S1: It's KPBS Midday Edition. I'm Maureen Cavanaugh. Our live concerts becoming only for the rich or for people willing to go into debt for a ticket. If you've tried to buy a concert ticket recently , you probably know the purchasing venue. Seats for a major star is becoming much harder and way more expensive than ever. Like for the Bruce Springsteen concert coming up at Pechanga in December. For a row , one seats are going for $4,000. That's for one ticket. So when trying to get tickets for even moderately well-known acts , chances are you've done business with services like Ticketmaster who act as brokers between the venues and the fans. Ticketmaster has not made it a secret that prices have gone sky high , but they say it's just in an effort to develop fair , market based pricing and squeeze out scalpers. The problem is the prices have also been squeezing out fans. Jason Kepler is with me. He's editor in chief of Motherboard. That's Vice's tech site. And he's been covering this story. And hi , Jason.
S2: Hey , thank you for having me.
S1:
S2: Part of it is the pandemic. You need to realize that this is an industry that for the most part was unable to throw any sort of events for the greater part of a year and a half. You look at something like Taylor Swift. Taylor Swift hasn't been able to tour for years , and now that she is doing the tour , you have this pent up demand. You have fans who want to go see these these their favorite artists , and in part you have venues that were shut down for a long time. You have all of these employees who make a living off of live music , who need to get paid. And you have artists who increasingly have to get paid through live music because they don't make a lot of money streaming. And so they're trying to make some of that money back by increasing the prices of concert tickets. It's a little more complicated than that , but that is a major factor and I think a big reason why people have noticed it in the last few months.
S1: It's also this kind of merger between Ticketmaster and Live Nation.
S2: So Ticketmaster and Live Nation are this mega corporation that in many cases owns or operates many of the biggest venues in the United States. They often they're the ticketing provider and they're also represent the artists in many cases. And so they have a huge ability to control the prices of tickets. Like I mentioned , there's sort of this pent up demand for really any popular artist and there's a massive secondary market for tickets. I think anyone who has tried to buy tickets and who has been unable to has probably hopped over to StubHub , for example , and , you know , maybe had their eyes bleed when they see just the prices of some of these things. I know , I know you mentioned Bruce Springsteen. And so the public gets very mad when they have to pay these really high prices on the secondary market. And so Ticketmaster has said , okay , we're going to try to fight scalpers. And part of the way that they've done that is with this tool called dynamic pricing , which is a simplified version , is comparing it to Uber surge pricing. So when there's very high demand , they sort of use an algorithm to jack up the prices that you pay from the secondary market , from the primary market. So in this case , you mentioned Bruce Springsteen. Another one was Blink one of the two. There were examples of tickets for Blink 22 selling for $250 for floor seats. And this is , you know , nominally a punk band where you'd expect the prices to be cheaper. And part of this is just because there was such high demand that Ticketmaster's algorithm determined that the dynamic pricing is going to kick in and the prices are going to be sky high. So now , rather than everyone being mad at scalpers , they're sort of mad at Ticketmaster and the artists , when they go in expecting to pay 60 , 70 , $80 for a ticket and they are suddenly having to pay 200 , 300 or more , depending on where the ticket is.
S1:
S2: And so in some cases you can get like a nosebleed seat for a set price , say like $50. But when you're when you start talking about floor seats or the lower levels right in front of the stage , those can have dynamic pricing enabled. And there might be a situation where you are paying $500 for a ticket and the person next to you basically the same seat , like right next to each other is paying more or less. And so that definitely raises the question , like what is a face value ticket ? I think one of the biggest problems is there's very little transparency. It's really hard for a consumer to know whether they are paying the same price that other people are paying for these tickets. And then that becomes even more complicated when you start talking about the secondary market , when you start having to buy tickets off of something like StubHub. Okay.
S1: Okay.
S2: Many smaller venues use other other vendors. There's a company called Access that sells tickets. There's services like Eventbrite and some other independent ticket sales that don't use Ticketmaster. When you start talking about the secondary market , I mean , StubHub is one of the biggest ones , but there's a lot of other competitors. There's things like Seatgeek , there's a website called Vivid Seats. You can still buy tickets on eBay or Craigslist. Although definitely buyer beware if you're buying tickets on Craigslist. But any time that you're sort of not buying from the primary seller , which in many cases is Ticketmaster , you are basically you're basically dealing with supply and demand. It's like , how much is your neighbor willing to pay and you're going to pay the highest price. The market will bear more or less. What I recommend is for shows that are not sold out , you can often show up at the venue the night of the concert or even a few days before , and you can buy tickets and often those seats will have no fees attached because when you buy directly from the box office , they don't need to charge the processing fee and the delivery fee and all the other fees that end up getting tacked on when you do use a Ticketmaster or a StubHub.
S1: You know , I've been. I've been looking and oh , for months now there's been a rebellion against Ticketmaster on social media.
