this post was submitted on 07 Sep 2024
591 points (98.8% liked)
Videos
14271 readers
302 users here now
For sharing interesting videos from around the Web!
Rules
- Videos only
- Follow the global Mastodon.World rules and the Lemmy.World TOS while posting and commenting.
- Don't be a jerk
- No advertising
- No political videos, post those to !politicalvideos@lemmy.world instead.
- Avoid clickbait titles. (Tip: Use dearrow)
- Link directly to the video source and not for example an embedded video in an article or tracked sharing link.
- Duplicate posts may be removed
Note: bans may apply to both !videos@lemmy.world and !politicalvideos@lemmy.world
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Source/disclaimer: I work for an LN-partnered independently owned venue, so I'm likely to be very biased.
Live Nation/Ticketmaster is definitely a monopoly AND ticket prices are definitely gouged.
However, from what I've heard with many people in the industry, the current antitrust suit isn't likely to change anything. Partnered/independently owned venues will still use Ticketmaster. Live Nation venues will still use Ticketmaster (unless they're forced not to).
Additionally, most people that are complaining about prices don't know that Live Nation typically has little say in the set ticket prices. The artist and/or their tour management sets them. And if people buy them, the prices stay the same (or go up, with the recent dynamic pricing fiasco). If not, the price is discounted.
Tickets aren't even LN's primary source of revenue. It's food and beverage sales, which are also gouged. (Profit margins of 80-90% per item)
LN will continue to blame scalpers (or brokers, the politically correct industry term), which is partially the truth. While this is something I'm not fully aware of, LN has done some things to bring the prices down brought on by brokers. One of them is platinum seating. The most expensive tickets that get resold on ticketmaster are typically purchased by LN and then resold at the "normal" price. Yes, LN is losing money doing this, but it's something they can use to cover their ass in the DOJ suit.
Another thing that several people have already mentioned is the cost of production is MUCH higher than it used to be, especially for stadium shows.
I don't even go to shows myself anymore because of how ridiculous the prices are. We can only hope the DOJ suit does something.
I don't think LN are losing money doing this. They are artificially rasing prices for the real people buying platinum tickets without any additional costs.
If this is true, they're effectively creating demand by removing a large set of seats from the initial offering pool. This means they can say "tickets are selling fast", without lying if you include that they're just referring to the set on sale right now, not the total number of tickets.
This does smell like false advertising though, but I wouldn't put it past the cracked US legal system for this to be totally legal.