State Champ Radio ticketmaster
Page: 3
Neil Young has spent more than half a century as a dedicated road dog. But based on a heated screed the Rock Hall of Famer posted on his site this week, the road might have an end. Titled, “Concert Touring Is Broken,” the letter is a kind of addendum to the Don Quixote-like battle The Cure‘s Robert Smith has been waging against ticketing giant Ticketmaster over what both men say are its exorbitant added fees.
“It’s over. The old days are gone,” wrote Young under an all-caps opening line that claimed that TM fees are “at 30%.” Young wrote that he’s gotten letters from fans blaming him for $3,000 tickets for a benefit he’s doing. “That money does not go to me or the benefit,” he said. “Artists have to worry about ripped off fans blaming them for Ticketmaster add-ons and scalpers.”
“CONCERT TOURS are no longer fun,” said Young, who has mostly been keeping his road powder dry since before the COVID-19 pandemic (with the exception of a few benefit appearances). Young recapped the public battle Smith has been waging over the past few weeks surrounding his outrage over the additional fees tacked onto the price of tickets for his band’s upcoming North American tour, which, in some cases, exceeded the face value of the ticket.
Smith told his fans that the Cure were determined to make the tickets for their Songs of a Lost World tour affordable for fans and keep them out of the hands of price-gouging scalpers by going through TM’s Verfied Fans program and making them non-transferrable, with some seats available for as low as $20 each. But when Smith got wind of some of the fees added on, the goth rock icon went on a multi-day Twitter rampage that resulted in TM refunding fans $5-$10 on every order.
At press time a spokesperson for TM had not returned Billboard‘s request for comment.
Young’s post also linked to news reports about Smith’s battle with TM, which came after the company’s disastrous roll-out of tickets for Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour when TM’s servers were overwhelmed by demand (and an army of bots). The Justice Department has also held hearings looking into TM and sister company Live Nation Entertainment as part of an antitrust investigation.
The country’s two leading concert companies, Live Nation and AEG, are at odds over how Congress should address the future of ticketing after a disagreement over Taylor Swift’s record-breaking The Eras Tour.
Long before the pop star’s Nov. 15 sale dominated the news cycle, where hundreds of thousands of Swift fans experienced service disruptions that kept them from buying the tickets they wanted, the two companies had signed an agreement that many thought might take AEG out of the ticketing business entirely. In 2021, when AEG announced that its facility management division ASM had struck a deal to make Ticketmaster its preferred ticketing partner, many assumed that meant the company was on the way to shutting down its own ticking platform, AXS Tickets.
Instead, ASM’s contract with the Live Nation-owned Ticketmaster would pave the way for an expansion of AEG’s AXS, thanks to a provision in Ticketmaster’s exclusive agreement that granted AEG the right to use AXS to sell tickets to AEG-promoted shows at ASM venues, sources tell Billboard. AEG tours like Kane Brown, Elton John and Luke Combs could opt out of using Ticketmaster when playing ASM-client venues such as Soldier Field in Chicago, U.S. Bank Stadium in Minneapolis and Desert Diamond Arena in Glendale, Ariz., and use AXS instead. This marked the largest carve-out in Ticketmaster’s exclusivity contract to date, potentially allowing hundreds of arenas, stadiums and performing arts centers to use AXS for the first time, like the new Allegiant Stadium in Las Vegas — the highest grossing stadium on Billboard’s 2022 year-end Boxscore chart.
The provision was a sort of double victory for AEG, Live Nation’s leading competitor: The company was able to leverage its control over 350 ASM venues to get those clients large payouts for re-signing with Ticketmaster without forsaking its own ticketing service. AEG officials had also hoped this might mark the beginning of a more open ticketing ecosystem away from the sorts of exclusive deals that have helped Ticketmaster gain such dominance in the space. But less than two years later, AEG and Live Nation find themselves at odds, divided over the handling of Swift’s The Eras Tour.
AEG is now refusing to join a coalition of music companies supporting Live Nation’s Fair Ticketing campaign, a piece of proposed anti-scalper legislation born out of the bot attack on Ticketmaster’s Nov. 15 presale for Swift’s tour. While Universal Music Group, Red Light Management, Irving and Jeffrey Azoff, and all four major talent agencies are backing the FAIR Ticketing reforms to ban scalping practices like “speculative” ticket selling and mandating all-in pricing across all ticketing marketplaces nationally, AEG has been taking a different approach to what they see as some of ticketing’s biggest problems. Sources tell Billboard that AEG executives have been quietly lobbying the Department of Justice to investigate Ticketmaster’s use of exclusive ticketing contracts to lock up the ticket market as a possible violation of its consent decree governing its merger with Live Nation in 2010. AEG leadership is also lobbying politicians to include restrictions on such exclusive ticketing practices in new legislation that could be introduced as soon as this week.
Sources say Live Nation executives have been careful not to engage with AEG publicly about its exclusivity agreements. Privately, they have accused AEG of trying to have it both ways, accepting the money that comes with exclusive ticketing contracts, while trying to expand AXS ticketing beyond the ASM deal into all NFL stadiums ticketed by Ticketmaster.
“This is a bad look for them,” one source at Ticketmaster tells Billboard.
