Over the past week and a half, much of my emotional investment has been dedicated towards a single entity: Ticketmaster.
Ticketmaster’s system of ticket distribution is unfair towards fans and instead encourages scalpers and bots to snatch up tickets before most concert goers get to them. The process prioritizes sheer luck over a stress-free environment.
Two of my favorite artists announced new concert dates, and of course, I was eager to get tickets. Like any fan, I know the drill: sign up for the artist presale, find a fast internet connection and hope for the best.
On the first round of presales for one tour, I was in absolute shock. More than 88,000 people ahead of me for tickets for a venue that seats 19,000 people. I knew that these presales were going to be tough but was not expecting this many people. Within minutes, Ticketmaster notified me in the virtual queue that tickets are now limited for the three shows; but a new date has been added and the presale will begin shortly. Unfortunately, when I opened the presale and was put in the virtual queue, there were more than 100,000 people ahead of me, which is dwarfed by the 2.2 million people in the queue for the London shows.
I left the presale hoping for better luck in the general public sale the next day. However, those tickets sold out in minutes while my Ticketmaster queue showed that there were still tens of thousands of people ahead of me. Because of the system Ticketmaster has in place, the only affordable way to get tickets is by getting lucky with a low virtual queue number.
Resale platforms have nosebleed tickets going for $600, lower bowl tickets for $1000 and floor tickets for thousands of dollars. After the presale disaster of Taylor Swift’s The Eras Tour, I thought that the ticketing industry had learned its lesson, but tickets are still astronomically marked up.
Later that week, I attempted another presale for a different artist. After multiple attempts for two different cities, I was able to purchase tickets for this show. However, when I entered the ticket purchasing page I discovered what it is like to purchase tickets under dynamic pricing.
Ticketmaster adjusts ticket prices automatically, primarily based on supply and demand. With dynamic pricing, finding a ticket within my budget required refreshing the page multiple times and narrowing the search results. I was lucky to find that ticket; had I not known to refresh I would’ve exited the page thinking the only tickets left were $489 nosebleeds.
Out of my 11 attempts to get tickets to concerts, I only succeeded once: a 9.09 percent success rate. These were two different artists, three different venues and six different total shows. The source of these problems is not the artists or even their popularity; it stems from how the ticketing industry treats live music fans.
The ticketing industry has been an enabler for ticket scalpers and bots to snatch up tickets before fans are able to get them. All a person needed to access both these presales was a valid Ticketmaster account and the ability to select the shows for which they want to buy tickets, with no identity verification needed. Other presales will send participants an individualized code beforehand; however, both scenarios create a prime setting for scalpers, bots, brokers and bad actors to grab tickets and then resell them for a significant profit. Ticketmaster, or any other resale platform, charges a commission fee for any ticket reselling transaction and therefore profits off of marked-up resale tickets.
This system of fans missing out on tickets has to end, but finding solutions is not an easy task.
One solution is to move the concerts to bigger venues such as football stadiums. However, this change can ruin an intimate concert environment and creative control of the concert.
Ticketmaster has previously tried to retroactively combat bots and scalpers by revoking resold tickets. This solves the problem of scalpers being in control of multitudes of tickets and restores them into the hands of fans, but also leads to fans who bought resold tickets having their tickets revoked.
An ideal solution would work to restore the fan’s experience and minimize both Ticketmaster’s and resale ticketing markets’ impact. One current example of this is how Chappell Roan is distributing tickets for her U.S. shows this year. Roan’s shows are using the ticketing platform AXS, which is distributing the tickets through a program called Fair AXS. Under the system, anyone interested in acquiring tickets must register a valid credit card and a billing address, and any duplicate entries will be disqualified. All entrants are randomly selected, and selected entrants can only buy tickets through a link in their emails. Their tickets are tied to a unique AXS mobile ID. Any non-selected entrants are then put on a waiting list for any unsold tickets.
While this model is currently the fairest out there, it is not practical for a large-scale tour. Roan’s shows are using less traditionally popular venues and the venues do not fall under Live Nation Entertainment management, the same company that runs Ticketmaster.
Live Nation, an event promotion company that runs major music and sports venues, and operates major touring acts, merged with Ticketmaster in 2010 to create Live Nation Entertainment. As a result of this merger, most tours that play major venues use Ticketmaster as their ticket distribution system.
In 2024, the Department of Justice (DOJ) sued Live Nation Entertainment for “monopolizing markets across the live concert industry.” In the lawsuit, the DOJ claims that this monopoly “exercises its power over performers, venues, and independent promoters in ways that harm competition.” In addition, the DOJ claims that Live Nation Entertainment creates barriers for other ticketing platforms and limits the expansion of other vendors. Because of this monopoly, it is much more difficult for artists to embark on a major tour without having to use Ticketmaster for ticket distribution.
The model that artists should be following is Billie Eilish’s use of Ticketmaster for distributing tickets on her latest tour. She used a typical presale then general sale model but created restrictions for selling resale tickets. Eilish turned off the availability to transfer tickets on Ticketmaster, restricting tickets from entering third-party platforms. Instead, Eilish is using Ticketmaster’s Face Value Exchange, which allows people who bought tickets to only resell them for face value. This model is smart, practical and ensures that the fans are prioritized while dissuading scalpers and brokers from acquiring tickets.
There is no perfect solution for how to stop the Ticketmaster monopoly from monetizing off of concertgoers. Ticketmaster doesn’t value the fan’s experience, it values the ability to make money off of fans.
In fact, Michael Rapino, the Chief Executive Officer for Live Nation Entertainment, stated in a recent interview with CNBC that ticket prices for concerts are in fact underpriced compared to sporting events.
“When you read about the ticket prices going up, it’s still an average concert price [of] $72. Try going to a [Los Angeles] Laker[s] game for that and there’s 80 of them [in a season]” Rapino said.
This comment demeans a concertgoers’ experience. In most of the presales for which I attempted to buy tickets, the cheapest one was around $72 and sold out quickly. His comment also undermines a concertgoer’s motive for seeing their favorite artist, who may only come to their local city once every few years.
Unfortunately, the responsibility now falls onto the artist to ensure that their fans do not miss out on seeing them live. The artist shouldn’t be responsible for keeping corporate greed out of the way; there needs to be an industry-wide change in how ticket distribution functions.