S2: But you know , over the years I've tried to buy many tickets off of Ticketmaster and you know , it's a website that's been plagued with problems over the years. It's like sometimes you try to go and buy a ticket and the site crashes. Sometimes you try to buy a ticket and they're sold out in one second. Other times you get tickets in your cart and you go to checkout and there's some sort of error. And so I think it's one of those services where it's like , if everything works well , that's kind of what you expect and you don't give Ticketmaster a lot of credit for , you know , successfully selling you a ticket. But when something goes wrong , it's a really emotional thing because people really want to go see their favorite band or go see , you know , a hot ticket for a sporting event. And when you feel like you've been cheated out of that in some way because the site crashed or because the fees are really high or because you just can't get a ticket because , you know , the scalpers bought all of them or something , It's it becomes one of those situations where you blame Ticketmaster and , you know , in many cases , Ticketmaster deserves the blame. It's , you know , a giant corporation that makes a lot of money from its fees. And it is this vertical , vertically integrated monopoly , like I mentioned. At the same time , I don't think that I don't know that another company would be doing any better. I think it's one of those situations where when a really popular artist comes to town , there's always going to be more people who want to see the show. Then there are tickets available , and so the people who don't get tickets are going to be really upset and they're going to be upset at Ticketmaster usually.
S1: Yeah , but some artists and musicians are also complaining and you would think they'd be on the a good end of rising ticket prices. Tell us about some of the recent controversies.
S2: The big recent one was the cure , and they announced that they were going to try to keep ticket prices very low. And so they announced that tickets were going to be on sale for $20 for members of their fan club or members who went through this system called Verified Fan , which is supposed to keep scalpers out of out of the loop , basically. And a lot of fans did get tickets , but then when they went to to buy the tickets , they noticed that there were fees of like 22 , 25 , $30 per ticket. And so they were paying more in fees and they were actually paying for tickets. And this obviously caused some outrage. The lead singer of the band , Robert Smith , said , you know , this was not what we intended. And Ticketmaster ultimately gave , I think , a $5 per ticket refund to people who bought tickets. But basically there's been a series of scandals in quick succession that has really put the heat on Ticketmaster over the last few months.
S1:
S2: I mean , you know , tickets for the Beatles were five , $10 back in the 60s. And you can extrapolate that out for inflation. And it doesn't come close to what we're paying for tickets now. I think a good sort of apples to apples one for me because I am a big blink 182 fan is back in 2016. You know tickets for Blink 182 were between 20 and $50 per ticket and now there are between 50 and $250 per ticket. And you know , there's been some inflation since 2014 , but not not to the you know , not to the extent where we should have be having to pay five times as much for a similar seat as we were just eight years ago.
S1:
S2: It's , you know , if you want to see a big band , you are not going to be able to go see it for even $100 these days. It's like you're going to have to pay if you're taking your whole family. It can be $1,000 excursion just to get just to get in the door with the worst seats. You know , once you have to pay for parking , once you start taking into account , you know , the prices for food and drinks , it's like taking a vacation or a luxury for a lot of people. I think. I don't want to paint with such a broad brush , though , because there are so many independent venues , smaller venues , smaller acts that you can. Still see you for 5 or $10. But when I think it when it comes to acts that are on the radio , acts that are really popular , acts that haven't toured in a long time , you're looking at these massive expenses associated with just a few hours of one night. Okay.
S1: Okay. So I started out I talked about that $4,000 Bruce Springsteen ticket. But when you think about all the things behind the stage , all that it takes to put on a concert and for everyone involved in that to be compensated fairly. There are many tickets in this Pechanga concert coming up that they're kind of nosebleed seats , but they're going for between 1 and $200.
S2: I mean , I have paid between 100 and $200 for tickets before and I've been thrilled. I've been thrilled with the show. You know , I haven't regretted doing it. And so I think it depends on how big of a fan you are of a specific act , how much money you have. I mean , if you make a lot of money , if you are a member of the 1% , $100 doesn't matter to you. I think if you're struggling to make ends meet , that's could be the difference between being able to go out to eat or pay your bills. And so , I mean , I think we do need to do something to make concerts more accessible to the masses. At the same time , you're absolutely right. There's a lot that goes into these concerts where , you know , you have people who work at the venues , you have sound people , you have a security. You know , it's it's a massive expense just to put on a concert. And so I think part of what's happening right now is we are paying what I've been calling a tax more or less , where , you know , you had all of these venues that were having to pay rent and in some cases having to pay their staff for years and years and are suddenly able to have a full schedule again. And they kind of have to make up , make up for all of that lost income. There were there were some government programs that gave relief to certain venues , but for the most part , a lot of these people have been out of work for a long time and people are paying the price for that now.
S1:
S2: But I think that we have seen in the past when when prices go up and people start to get used to sort of the new normal for prices , they rarely go back down. I don't know that for sure. But that's just my that's my opinion. I think that the high prices are unfortunately here to stay. Okay.
S1: Okay. You were giving me some hope there , but I'll calm myself down.
S3: Yeah , sorry about that.
S4: I've been speaking.
S1: With Jason Kessler. He's editor in chief of Motherboard , Vice's tech site. Jason , thanks a lot.
S2: Thank you so much. Have a good one.
When trying to get tickets for even moderately well-known acts, chances are you’ve done business with services like Ticketmaster.
Ticketmaster hasn’t made it a secret that prices have gone sky-high, but they say it’s just in an effort to develop a fair market. The problem? The soaring prices have also been squeezing out fans.
Guest:
Jason Koebler, editor-in-chief of Motherboard
