Tickets: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO)

moving on our main story tonight concerns live entertainment it's one of the things that people missed the most during the pandemic and everyone was very excited to see it start to come back it's been more than a year without them but now the hampton coliseum is bringing back concerts i'm pumped i'm ready to go i'm vaccinated i'm ready to go i've been locked up for a year 10 months and i'm going to let loose and destroy this place you know what let him have that everyone missed their comfort zone with a pandemic for instance i can guarantee that the sentence i've been locked up for a year and ten months and now i'm here to destroy this place was also said several times at the reopening of an ann taylor loft everyone's been a bit edgy live entertainment undeniably offers unique experiences from taylor swift unveiling her squad to a hologram 2-pack performing at coachella to this unsurpassed moment from a justin bieber concert [Applause] good good i'm glad that happened and while it is amazing to watch that together now just imagine being there to see it live in person but if you've bought or even tried to buy tickets recently you know those experiences come at a cost i just spent the last hour and 15 minutes trying to get pink tickets if you don't want to be behind the stage you're looking at 500 per ticket who can afford that for the amount that i'm paying to see any random ban that's going on tour they better be serenading me why are bad bunny tickets so dammit you're making me want to sell my husband's feet on only fans wow that is a striking sentiment there actually hold on hold on for sale husband feet only fans yes we did it we created a whole story in just five words suck it hemingway suck it now if you think tickets have been getting ridiculously expensive they have the average price for a popular content has more than tripled since the mid-90s vastly outpacing inflation and that is before they hit the resale market and with huge artists starting to put tickets on sale for summer shows that irritation is only likely to increase so tonight we thought we'd try and explain exactly why bad bunny tickets are so expensive who is making money off them and what you might be able to do about it that does not involve selling your husband's feet and let's start with the company that you're probably immediately thinking of ticketmaster they are the biggest player in the ticket market by far and claim they strive to put fans first and that the people we care most about are the fans and yet as anyone who has ever bought a ticket from them knows that's generally not the feeling you get when dealing with them as this youtuber explains if there was anything that i had as a wish for any big artist or band that comes through whether it's kpop whether it's a western artist i don't give a if you're a magician any big ticket person that ever comes through and does a concert never use ticketmaster use literally anyone else they are terrible okay first excellent shade thrown at magicians there it was noted and it was appreciated but they're absolutely right ticketmaster is one of the most hated companies on earth which is really impressive because remember this is a planet in which at t also exists hey guys we've still got a few weeks until the merger goes through and i gotta say it's gonna be a bumpy ride until then and also after and look it is no secret ticketmaster is horrible but exactly how it is horrible is genuinely interesting let's start with one of the things that infuriates people the most about them and that's the fees they can come as a nasty surprise at the very end of a transaction and can raise from the annoying to the completely bat we found a ticket to a 2019 kids pop concert with fees that amounted to 75 percent of face value for one ticket to a time in the creator show next week the fees had an extra 78 and the fees on a 15 ticket to a monster truck rally in houston was 16.41 that's more than the cost of the ticket itself which is clearly ridiculous although i will say in the case of that kids bop tour it may actually have been worth it because they could have played this i just took a dna test turns out i'm 100 that kid even when i'm crying crazy yeah i got some problems that's the human in me bling stop it stop it right now and forever i have so many issues with what you just saw there the least of which is what they did to the lyrics because if you are saying took a dna test turns out i'm 100 that kid you were either a selling a paternity dispute on maury or be returning to your hometown after having been kidnapped 30 years ago i swear guys i just took a dna test turns out i'm 100 that kid and while it is both easy and fun to on ticketmaster for their fees as they point out they're not solely responsible for them instead they say ticket fees are determined in collaboration with our clients who share in a portion of the fees we collect which is true ticketmaster enters into contracts that set and share fees with the venues where concerts are held the promoters who book market and organize the shows and sometimes even the artists themselves you could say ticketmaster's business model is to stand in as the bad guy and let all those other players hide behind them or you could not say that and just let ticketmaster's former ceo basically admit it directly to congress when people hear what ticketmaster service charge is you know ticketmaster was set up as a system where they took the heat for everybody in that service charge are the credit card fees the rebates to the buildings rebates sometimes to artists sometimes rebates to promoters so ticketmaster has been that you know we're like the irs we deliver bad news yeah it's true ticketmaster is very much like the irs in that it's an opaque bureaucracy takes more out of your paycheck than you think it should and is represented by men so catastrophically uncharismatic they look like they're putting themselves to sleep although it is worth knowing that while ticketmaster does share fees with other parties some of those other parties may also be ticketmaster because just one year after that hearing they completed a gigantic merger with live nation which owns or operates many of the country's top music venues and call themselves the largest producer of live music concerts in the world and since then they've had something of a chokehold on live entertainment in fact the doj recently alleged that the company had repeatedly strong-armed venues into using ticketmaster and retaliated against or threatened venues that did not use its