Since Live Nation merged with Ticketmaster in 2010 and AEG launched its own ticketing platform in 2012, both companies have found they can earn more from the concerts they promote if they also control the ticketing, collecting more fees for themselves, while keeping data generated by the concert in house. The additional revenue for a promoter like AEG could be substantial, especially for an artist like Swift, who sold a total of 2.4 million tickets for The Eras Tour.
With Swift’s tour, sources say AXS was expecting to handle some of the ticketing under the ASM-Ticketmaster provision, since AEG was a co-promoter with partner Messina Touring Group. ASM managed five stadiums, representing 12 shows on the 52-date trek, and sources say AXS officials were hoping its ties to the tour could lead to it getting some, if not all of the tour. Except that Ticketmaster executives said their exclusive contracts with more than a dozen NFL teams (and the venues they own) superseded AXS’ claim. Under that reading of the deal, two of the 12 ASM dates — a pair of concerts at State Farm Stadium in Glendale, Ariz. — would be ticketed by SeatGeek under its exclusive deal with the Arizona Cardinals. Making matters worse, two of ASM’s management clients decided to partner with Ticketmaster for the sale.
Down to just five shows at two stadiums, AEG dropped the matter. According to a source, AEG executives have since spoken with the Department of Justice, encouraging them to look at Live Nation and Ticketmaster’s use of exclusive contracts as anti-competitive.
Relations only worsened in the days following The Eras Tour presale. After the fiasco, Live Nation chairman Greg Maffei appeared on CNBC to defend Ticketmaster and cited the company’s arrangement with AEG in response to claims of monopolistic behavior. “AEG, who is the promoter for Taylor Swift, chose to use us because, in reality, we are the largest and most effective ticket seller in the world,” he said. “Even our competitors want to come on our platform.” AEG leadership was quick to respond with a statement, saying the promoter had no choice but to use Ticketmaster. “Ticketmaster’s exclusive deals with the vast majority of venues on The Eras Tour required us to ticket through their system,” an AEG spokesperson said. “We didn’t have a choice.”
AEG hopes its private lobbying of politicians and anti-trust officials will lead to regulatory change that could include abolishing exclusive ticketing contracts in the United States and ultimately move toward an industry more similar to Europe, where promoters generally don’t sign exclusive ticketing deals and work with multiple partners to sell tickets.
Despite the disagreement, the ASM-Ticketmaster deal remains in place, and AEG officials have had success convincing buildings like the Greek Theater in Los Angeles and the Quicken Home Arena in Cleveland to avoid exclusive ticketing agreements and remain open to multiple systems.
Live Nation and AEG declined to comment for this story.
Robert Smith’s furious tweet spree on Ticketmaster’s fees “debacle” for the Cure‘s forthcoming North American tour has had the desired effect — a “gesture of goodwill” from the ticketing giant and the promise of some money returned.
Explore
See latest videos, charts and news
See latest videos, charts and news
Earlier in the week, Smith unloaded on Ticketmaster when the band’s fans complained that fees attached to the Lost World North American tour were most costly than the price of a ticket.
The problems emerged Wednesday (March 15) when tickets were made available to those who had registered for Ticketmaster’s “verified fan” sale.
Smith went on the attack when, in some cases, the added-on service fees, facility charges and order processing fees added up to more than the cost of entry, all despite the band offering reasonably-priced tickets for the trek and ensuring the tickets will be non-transferable to minimize resale and keep prices at face value.
“I AM AS SICKENED AS YOU ALL ARE BY TODAY’S TICKETMASTER ‘FEES’ DEBACLE,” Smith blasted in one all-caps broadside against Live Nation sister company. “TO BE VERY CLEAR: THE ARTIST HAS NO WAY TO LIMIT THEM. I HAVE BEEN ASKING HOW THEY ARE JUSTIFIED. IF I GET ANYTHING COHERENT BY WAY OF AN ANSWER I WILL LET YOU ALL KNOW.”
He got an answer, and he let them know.
“AFTER FURTHER CONVERSATION, TICKETMASTER HAVE AGREED WITH US THAT MANY OF THE FEES BEING CHARGED ARE UNDULY HIGH, AND AS A GESTURE OF GOODWILL HAVE OFFERED A $10 PER TICKET REFUND TO ALL VERIFIED FAN ACCOUNTS FOR LOWEST TICKET PRICE (‘LTP’) TRANSACTIONS,” writes Smith in the first of a new batch of tweets.
“AND A $5 PER TICKET REFUND TO ALL VERIFIED FAN ACCOUNTS FOR ALL OTHER TICKET PRICE TRANSACTIONS, FOR ALL CURE SHOWS AT ALL VENUES;” he continues. “IF YOU ALREADY BOUGHT A TICKET YOU WILL GET AN AUTOMATIC REFUND; ALL TICKETS ON SALE TOMORROW WILL INCUR LOWER FEES.”
In a separate tweet, Smith confirmed that “Verified Fan” ticket sales have now ended.
The legendary British goth-rock band’s Shows of a Lost World North American tour will span 30 dates, kicking off May 10 at New Orleans’ Smoothie King Arena.
The Cure took their place in the Rock And Roll Hall of Fame in 2019, with Trent Reznor on hand to induct the group.
