Concert goers (and those who like to attend live sporting events) have known for quite a long time that they are drawing the short straw when it comes to ticketing fees… but now there’s an actual price that’s been calculated to show just how big of a joke the ticket selling industry really is.
For years, online ticket sellers and resell markets have made the ticket buying experience one full of dread and an inordinate amount of additional and often secretive fees. It’s no secret that the ticket market for live events is all the way corrupt, though I’m hoping we’re slowly but surely on the right track to more straightforward ticket buying (I’ve been saying that for year now).
I can’t tell you how many times I’ve gone to buy a $45 ticket and when I go to checkout, it’s $145 after all of the services fees and transaction fees are tacked on. I’m the type of guy that always pulls out the Dad Joke of, “Convenience fee? That sure isn’t convenient for me.” And now, we can factually say that it’s a multi-billion dollar problem.
According to new research from the Vanderbilt Policy Accelerator, the current state of the online ticketing platform is costing consumers over $11 billion a year:
“Large corporate ‘ticket brokers’ engage in an online version of the centuries-old practice of ‘scalping,’ but instead of speculating and selling tickets for a higher price on the street, they buy large volumes of tickets as soon as they are available to take advantage of an arbitrage opportunity and resell them on online ticketing platforms like Ticketmaster, StubHub, and SeatGeek.
Just as bad, the online ticketing platforms are taking advantage of the fact that consumers have few options and charging excessive service charges for each ticket purchase. The combination of these two things adds over $11 billion every year to the price of live events in the United States.”
That’s quite the large, monetary number, eh?
But it’s certainly believable. Music fans and sports fans that like to attend live games have felt the pinch in recent years. Artists keep wondering why “blue dot fever” has taken over… it’s because concert going has slowly become an unaffordable night out. If someone has to choose between buying groceries for the week and going to a three hour show, they are probably gonna go with the option that includes eating food.
So what’s the fix, if there is one? Thankfully, the Vanderbilt Policy Accelerator didn’t just provide a problem without offering up a couple of solutions. The study admitted that they aren’t the first to propose these alleviations, but that’s all the more reason to go with these two fixes.
No matter what way you look at the problem, it’s clear to see that these are the steps forward:
“This paper proposes that policymakers solve these two problems with (1) a simple bright-line ban on reselling tickets above face value and (2) a 10-percent cap on processing fees charged by the online ticketing platforms. This proposal would preserve online peer-to-peer sales by customers who decide not to attend an event, while eliminating the broker business model that drives up the price of tickets.
And a cap on processing fees would allow ticket platforms to remain in business, while making sure processing fees are reasonable. To be clear, these proposals are not new. There have been countless calls for banning online ticket brokers in the past and for capping ticket platform service charges, including from other academics as well as big name musicians like Pearl Jam, Kid Rock, Dua Lipa, Coldplay, and Radiohead. In fact, Rhode Island already does both.”
Sounds like the rest of the world needs to get with Radiohead (among other artists) and Rhode Island and ban online ticket brokers and cap ticket platform service charges. That is… if they are interested in saving consumers $11 billion dollars.
