Ticketmaster is a common website for anyone who is attending a large event. On Ticketmaster people primarily buy tickets for theatre, sporting events, and concerts, but they have tickets for everything you can imagine. This website sounds like a dream, and at first glance it is, but once you take a deeper look into what’s happening behind the scenes, your perception of Ticketmaster changes drastically.
In 2022 the Eras Tour was announced. This was Taylor Swift’s biggest tour yet, and people worldwide wanted tickets. 3.5 million people signed up for the pre-sale, excited to get tickets. The pre-sale was organized by Ticketmaster and would take place on their website. When pre-sale codes were sent out, Ticketmaster sent out 1.5 million, leaving 2 million people without a code and on a waitlist. This was very upsetting to the fans, with many complaining all over social media. The day of the pre-sale came and over 14 million people attempted to get on the website even though only 1.5 million people had the code. This led to the website crashing various times, and wait times being hours to buy tickets.
While this part of the ticket sale was mostly an issue with the fans and the website not being able to handle the capacity of people it thought it could, the main issue appears as people tried to buy tickets.
Ticketmaster often uses a system called dynamic pricing. This is their way of saying, “If people want the tickets, the prices will double because people will still buy them.” This was used during the Era’s Tour pre-sale, where people were forced to make last minute decisions in a rush. People ended up spending thousands of dollars on tickets that had been only a couple hundred for the first batch of consumers.
In the past year, the issues with Ticketmaster’s greed is yet to cease.
After the Eras Tour ticket sale, people started doing more digging into Ticketmaster. They found their prices sketchy, and the company even more sketchy. This eventually led to Ticketmaster, more specifically its parent company Live Nation, being sued.
The lawsuit consisted of concerns over not just ticket prices, but the fees attached. The jury found that there were fans in about 21 states paying 1.75$ over what they should actually be paying. This sounds like a non-issue until you realize how much money that is in the long run. Also this shows that Ticketmaster has been lying to its supporters for years. Ticketmaster also has been promoting artists that perform at sponsored venues, ignoring ones at lesser venues. Finally, they have been monopolizing primary ticketing, making sure that they stay at the top of the ticket selling websites.
This leaves the public questioning what to do when they want to buy tickets. Unfortunately, Ticketmaster is one of the only safe options to purchase tickets in this day and age. With this being said, the lawsuit and the controversy leaves the window open for better companies to rise. An alternative where you are not scammed whenever you try to buy a ticket for a show is needed for the public to feel comfortable as consumers in the world of concerts, sporting events, and theatre.
As a frequent Ticketmaster user myself, I can only hope that a better alternative will be produced.