See Smith’s tweets latest below.
1 OF 2: AFTER FURTHER CONVERSATION, TICKETMASTER HAVE AGREED WITH US THAT MANY OF THE FEES BEING CHARGED ARE UNDULY HIGH, AND AS A GESTURE OF GOODWILL HAVE OFFERED A $10 PER TICKET REFUND TO ALL VERIFIED FAN ACCOUNTS FOR LOWEST TICKET PRICE (‘LTP’) TRANSACTIONS…— ROBERT SMITH (@RobertSmith) March 16, 2023
2 OF 2: …AND A $5 PER TICKET REFUND TO ALL VERIFIED FAN ACCOUNTS FOR ALL OTHER TICKET PRICE TRANSACTIONS, FOR ALL CURE SHOWS AT ALL VENUES; IF YOU ALREADY BOUGHT A TICKET YOU WILL GET AN AUTOMATIC REFUND; ALL TICKETS ON SALE TOMORROW WILL INCUR LOWER FEES— ROBERT SMITH (@RobertSmith) March 16, 2023
I WILL KNOW IN A BIT – AND LET YOU KNOW – WHAT SHOWS HAVE TICKETS LEFT FOR SALE TOMORROW… ONWARDS X— ROBERT SMITH (@RobertSmith) March 16, 2023
SO… ‘VERIFIED FAN’ SALES HAVE NOW ENDED – A NUMBER OF TICKETS FOR ALL CURE SHOWS (EXCEPT LA + DETROIT… A MISCOMMUNICATION? sigh… ) WERE HELD BACK FOR ‘GENERAL’ ON SALE FRIDAY 17TH AT 10AM LOCAL TIME – LINKS WILL BE POSTED IN A BIT… GOOD LUCK X— ROBERT SMITH (@RobertSmith) March 16, 2023
After warning fans in a tweet spree earlier this week that Ticketmaster’s “Verified Fan” system was “far from perfect,” The Cure singer Robert Smith continued his Twitter rant on Thursday after his band’s 30-date Shows of a Lost World North American tour went on sale.
“I AM AS SICKENED AS YOU ALL ARE BY TODAY’S TICKETMASTER ‘FEES’ DEBACLE,” Smith raged in his latest all-caps broadside against Ticketmaster. “TO BE VERY CLEAR: THE ARTIST HAS NO WAY TO LIMIT THEM. I HAVE BEEN ASKING HOW THEY ARE JUSTIFIED. IF I GET ANYTHING COHERENT BY WAY OF AN ANSWER I WILL LET YOU ALL KNOW.”
Smith’s tweet came as fans complained that despite the band offering reasonably priced tickets for the outing and making sure the tickets will be non-transferable to minimize resale and keep prices at face value, in some cases the added-on service fees, facility charges and order processing fees added up to more than the cost of entry.
By making the tickets non-transferable, scalpers will be unable to purchase tickets and then resell them for a profit since the original owner will have to be present to enter the venue. For fans who purchase tickets but can’t make it to the event, they will be able to resell the ticket on a face-value ticket exchange.
Before the VF onsale, Smith assured fans that he was doing everything he could to alleviate ticketing pain points, including avoiding platinum packages and dynamic pricing, referring to those practices as “a bit of a scam.” But when he saw the complaints about the service charges during Thursday’s onsale, the singer could not hold back; at press time a spokesperson for Ticketmaster had not returned Billboard‘s request for comment.
Following up on his “scam” tweet, on Wednesday (March 15), Smith explained, “I HAD A SEPARATE CONVERSATION ABOUT ‘PLATINUM’, TO SEE IF I HAD MISUNDERSTOOD SOMETHING… BUT I HADN’T! IT IS A GREEDY SCAM – AND ALL ARTISTS HAVE THE CHOICE NOT TO PARTICIPATE… IF NO ARTISTS PARTICIPATED, IT WOULD CEASE TO EXIST.”
If nothing else, Smith implored his fans to avoid buying tickets secondhand from scalpers, writing, “I HAVE BEEN TOLD: StubHub has pulled listings in all markets except NY, Chicago, Denver (IE. CITIES IN STATES THAT HAVE LAWS PROTECTING SCALPERS). PLEASE DON’T BUY FROM THE SCALPERS – THERE ARE STILL TICKETS AVAILABLE – IT IS JUST A VERY SLOW PROCESS… I WILL BE BACK IF I GET ANYTHING SERIOUS ON THE TM FEES… IN THE MEANTIME, I AM COMPELLED TO NOTE DOWN MY OBVIOUS RECURRING ELEPHANT IN THE ROOM THOUGHT… THAT IF NO-ONE BOUGHT FROM SCALPERS… THEN.”
The Cure’s efforts to combat resale ticketing comes after a season of in-demand tours facing astronomical price increases due to dynamic ticketing and scalpers. Ticketmaster is currently facing government inquiries into its handling of the disastrous Taylor Swift Eras Tour presale, which left many fans outraged when service delays and website crashes (caused in part by bots) prevented many of them from securing tickets.
See Smith’s tweets below.
