Ticket prices

talk about inflation.....

$92?! Man alive. I heard that Sting tickets are like $60 to $80 for general admission. That's just insane. Last concert I went to was Erykah Badu here in Detroit and tickets were about $40. I thought that was a lot. BTW, great live performance.

Ticket prices are way high but it's the added cost of fees that really drives me nuts, especially the $2.00 "convience" fee to print your ticket at home. My printer, my paper, my ink, I should be getting a $2.00 discount.

Some claim that piracy is to blame. I remember reading a good article about that. I can't find it but a quick Google search brought up this: http://www.digitalmusicnews.com/stories/080510partingirving

 

And yes, this bugs me so much. When I was looking to buy tickets for Massive Attack, GA was listed at about $55. After all of the fees were added up I think it was around $70!

Edited by salannelson - 3/11/11 at 2:36pm

Holy thread resurrection. But a good thread to bring back.

This is why I, unfortunately, only go to one or two Ticketmaster events each year. The fees make me angry - there's no justification other than ripping people off. Without getting into politics, there are existing laws that address this. Too bad they aren't enforced any longer. Grrrr.

However, I do go to free and cover charge performances at various venues. I paid $10 or $15 to see Electric 6 at a bar in Tucson a couple years back. That's cool, since I know the money goes to the bar and the band. It was a more intimate performance and the band hung around afterwards and chatted with everyone. Very cool and much better than the typical arena concert. I also like to see student/college orchestras. Often very good and the money goes to the school, rather than to some plutocrat.

Wow, I didn't realize how old this was!

 

Is it possible to buy tickets directly from the venue instead of ticketmaster?

 

 For most events you can get tickets directly at the box office. However, they usually don't go on sale at the box office until the day after they go on sale at Ticketmaster, so if you want good seats for a concert you're pretty much stuck.

I usually get GA anyway, so that's really not a problem.

 

Thanks.

it's not only the ridiculous added costs, it's the ridiculous prices in general for concerts these days.

 

120+ euros for U2, 100+ euros for The Police, Dire Straits, etc. etc. .....

 

And what do you get for it? You can hardly see them from the distance you're standing, and you get absolutely horrible stadium concert sound.

 

I know quite a few people (myself included) who have had great luck with buying tickets at the box office on the day of the show, especially for the large, outdoor amphitheatres. Last year my wife and I went to see Rush and had planned to get a ticket for the lawn. When I got to the ticket window it was 7:30 which was the scheduled concert start time. Just for the heck of it I asked what was available in the seated area. I knew how the rows were numbered/lettered and what sections were left/center/right but I didn't know how many seats were in any given row. The woman told me there were seats in row D of section 102 (center) so I figured what they heck, and bought them. As we hurried into the venue we could hear the video starting and when we got to the section entrance an usher walked us to our row and we had to get past about 10-12 people to our seats. But when we did get there, I realized we were in the 4th row and one seat off of center. We had a great view of everything and it turned out to be an outstanding concert. My wife and I kept looking at each other like, "Did we really just get 4th row, center to see Rush"? If I live in California I would have been stoked, dude.  
 

 

I read an article last year (can't find it, unfortunately) that quoted a profit-per-ticket for Ticketmaster that was actually relatively small (I think it was about $3 but not 100% sure). Now, granted, $3 per ticket adds up pretty quickly when you sell millions of tickets. But it's not as heinous as you would think from all of the fees they tack on. Having tried to compete for hot tickets on a bunch of different websites, I can also say that Ticketmaster is far and away the winner in terms of not crashing or crapping out when 10,000 people (and scalper-bots) are hitting their servers - so they are spending more money than their competition on infrastructure.

 

It's probably easier for me not to hate them, though - very few of the venues I go to are affiliated with Ticketmaster or LiveNation. Last year I went to 50+ shows and I think only 6 were at venues that sell through TM. All of the smaller venues are switching to other services like TicketWeb or Brown Paper Tickets. I've actually had a TM gift card burning a hole in my pocket since December and haven't managed to spend it yet...

 

Really the best solution to this problem is to like less popular bands   The best show I've been to this year was $18... including fees. $18 for front-row seats, autographs, talking to the band after the show... It's a little more time-consuming to find the less well-known bands that are really good, but it's worth it if you like live music.

Sarah, Ticketmaster might only show $3 of profit per ticket on their books.

However, I'd love to see how they keep their books. Among other things, I'm an accountant. It's a much more creative profession than you might think. Give me a profitable company and I can make it look like it's losing money or just barely scraping by. There's a whole bag of tricks and I have zero doubt that Ticketmaster employs as many as possible.

Just like Hollywood, which has the most notorious accounting. Well, in the private sector. Don't get me started on how governments handle their books.

You'll notice that every movie "loses" money. Hmmm. Interesting. If they're so unprofitable, how come so many of them are made?

Sure, there are costs. But how much more are they than the costs of an online retailer selling something like a TV set? After all, you have to warehouse the TV set and deal with returns. Mailing a few tickets you printed out doesn't have those costs. It's a pretty simple operation. Though I haven't seen their books, Ticketmaster is probably raking it in. Compare it to online ticketing for movie theaters. Pretty much the same thing, but without the ridiculous fees. The only reason movie theaters are different is because there isn't a monopoly. If there weren't alternatives for movies, you can be sure that fees would start crawling upwards to the ridiculous.

Well, obviously I can't get any insider info, I just know what I read... I'm not a particular fan of theirs or anything, but after reading that I thought maybe they were getting a worse rep than they deserved. I could be wrong and they are just as evil as everyone thinks

 

The reason I really don't like them is that they add me to so many freaking e-mail lists - at one point last year they suddenly decided to sign me up for a different list for every city I've ever been to a concert in (which is somewhere in the region of 15 if we're keeping it to US shows bought via ticketmaster) and I could not get off any of these lists via their website. I had to finally call the company, and then the instructions they gave me to remove myself from the lists did not work. They had to go into their database and manually unsubscribe me from their torrent of spam.

 

I also got automatically added to some kind of extreme death metal concert e-mail list - I am not a fan of metal and never bought tix to any metal shows, no clue where that came from. And then there's all the lists I get added to because of concert tickets I bought for family members as a favor or gift... it really gets old. (Although I am occasionally amused by some of the juxtapositions - on sale soon: James Taylor! and GOATWHORE!)

100+ euro for Dire Straits? I don't think that euro was even born last time they were touring. I don't ot that often, but I would would gladly pay that and more to see them live.

Edited by giedrys - 3/13/11 at 8:27pm