services and while life nation denies that there is no denying just how much power it has even before that merger pearl jam at the height of their fame tried to do a talk without ticketmaster or their affiliated venues but their manager admitted at the time they were going to have to play at weird places like a ski resort in lake tahoe and a fairground in san diego and if pearl cham in the 90s doesn't have the power to walk away from ticketmaster nobody does so when you wonder understandably why can't my favorite artist or magician just use another ticketing company the truth is if they want to perform at a venue that has an exclusive contract with ticketmaster they actually can't do that but fees are obviously not the only complaint that people have with the ticket buying process another is tickets disappearing before we have a chance to buy them concerts for major artists can sell out so fast sometimes they even make the news you know you're hot when you can sell out madison square garden 20 000 seats 30 seconds that's what justin bieber did we're talking about two shows at the garden which seats around 20 000 people selling out in less time than it takes me to apply my lip gloss that's crazy yeah that is crazy not just bieber selling out 20 000 seats in 30 seconds though but also that she puts lip gloss on for over 30 seconds that is just way too much time i'll show you how you do it put a timer on the screen right now check this out stop the clock look at that not even close to 30 seconds i didn't break a sweat and i look great and here's the thing selling 20 000 seats in 30 seconds would be crazy if that's what bieber did but he didn't because a report from the new york ag later revealed fewer than 2 000 tickets were actually put on sale that day and that's by no means a one-off for many top shows less than 25 percent of tickets are initially released to the general public and in audit of the blaisdell center in honolulu they found that when janet jackson played there in 2015 only eight percent of all tickets went to the general public and when mariah carey played there the next year it was just seven percent that was presumably for her fame to mariah good luck getting in to see this tour and if you're wondering where on earth the rest of the tickets go well they are deliberately held back to be sold in other ways and often a big chunk goes to credit card companies as you might know from ads like this when lauren broke up with me she said jack you're a little boring boring boring [Music] use any city card to get the benefits of private pass more concerts more events more experiences oh yeah lauren would a boring guy use our breakup as an excuse to sign up for a credit card so that i could quietly stand backstage during an alicia keys concert and an on-paper sensible decision i submit that a boring guy would not do that lauren and i await your confirmation you're up lauren you're up and it's not it's not just tickets being siloed away for credit card offers they can also wind up being put on sale by the promoter or a radio station or through an artist's fan club which sounds fine but a lot of average fans can't afford special credit cards or don't have time to jump through hoops in a fan club but one group very much has that time and the resources and that is professional ticket brokers these are the individuals or companies that buy up tons of tickets before you can get them sometimes with the help of bots that snap them up incredibly quickly because as you i'm sure assumed all of those stupid are you a robot tests have very much not kept them all out because every time ticket size come up with a new technology bots find a way around it and once brokers have those tickets they will flip them on the secondary market at a huge markup and at this point we should probably talk about the secondary market it's sites like seatgeek stubhub and surprise surprise ticketmaster again these sites badly want you to think of them as fantu fan marketplaces ticketmaster even describes its resale marketplace like this our objective is if that secondary market exists we want to create a safe environment and platform for you to be able to exchange those tickets you've bought tickets to go see someone you love at the 11th hour your babysitter can't make it you should have the right to recoup your costs on that ticket right because the last thing that you want is resentment toward your baby to start festering because of a missed concert every time you look at their chubby cheeks you'll just think if you weren't born i'd have seen the red hot chili peppers live and i'd have been happier you're the worst but the truth is resale sites are not just fanta fan at all in fact a government report found that professional brokers represent either the majority or the overwhelming majority of ticket sales on these sites and they make a lot of money doing it the new york ag's office found brokers mark up the price of tickets by an estimated 49 on average but sometimes by more than a thousand percent and in one case by 7 000 that was for a one direction concert by the way and let me just say i don't actually regret it it was worth it my favorite one direction is nile i don't even know who the other ones are and i get mad when they sing over the top of him and ticket selling sites go out of their way to cater to their broker clients because they bring them in a lot of money for instance while they limit the number of tickets that any one account can buy to an event there is an obvious way for brokers to get around that and that's simply to have more than one account this is a practice ticketmaster has long been aware of there is a ticket broker conference in vegas each year and just watch what happened when reporters went undercover there and talked to someone at ticketmaster's booth ticketmaster was busy surrounded by scalpers i want to know the straight goods on whether ticketmaster is going to be policing us using our multiple accounts i have a gentleman who's got over 200 ticketmaster.com accounts how many brokers are using multiple accounts actually pretty damn near every one of them yeah of course they were because you weren't stopping them although i will say i'm in absolute awe of anyone who can remember user names and passwords for over 200 accounts i just use one password for all my accounts and it's niall horan is the best one direction exclamation mark don't tell anyone about my perfect password now i have to tell you ticketmaster insist that it spends millions on technology to weed out bad behavior and that that employees comments were not reflective of