I AM AS SICKENED AS YOU ALL ARE BY TODAY’S TICKETMASTER ‘FEES’ DEBACLE. TO BE VERY CLEAR: THE ARTIST HAS NO WAY TO LIMIT THEM. I HAVE BEEN ASKING HOW THEY ARE JUSTIFIED. IF I GET ANYTHING COHERENT BY WAY OF AN ANSWER I WILL LET YOU ALL KNOW. X— ROBERT SMITH (@RobertSmith) March 16, 2023
WHAT I MEANT BY THIS BIT WAS… I HAD A SEPARATE CONVERSATION ABOUT ‘PLATINUM’, TO SEE IF I HAD MISUNDERSTOOD SOMETHING… BUT I HADN’T! IT IS A GREEDY SCAM – AND ALL ARTISTS HAVE THE CHOICE NOT TO PARTICIPATE… IF NO ARTISTS PARTICIPATED, IT WOULD CEASE TO EXIST X https://t.co/Kj7hjkRGn1— ROBERT SMITH (@RobertSmith) March 15, 2023
I HAVE BEEN TOLD: StubHub has pulled listings in all markets except NY, Chicago, Denver (IE. CITIES IN STATES THAT HAVE LAWS PROTECTING SCALPERS). PLEASE DON’T BUY FROM THE SCALPERS – THERE ARE STILL TICKETS AVAILABLE – IT IS JUST A VERY SLOW PROCESS… X— ROBERT SMITH (@RobertSmith) March 16, 2023
The Cure is taking serious measures to avoid outrageous ticket prices for their upcoming tour dates. The band, which announced a 30-date run of shows earlier this week, took to social media Friday (March 10) to let fans (and scalpers) know that tickets for their Shows of a Lost World Tour dates will be non-transferable.
“We want the tour to be affordable for all fans, and we have a very wide (and we think very fair) range of pricing at every show,” the message said. “Our ticketing partners have agreed to help us stop scalpers from getting in the way; to help minimise resale and keep prices at face value, tickets for this tour will not be transferable.”
By making the tickets non-transferable, scalpers will be unable to purchase tickets and then resell them for a profit since the original owner will have to be present to enter the venue. For fans who purchase tickets but can’t make it to the event, they will be able to resell the ticket on a face-value ticket exchange.
Three states in the U.S. have outlawed non-transferable tickets, making it illegal for The Cure to uphold the practice for shows in New York, Illinois and Colorado. For those dates, the band encourages fans to only purchase tickets from face-value exchange platforms like Twickets and Cash or Trade.
“Fans should avoid buying tickets that are being resold at inflated prices by scalpers, and the sites that host these scalpers should refrain from reselling tickets for our shows,” the message reads.
The band went on to explain that any tickets listed as of today (March 10) on secondary ticketing sites are not legitimate. Scalpers will post tickets onto secondary ticketing platforms prior to a tour’s on-sale via a practice called speculative ticketing. When a fan pays for the “speculative ticket”, the scalper will acquire a ticket at a lower price once tickets actually go on sale and pocket the difference. The Cure has stated that they will work with Ticketmaster to cancel any tickets obtained via this method.
When the band announced the world tour earlier this week, they established that “there will be no ‘Platinum’ or ‘Dynamically Priced’ tickets on this tour,” which includes stops at Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles, Moody Center in Austin, Madison Square Garden in New York and State Farm Arena in Atlanta.
Fans looking to secure tickets to The Cure’s 2023 tour should register with Ticketmaster’s Verified Fan program. Registration is open through Monday (March 13). After registering, fans will be entered into a lottery system to try to purchase tickets for their preferred date and location.
The Cure’s efforts to combat resale ticketing comes after a season of in-demand tours facing astronomical price increases due to dynamic ticketing and scalpers. Ticketmaster is currently facing government inquiries into its handling of the disastrous Taylor Swift Eras Tour presale, which left many fans outraged when service delays and website crashes (caused in part by bots) prevented many of them from securing tickets.
Live Nation president/CFO Joe Berchtold might have been the sole defender of his company’s 2010 merger with Ticketmaster at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing in January, but behind the scenes, he wasn’t alone.
Advising Berchtold and managing key relationships on Capitol Hill is a small army of over 30 lobbyists, deployed to defend the company from growing criticism by senators like Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., and Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn. Klobuchar, who serves as the chair of the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Competition Policy, Antitrust and Consumer Rights, has made repeated calls to the Department of Justice to investigate Ticketmaster and break up the company if any wrongdoing is uncovered during a DOJ review of the consent decree it created to foster competition in ticketing. That review is expected to wrap up soon.
While Live Nation’s lobbying spending has been historically low for a company of its size and domi- nance, that’s changing. Last year, the company spent nearly five times as much on lobbying as it has in the past, according to data from Open Secrets, which uses public records to track such spending. From 2012 to 2018, Live Nation spent an average of $225,000 annually to lobby federal officials. In 2022, its annual lobbying expenses had increased to $1.1 million.
The company’s agendas include defending criticism regarding Ticketmaster’s handling of the Swift presale last November.
One of those insiders is Seth Bloom, a former longtime general counsel for the Senate’s antitrust subcommittee and advisory board member for the American Antitrust Institute. Another is Jonathan Becker, a former chief of staff and chief counsel to Klobuchar who now serves as a partner at law firm Mayer Brown and represented a dozen big-name clients in 2022, including Meta, Microsoft and Phillip Morris.
