain’t there. They lose millions as a result
IMO people conflate different issues and assign blame randomly. The process stinks to high heavens and everyone in this chain contributes to it.
On the ticket prices itself (regular and dynamic) there are 2 key factors: the artist and the promoter. The artist says "I need such and such money to come play at your city". Then the promoter says "it's gonna cost that much money to do the show and I want to make that much profit out of it" so they start calculating prices etc. In this part I think it is greed from the artist and the promoter. The whole dynamic pricing (as previously said) is because there are people that really want to go to the gig that can afford and are willing to pay the dynamic price. Thus the promoter can keep the majority of the tickets at a regular price (which is not cheap to begin with) and get the extra money from the dynamic prices. IMO so far Ticketmaster isn't to blame for the dynamic prices.
Two issues that TM are to blame.
First the extortionate fees. 10 euro minimum fee on each big concert ticket for what? What exactly do they handle? They are just a facilitator and do almost nothing. For a gig like Oasis, TM must have gotten 1.6 million euro (160.000 tickets x 10 euro) for doing nothing. Someone in another thread has said that this money are split between TM, promoter and artist - not sure if it is correct but I'll take their word for it. In my opinion, this is the one that governments etc need to go hard on TM.
The second (more minor) issue is that you only find the exact pricing only when you are ready to buy the ticket. I'm from Greece and old enough to remember before Ticketmaster where the promoters would advertise the prices before the tickets went on sale. Obviously dynamic pricing wasn't a thing back then but the promoter would clearly state if there was an early bird or that the first few tickets were cheaper etc. And the fees were reasonable. Not sure if anything can be done in this area.
I am speaking about large, in demand stadium type gigs where people will pay 400+ for a ticket.
AFAIK harvey norman aren't allowed advertise 'latest samsung 50 inch TV for €400' and then tell you when you get to the till that they put the price up because they were popular; but that's effectively what we're allowing ticketmaster to do with dynamic pricing.
dynamic pricing is effectively an auction in that sense.
Are people going to pay 400 euro for gigs on a regular basis? I highly highly doubt that. These gigs had mania and histeria written all over them. As I have said, there is no atmosphere at events full of rich people. I don't care what you say. People will see it as a money grab that really isn't worth it.
I don't have an issue really with dynamic pricing because if you do, what you are really saying is that an artist should not be allowed choose the price of their art. That's something I don't agree with.
What I think needs to be improved is information to the buyer. If artists want their tickets to be fully market priced then they need to provide information on the state of the market throughout the sale. This includes the amount of unsold tickets and the current market price, updated at least every minute.
One thing which I think could at least be considered in terms of regulation is the council should put in place a policy that for gigs to be licensed, all intended gigs need to be announced, or tickets put on sale, at the same time.
If you paid 400 quid for a ticket for 'one of the only two Irish gigs oasis will ever play again' (say - that's just for dramatic effect) and they decide to cash in by announcing two more shows - those extra licences could be denied?
This isn't gonna solve too many problems either - especially if you give people more time to complete their transaction. There will always be situations where this information won't be correct and people will no doubt complain.
What if the tickets are the same price from all vendors? €250 € 400 and 500 for example? This would be defined by the artist. Granted there might be fee differences to the artist and the consumer.
People are going to lose out when demand exceeds supply - and queuing is required in almost all high demand events - it's only when you get to the top of the queue you can see what tickets are left. For example, your queuing position means that there are only 400 and 500 euro tickets left when you get to the top of the queue. How long should you be given to make a decision to buy (bearing in mind others are queuing also)
A well functioning market definition depends on where you sit within that market.
Everyone will just log on when it opens then so that doesn't solve anything.
I also only found out that your position is the queue was random recently, previously I would always log on as soon as the waiting room opened.
It's not like it took any effort, log on, make a cup of tea etc, do something else in the meantime. You know ticket sales aren't starting until they're starting so it's not like you have to be glued to the screen.
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.
The idea of showing the price range available live while queuing would help the consumer. Have it update every few minutes.
If you're queuing and you see the cheapest tickets are available at €80 you might be happy to stay in queue. If they go to €150 you might have a think, and if they go above €200 you might decide to pull out. But you have time to think and decide while still queuing.
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.
most of that goes to Coldplay and some to promoter! Coldplay will get anywhere between €2-4 of the ticketmaster fee
Point 2 is a very good one.
Yeah perhaps, it will really really harm sport in particular. Without a diverse following you are literally harming the future of the sport. Having ol lads in the stands yapping about balance sheets won't make a game interesting and having watched some of the rugby in the aviva in front of a flat atmosphere. It's like watching a game down the local club. With music, you have people who don't know the songs and wreck the atmosphere also.
I think the solution is fairly simple. Break up ticket master and bring some competition back to the consumer the way capitalism is supposed to work.
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.
Customers were “made” to sit through morning queues to find out what price the tickets were due to this “dynamic pricing”. Because of this anti-competitive system, there is no way for a customer to know the prices otherwise before they buy.
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)
I understand however I don't think the monopolistic nature of TM is a factor here. Ultimately they are just a platform for selling tickets that have a few features than can be turned on or off but at the end of the day the artist dictates the financial side of it. TMs main role is to work on behalf of its clients to get as many tickets sold as possible at a price point that the clients and consumers deem acceptable.
I don't think any other platform (and there are a few that come to mind) would work off any different a role so I really don't think that's as big a deal as is being stated.
Ultimately Oasis are the monopoly here. They set the prices, there's no competition for them. If you want to see Oasis you jump through the hoops that have defined and pay whatever price is presented to you at the final stage. Outside of possibly a few UI enhancements, maybe better traffic management/tech and perhaps less commission from both sides would there really be that much difference if there were more completion on the platform side had the artist made the same set of requirements for overall pricing?
Lol both sport and gig atmospheres would then become sterile borefests. It would do a lot of harm for both industries
I haven't justified it. Not once. I've called Oasis greedy for what they've done a least a dozen times.
I've no idea how you think that pointing out who is responsible for the greed and pricing is somehow justifying it. I suggest you carefully re-read what I said and then maybe you can retract that bullshït claim.
I paid for my face value ticket at 8.42am. So there were at least 42 minutes of people paying face value.
And no, I wouldn't feel happy about being asked to pay 425 for a standing ticket as it's way too high a price. I'd have walked away.
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 ?
Sure. But the ultimate blame lays with them who signed off on it.
Except some who got presale lottery tickets..
Well that's not true. Check the Oasis thread and you'll see a load of posters say they got regular priced tickets in the general sale, myself included.
There's an assumption that every ticket was sold under dynamic pricing which clearly wasn't the case.
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 .
Look, I get that there is a massive dynamic there in terms of the net weight of the brothers reforming, but at the end of the day there is a facilitator within the equation who isn't being upfront or independent in their dealings with the public and are an established monopoly as well as a closed marketplace. That's the crux here and if there was better competition out there then Joe Public would be getting a better deal and a fairer hand dealt to them.
If you disagree with that then we have other issues.
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??
Ah yeah, poor Liam and Noel. Being frogmarched against their will into a dastardly scheme.
They were given a range of options to make their money and they and their management picked one.
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.
Oasis say they want 200 million net for the "tour" but only want to play 15 shows. 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)
That there is where it all clearly went wrong because Live Nation obviously stood up and said… "errum - the average ticket price for a stadium gig is 89 EUR, but with dynamic pricing and our monopoly of the market we can get you the average of 333 EUR".
You see if the opportunity hadn't been there in the first place to facilitate that request by the Gallagher brothers, then they would have been told to walk back their payment demands and we wouldn't be having this conversation. Capiche?