its policies but even taking them at their word which i am not inclined to do their whole system is designed to be opaque especially when it comes to brokers selling tickets because all the resale sites including ticketmaster actively choose to provide anonymity to them so when you buy a ticket on the secondary market there is no way to know the identity of who you're buying from whether it is a fan whose babysitter just canceled or a broker who might have 500 other tickets on sale for that same event which when you think about it is a bit weird on most sites where people resell things you can see who you are buying from take ebay for instance if you saw this listing for a mickey mouse shaped potato available for fifty dollars you could look at the seller see their username know that they have a 100 favorable rating and feel confident in your purchase and i already know what you're thinking you're thinking john you bought that potato didn't you and it's under your desk right now no it is not under my desk it's over here behold [Music] yes of course we bought it as you can see it definitely kind of looks a bit like mickey mouse the point is brokers with their identities concealed can snap up large numbers of tickets and resell them at a massive markup and meanwhile the secondary market sites are themselves making money by charging a percentage on those ludicrous ticket prices we found a ticket for adele selling on seat geek for sixteen hundred and ninety dollars plus five hundred and thirty eight dollars in fees and look here is where we need to deal with an uncomfortable fact which is the question of what that ticket is actually worth because an economist will tell you it is worth whatever people will pay so if someone is willing to spend over two thousand dollars including fees for an adele ticket that is what it's worth as gross as that sounds but if adele doesn't want to charge that there is going to be a gap between the face value of the ticket and what someone can get for it and the whole industry is going to scramble in to exploit it and unfortunately live events are uniquely vulnerable to this because they are inherently rare bad bunny for instance is probably only coming to your town once a year at most and a lot more people want to see him than there are seats and while bad bunny could charge the going rate for every ticket that he sells he probably doesn't want to do that because he'd look like an which he very much isn't he is not a bad bunny at all despite the name if he's anything he's a very good bunny and as long as artists with all good intentions price their tickets below the market exploitation is going to happen and that woman's husband is going to have to show feet although it is worth noting some artists have tried to sneakily get the scalper price for their tickets without anyone really noticing remember how justin bieber was supposedly selling out venues in seconds while tons of tickets were held back and another stop on that same tour reporters looked into some of the tickets on resale sites and found something surprising section 205 row g 14 tickets listed for 246 dollars each and get this ticketing document showed that entire g row went to bieber's own tour i think there is no question when one looks at the document that bieber is scalping his own tickets yeah it's true a group of tickets held for beamer's tour ended up being released not to the box office but straight to the secondary market and on one hand i do get the impulse of if someone is going to make 246 off that ticket shouldn't it be the person who is doing the performing but it still doesn't feel great does it and it's also not going to stop me from showing you that clip of him falling down a hole again [Applause] excellent i mean it gets better every time you see it and look b was not unique in doing this a few years back in most that life nation has helped metallica place tickets directly onto the resale market admitting about a dozen other artists had asked them to do this in recent years and before you worry no i am not one of the artists putting tickets to this show straight onto the resale market we do it the right way distributing tickets at random to anyone who happens to be walking past the studio at the time half of these idiots think i'm the warm-up act for drew barrymore she'll be out any minute folks she'll be out anymore she's so glad you're here okay all right so when you take all of this together the reason tickets are so hard to get when they're on sale is that they're often not on sale and the reason they cost so much on the secondary market is that you're paying exorbitant fees to the platform and might be buying from a broker or in rare cases even from the artists themselves and this whole ecosystem enriches a lot of people who do not contribute anything to the actual show that you're paying to see and at the centre of all of this is ticketmaster because it turbo charged many of the shitty practices that have now become industry standard so what can we do well congress could inject transparency into this process by passing laws that require sites to disclose their fees upfront along with the identity of the seller on resale sites but the truth is much of the power here is actually in the hands of the artists because the biggest ones could do things to tamp down the secondary market like making their tickets non-transferable meaning resale is restricted bands like pearl jam have experimented with this and before their 2022 was postponed they even worked with ticketmaster to create an online marketplace where fans could sell tickets that they didn't need but with no additional fees and not for a profit that seems like the model that everyone should be using here but if regulators don't act and artists don't have the clout or the inclination to require companies to put those guard rails in place i'm afraid you as a fan are going to remain vulnerable to the worst parts of this system one driven by one of the most widely loathed companies on the planet that became even bigger due to a merger that probably shouldn't even have been allowed and i know that all of this may feel a little unsatisfying but if it's any consolation to you i personally promise to continue to offer the only accurately priced entertainment on the market you know what i'm talking about i'm talking about one in which tickets for this show remain available for free and you can come watch a decaying man shout numbers apply lip gloss shoddily and shamelessly earn back your goodwill by showing your potato that you have to admit it does look a bit like a famous mouse