Live Nation now spends significantly more than its competitors in the touring sector. Last year, enter- tainment conglomerate AEG spent $140,000 on federal lobbying, according to Open Secrets, while secondary-market ticketing competitor SeatGeek spent $170,000 and Viagogo, the British company that bought StubHub in 2020, spent $140,000. Live Nation partner company Oak View Group spent $570,000 on lobbying, while Spotify, which has rolled out a new ticketing offering for concert promoters and is hoping to broaden its reach within the live space, spent $710,000.
Live Nation could spend even more this year as it ramps up efforts to exit the consent decree once the five year extension ends in 2024. The company now has more than seven lobbying firms working for it on issues that include ticketing, event safety and Federal Aviation Administration rules on the use of drones at events.
After weeks of strategizing how to salvage Ticketmaster’s reputation in the wake of last November’s Taylor Swift presale debacle and Live Nation president/CFO Joe Berchtold’s January grilling by the Senate Judiciary Committee, the ticketing giant’s parent company has settled on an approach that will ramp up lobbying to hit back at scalpers while educating consumers about ticketing fees.
Despite breaking two company records with the Nov. 15 The Eras Tour presale — the most tickets ever sold in a single day (2.4 million) and, according to the company, keeping 95% of those tickets off secondary sites like StubHub and SeatGeek — Ticketmaster found itself cast as the villain and Live Nation as a monopoly after a cyberattack disrupted over 100,000 transactions.
The outcry has led to a mixture of disbelief and self-reflection at Live Nation’s global headquarters in Beverly Hills, Calif. “The company enables music fans to connect with the world’s greatest artists through concerts and events that often become the cornerstone moments of people’s lives,” says a Live Nation executive who was not authorized to speak on the record. “Why the fuck do people hate us so much?”
Although the controversy over the Swift presale had to do with ticket availability rather than price — the prime complaint of Ticketmaster’s July 2022 Verified Fan sale of tickets to Bruce Springsteen’s 2023 tour — the executive says that Live Nation has determined that redeeming itself with consumers “starts with the fees,” which can add over 30% to the final price of a concert ticket.
“We’ve got to now go out and do a much better job so policymakers and consumers understand how the business operates,” Live Nation president/CEO Michael Rapino said during the company’s most recent investor call. “We’ve historically not had a big incentive to shout out loud that venues are charging high service fees or artist costs are expensive. But I think now [that] education is paramount.”
Ticketmaster’s main source of revenue comes from the fees it charges to process ticket transactions. A ticket’s face value goes to the artist, while the ticketing giant shares the fees it collects with the venues that contract for its services.
Ticketmaster typically keeps $2 to $5 per ticket for processing costs and a small portion of the fees it collects to recoup any loans, advances or bonuses it may have paid the venue to win its ticketing contract. Contracts for large venues can be worth millions of dollars. The balance of the fees collected goes to the venue, which uses the money to cover the cost of the show.
Traditionally, promoters book venues for artists, pay rent to use the space and hire its staff. What’s left over as profit is divvied up with the act, which typically receives 80% to 85% of that amount.
But as competition to book top-shelf headline talent has increased over the last decade, venues have reduced the rent they charge and promoters have agreed to take a smaller percentage of base ticket sales — sometimes as little as 5%.
As Rapino said on the investor call: “The artist takes most of that ticket fee base. So the way that the venue, the promoter or the ticketing company [earns its] revenue fees is through that extra fee.”
The increasing costs of concert production, which are borne by the promoter, have also wid- ened the gap between a ticket’s face value and the final amount charged after fees, which can induce sticker shock when two $100 tickets can end up costing $265. While it has been very profitable for Ticketmaster to cover more of a concert’s costs through these fees, it has helped turn ticket buyers against the company.
Ticketmaster executives are hoping a simple fix can solve the problem — showing the total cost of a ticket, face value plus fees, at the be- ginning of the checkout process. That method is already used in New York, where it is mandated by state law.
“We all want to know what is the true cost to see the show when we start shopping,” Rapino said on the call. “We wish that would be mandated tomorrow across the board [because] that would relieve a lot of the stress [and] the consumer’s perception that there’s this magical extra fee added on” that isn’t part of the overall show cost.
Ticketmaster and other ticketing companies have long debated whether to abandon what’s known as a “drip pricing” model but haven’t pulled the trigger because studies show that fans are more likely to make a purchase if the fees that are tacked onto the face value of a ticket don’t appear until checkout. Secondary-market ticketing companies have also adopted the practice, advertising tickets at prices below those sold on the primary market, then hitting consumers with a 35% to 45% markup at checkout.
In a move more closely tied to the Swift situation, Ticketmaster has also decided to target scalpers through legislation and proposed legislation called the FAIR Ticketing Act that would outlaw drip pricing and grant artists the ability to ban scalper websites from reselling their tour tickets. Support for the initiative includes all four major talent agencies, Universal Music Group and a number of management companies.
Pro-ticket scalping groups have proposed their own counter-legislation, effectively banning Ticketmaster from using its proprietary technology to stop scalpers. Neither bill has a congressional sponsor in either chamber of Congress, however, and unless that happens, neither has any chance of passing.
Ticketmaster does appear to have some serious muscle in its corner when it comes to the scalp- ing issue. In a February interview with Billboard, Gregg Perloff, founder and CEO of independent promoter Another Planet Entertainment, which produces San Francisco’s Outside Lands festival, said: “My question for [Congress] is, ‘Why are you picking on Ticketmaster and Live Nation when you should be outlawing brokers?’ They are the ones who screw up everything. Does every promoter take a few tickets? Does every venue have a few tickets? … Sure. But it’s the scalpers that make it so no one can get a decent seat except the rich. The Senate didn’t do the research they should have done before they started pontificating and acting like they knew what they were talking about.”
In addition, Perloff suggested that touring artists were partially responsible because they “really want to go on sale for the whole tour at once because they can advertise the whole tour at once and make a bigger splash.” Regarding Swift’s tour, he said, “There’s no system in the world — and this is where I have to defend Ticketmaster — that could have handled the onslaught.”
Also in February, at the Pollstar Live conference in Los Angeles, music mogul Irving Azoff and Madison Square Garden Entertainment chairman James Dolan took on pro-scalping journalist-podcaster Eric Fuller when he argued that scalping made tickets cheaper, citing discredited media reports of bargain bin-priced tickets available for Springsteen’s North American tour dates.
“It’s about a half-hour conversation, but you’re dead wrong,” Azoff told Fuller, who also operates a consulting business in ticketing.
“You got to take your hat off to this paid lobbying group that’s working for the scalpers,” Dolan chimed in. “These guys are pretty good. Maybe we should hire them.” In response, Fuller says Dolan’s comments are “grossly inaccurate.”
As North America’s largest independent promoter, Gregg Perloff, the co-founder/CEO of Another Planet Entertainment, isn’t the type to ask for permission from the majors before making his next move.
Perloff has learned since selling Bill Graham Presents in the 1990s to the company that would become Live Nation that stealth can be a strategic advantage in the live-music business. That’s especially true when competing against Live Nation and AEG, which each have hundreds of millions of dollars in capital.
So, after three years of secretly negotiating, leasing and remodeling a 45,000-square-foot venue in downtown Los Angeles — AEG and Live Nation turf — Perloff and The Bowery Presents co-founder Michael Swier are about to open The Bellwether. The two-story venue is located west of the 110 Freeway between Third and Fourth streets. The one-city-block-long space is anchored by a 1,600-capacity general-admission theater and features a street-level bar and restaurant, plus a 600-capacity private event space. The venue also comes with provenance: It was once owned by Prince, who named it after his 1992 song “Glam Slam.”
Prince moved out in 1995, and a parade of lesser-known club operators followed. Months before the 2020 shutdown of live music, Swier found it. Instead of buying the building from its current owner, Perloff and Swier — who owns L.A.’s Teragram Ballroom and Moroccan Lounge — quietly worked out a long-term lease and started preparing the building for a 2023 opening. The Bellwether will be booked by long-time Another Planet Talent buyer Nick Barrie.
Perloff pulled off a similar coup in 2007 when he engaged in under-the-radar negotiations with San Francisco officials to secure a permit for the first multiday, after-sundown private festival in Golden Gate Park. Knowing the city badly needed revenue due to budget shortfalls, Perloff and his team kept the talks under wraps and got the agreement signed despite the last-minute protests of his competitors in San Francisco’s Live Nation office. That event, Outside Lands, is today one of the highest-grossing independently owned festivals in the United States.
Basketballs signed by late UCLA Bruins coach John Wooden and Golden State Warriors point guard Steph Curry. Former San Francisco Giants catcher Buster Posey autographed the miniature bat.
Karen Santos
Perloff, who has six decades of experience in the live-music business, sat down with Billboard to discuss his new L.A. venue, his thoughts on the Taylor Swift ticketing debacle, the U.S. Senate’s subsequent grilling of Ticketmaster, and the effectiveness of the U.S. Department of Justice’s 2010 consent decree and the protections put in place to protect Ticketmaster customers.
Let’s hear the big news about your new music venue.
We will be opening our first venue in L.A. in decades: a 1,600-seat music venue just west of downtown. We’re partnering with Michael Swier, who owns some of New York’s most iconic rooms like Bowery Ballroom and the Mercury Lounge. The new venue will have an open floor plan that can host any type of contemporary music act or genre. It’s got perfect sight lines with a wraparound balcony and side lounge where people can relax. We’ve got a d&b [audiotechnik] sound system custom-built for this particular room. When we saw this new space, every one of us said, “Oh, my God. We have to do this.”
Perloff says he bought this sculpture by glass artist Dale Chihuly “at an Oakland children’s hospital music therapy event.”
Karen Santos
Did 2022 meet your expectations in terms of sales?
It was a really good year for us, and our sales in 2023 are so much better than they’ve ever been. I don’t think I’m alone in this. While everyone’s saying there aren’t enough acts out there, the other side of the coin is sales are spectacular. When the end of 2021 came, there seemed to be this built-up demand after the pandemic, and we had a burst of great sales including for our festivals Outside Lands and Life Is Beautiful, both of which sold out. We had a really great 2022 as well. [Billboard parent company PMC Media is a majority owner of Life Is Beautiful.]