Channel: LastWeekTonight

Views: 4,255,040

Keywords:

Id: -_Y7uqqEFnY

Length: 19min 49sec (1189 seconds)

Published: Sun Mar 13 2022

Reddit Comments

[u/BoogsterSU2]

Fuck you, Ticketmaster.

[u/PetyrDayne]

How has no other big tech company come for Ticketmasters throat?

[u/El_human]

I’m still waiting on a refund for a ticket that I bought “resale“ for a show that never even happened. For some reason it was listed on Ticketmaster site, but not on the actual venue site. And Ticketmaster was selling tickets. I didn’t even notice till the day of when I looked at the artist site, and saw they weren’t even on tour yet.

[u/peon47]

I live in Ireland. We passed a law last year that bans the reselling of tickets for more than face value. If your babysitter cancels, you can sell the ticket on to get your money back, but you can't make a profit on it.

[u/Paddlesons]

I am so SO glad I simply don't have the desire at all to go to these kinds of events. Sorry that others that seem to enjoy them have to deal with this bullshit.

[u/Summebride]

People in the comments will be saying various forms of how Oliver doesn't need to be mad about everything. Personally, I'm glad he at least explained the mechanics of this corrupt monopoly, and I'd say his "anger" was dialled back and in proportion compared to some of the atrocities we're living through.

For years I've resigned to the idea that concert and sports tickets have become a lot like lottery tickets: they're a tax on those who don't know math or the value of a dollar.

The product they offer is no way worth the jacked up price of these tickets. They've lost me forever.

[u/NewClayburn]

I wish we had a government that would actually do something about abuse from corporations.

[u/soonerfreak]

Rent seekers really are one of the major parasites of society. People who generate zero good and simply exist to buy and sell items with limited quantities. Or even worst, force their existence into law like the companies that buy medicine from the pharmaceutical companies and then sell it to the pharmacies, a business im pretty sure he has also covered. Without a crackdown on rent seekers these parasites will continue to fuck over everyone else.