Why is sales momentum continuing to build?
Maybe it’s that half the people going to shows right now were ready the day the doors opened back up, and the other half now have joined in. I literally have never seen a situation like this.
Do you worry about business cooling off in late summer?
Not for Outside Lands. It was held during the first week of August and had its best year in 2022. But to your point, I’ve always said that it would be better for everyone if we could figure out how to convince artists to play all year round and go from a six- or seven-month business where everyone’s compressed together to one where artists go out earlier in the year.
Another Planet was one of the few concert companies that did not lay off any of its staff during the pandemic. Why was that important to you?
We were the only concert company that kept 100% of our employees on payroll with no salary reduction during the entire pandemic. It was important that people could continue their lifestyle. I didn’t understand why these big companies didn’t do the same. There was plenty of work to be done from home: new venues, different ways to tell people about our shows and production and building maintenance. When the pandemic ended, we were ready to go.
You’ve been a Ticketmaster client for a long time and stayed with the company after its merger with Live Nation. Over a decade later, do you think the Department of Justice got it right?
I’ll say this: There is supposed to be a firewall in place so that Ticketmaster won’t share your data with the concert promotion side of Live Nation. If anyone believes that Live Nation can’t get numbers from Ticketmaster, they’re very naive. Somehow people seem to know what everybody else’s ticket sales are.
A tambourine depicting legendary concert promoter Bill Graham that Perloff got at an event thrown by his late boss’ memorial foundation.
Karen Santos
Do you agree with the argument that Ticketmaster leverages Live Nation content to land ticketing contracts?
No, and I can’t believe that the Senate keeps fixating on something that is irrelevant. They don’t do it. That isn’t an issue. To listen to the Senate talking about arenas when Live Nation doesn’t even own an arena in this country is just crazy. Secondly, when the Department of Justice said it was going to subsidize AEG’s AXS ticketing to be a competitor to Ticketmaster [in 2010], we all saw how that went — not very good. I’m not sure that most people would pick AXS over Ticketmaster.
Because of Ticketmaster’s dominance?
No. What I’m saying is that it’s hard for me to take the government seriously when they say they want to stop monopolies when there are monopolies in every part of business, from telecom to transportation.
What are your reasons for sticking with Ticketmaster?
I thought Ticketmaster was doing a good job for us. I have nothing bad to say about my competitors. Everyone wants to pick on AEG and Live Nation, but most people have no idea how hard it is to produce a tour. I toured Star Wars: In Concert with LucasFilm around the world for five years and worked on tours with Bill Graham; it’s a completely different game than being a local promoter. AEG and Live Nation do an incredible job and should be applauded for the work they do with Taylor Swift and Bruce Springsteen. Every five years, you get an artist that’s so popular that you just can’t make everyone happy.
Do you think the Swift ticket sale was mishandled?
I think there were a number of problems with the Taylor Swift on-sale. This might be the first controversial thing I’ll say in this interview: Bands really want to put the whole tour on sale at once because they can advertise the whole tour at once and make a bigger splash.
Fender guitar cases containing instruments won at a benefit auction for The Bridge School, which was co-founded by Pegi Young, the first wife of Neil Young.
Karen Santos
Right, and for Swift, something like 2.2 million tickets went on sale simultaneously.
If someone’s touring for six months, it might make some sense to maybe break the tour into two segments and go on sale with the second part of the tour closer to the dates. But there’s no system in the world — and this is where I have to defend Ticketmaster — that could have handled the onslaught.
Do you think the Senate understands that?
My question for them is, “Why are you picking on Ticketmaster and Live Nation when you should be outlawing brokers?” They are the ones who screw up everything. Does every promoter take a few tickets? Does every venue have a few tickets? Sure. But it’s the scalpers that make it so no one can get a decent seat except the rich. The Senate didn’t do the research they should have done before they started pontificating and acting like they knew what they were talking about.
What’s the best way to stop scalping?
Many years ago, my business partner, Sherry Wasserman, came up with a brilliant system for Prince at the Wilshire in Los Angeles back when I ran the theater. We wanted to completely stop brokering for the show, and we made people line up the day before the show and present an ID when buying tickets. It was foolproof, we thought. And then the next day as people are walking in, here comes Muhammad Ali with tickets and a matching ID. Muhammad Ali certainly wasn’t in line the day before when we sold the tickets, but here he was with a ticket and ID. We didn’t know how, but he managed to beat the system. We just laughed and thought, “We did the best we could do.”
Just hours the ARMY Member presale for SUGA’s heavily anticipated Agust D tour began on Wednesday (Mar. 1), Ticketmaster took to Twitter to announce that it has canceled the rest of the sales rounds.
Explore
See latest videos, charts and news
See latest videos, charts and news
“Due to extremely high demand during today’s ARMY MEMBER Presale, there will not be a General Verified Fan Presale or General Onsale,” the ticket company posted.
UPDATE for SUGA | Agust D TOUR IN U.S. — Due to extremely high demand during today’s ARMY MEMBER Presale, there will not be a General Verified Fan Presale or General Onsale.— Ticketmaster (@Ticketmaster) March 2, 2023
Ticketmaster previously warned fans that the demand exceeded the number of available tickets, and that all tickets would be released during the first round of presale. “If all tickets are purchased during the ARMY MEMBER Presale, there will not be any additional sales,” Ticketmaster tweeted.
However, members of the ARMY quickly pointed out that there are still available tickets under the “Official Platinum” category with inflated prices. “stop with the platinum tickets. i still see them on there 5 hours later, popping in then greying out then appearing again. release them at the fixed prices,” one fan tweeted.
All verified fan tickets were the same price at face value. This is what official platinum looks like. This is what’s still available for The Album night. pic.twitter.com/hVR2SGmd0K— Lindsey (@LindsHutt) March 1, 2023
This is hardly the first time Ticketmaster has faced scrutiny amid chaotic ticket sales for performers including Taylor Swift and Beyoncé. The Senate Judiciary Committee held a hearing in January to analyze the ticketing industry following the messy handling of Swift’s The Eras Tour ticket sale by Ticketmaster.
SUGA announced dates for the tour, named after his Agust D mixtape, on Valentine’s Day. The tour, which is his first as a solo performer, kicks off April 26 at the Belmont Park, New York. The jaunt will stop in New Jersey, Illinois and California before heading overseas for two nights in Seoul, Korea in addition to Jakarta, Bangkok and Singapore.
The Ledger is a weekly newsletter that covers the financial and economic side of the music business. An abridged version appears at Billboard Pro. Sign up here to receive the newsletter.
Ticket fees have been called everything from “exorbitant” (Sens. Richard Blumenthal and Amy Klobuchar) to “completely bats—” (Last Week Tonight with John Oliver). And they can increase the price of a concert ticket by an average of 27-31%, according to a 2017 study by the U.S. Government Accountability Office.
Unfortunately for ticket buyers, those fees aren’t going anywhere quickly. They may change or disappear completely, but consumers won’t reap any savings in the end, Live Nation CEO Michael Rapino explained during Live Nation’s fourth quarter 2022 earnings call on Thursday.
Say, for example, a venue is prohibited from charging fees on top of a ticket’s face value. “Well, then the venue would say, ‘Okay, artists, the rent isn’t $50,000 anymore. It’s $100,000,’” Rapino said.
The ticket fee is a surcharge that helps cover a venue’s costs. Rapino’s point is that the venue needs to cover its costs, so it’s going to collect money to cover them, no matter what. In a normal scenario, the consumer helps cover those costs by paying a surcharge directly to the venue.
If fees were eliminated, artists — who are the final authority on primary ticket prices — would be forced to raise them to cover the additional cost. The surcharge may have disappeared, but that cost would still exist in the form of a higher face value. Regardless of the approach, the consumer’s expense and the venue’s revenues would be unchanged.
“The true cost of going to a show and making the show happen is the full price all-in,” said Rapino. The concept is apparent to anybody who has pondered how airlines set prices. If airlines charged an all-in fee that encompassed all its costs, ticket prices would be dramatically higher. Legislation that banned fees for checked baggage could result in higher prices for everything from flight themselves to in-flight beverages. Airlines that previously allowed free carry-on bags might start imposing fees on those. They could also charge more to change your travel plans (which used to cost the consumer nothing).
Rapino acknowledged that Live Nation, which owns and operates venues, would do the same. “If tomorrow someone said, ‘You know, you can’t charge 20% service fees on your amphitheater, you have to [charge] 10%.’ Well, then the $75,000 house rent that we charge artists would be $100,000,” he said as an example. Live Nation couldn’t simply absorb the cost, he explained. Since the company requires money to pay staff and operate the venue, it would find a way to recoup the lost fees.
While what consumers pay won’t change, they may get more transparency. In the wake of Ticketmaster’s disastrous Taylor Swift Eras Tour pre-sale, President Joe Biden unveiled an initiative to limit, among other types of fees, mandatory, back-end fees that “often hide the full price” of a good or service. The White House pointed to research that found hiding the full price encourages consumers to spend more than they would have otherwise.
Live Nation has also come out publicly — and forcefully — against hidden fees. On Thursday, Rapino called numerous times for the industry to adopt all-in pricing that show the ticket buyer a single price at the beginning of the transaction. Also on Thursday, Live Nation issued a press release that encouraged lawmakers to introduce legislation that includes, among other things, mandatory all-in pricing.
The uproar against Live Nation and Ticketmaster over ticket fees is just one of many criticisms to gain momentum in recent months. Some members of Congress have called Live Nation a monopoly that limits competition in the touring business and harms consumers by charging high prices and leaving some unable to purchase tickets for in-demand concerts like Swift’s Eras tour. Many inside and outside of Washington have called for the Department of Justice to break up the company’s concert promotion and ticketing operations. On Thursday, Sens. Klobuchar and Mike Lee sent evidence of the Jan. 24 Senate hearing on the ticketing market to the Department of Justice and encouraged its antitrust division “to take action if it finds that Ticketmaster has walled itself off from competitive pressure at the expense of the industry and fans.” Others have suggested Ticketmaster improve its security practices to deal with the bot attacks that derailed Swift’s pre-sale.
Ticketmaster may be most reviled for its fees, though. And as Rapino pointed out, those aren’t going away anytime soon.
