But complaints to regulators tell another story. Closing down our secondary sites and creating a ticket exchange on Ticketmaster has always been our long-term plan," Parsons continued. The company admitted no liability. as well as other partner offers and accept our. "Were excited to launch our redesigned website which will make buying and selling tickets fast and simple, with all tickets in the same place.. At that point, I had nothing to get into the game, he recalled. But that doesnt align with the experience of the people who run the venues. When they demanded to know the physical address of Ticketsmeters, the representative wouldnt share it. This problem is not intractable. You refresh your browser as the seconds tick down to a team or artists official sale time. The complaint, filed in a California federal court, states that Ticketmaster has been working with scalpers for profit. 1910 University Dr. MS 1050 | Boise Idaho 83725, Copyright 2022 Morrison Center. And in 2016, StubHub announced a partnership with the Philadelphia 76ers that combined primary and secondary inventory in one place. The friend nodded. For more information, please visit theTicketmaster Resale website. I was able to get around the glitch by reentering the queue altogether a troubleshooting method I learned from Twitter. Now its effectively dominated by software companies. This is a marketplace where its very easy to confuse consumers and give them bad information., In February 2020, leaders in the secondary ticket market were called before Congress to explain their fees. is completed! But on boxofficeticketsales.com, they topped out at $376. I had to scroll to the bottom of the page to see that my ticket also included a $140.65 service fee a 32% markup over the advertised total. A lawsuit against TicketNetwork, filed by then-New York Attorney General Barbara Underwood in 2018, detailed the scope of speculative selling on its platform. Please end this, Ticketmaster. Bot operators began their full-scale assault on the industry more than a decade ago. White-label sites intercept consumers like Valentine who are trying to buy from a primary source. Will you be buying tickets from other verified fans? The thoughts expressed are those of the author. Immediately doubting her purchase, she started poking around. Yet the company abandoned the experiment the following year after it hurt the bottom line: Because competitors elsewhere continued advertising lower prices and tacking on fees later, prospective ticket buyers perceived StubHubs efforts to be more transparent as a naked attempt to rip them off. When I selected a ticket and began the checkout process, I saw an advertised price of $439 and a digital timer ticking down from four minutes. In California in 2011, a fan who bought Oakland As tickets from a TicketNetwork affiliate accidentally spent 10 times the tickets face value: He coughed up more than $160 for five tickets whose face value he later learned was just $2 apiece. Pender instructed his brother to purchase them on the spot. "Our number one priority is to get tickets into the hands of fans so that they can go to the events they love," said Ticketmaster UK's Andrew Parsons in a statement. "The BOSS Act is the best way to restore a pro-consumer ticket market by challenging Ticketmaster's anticompetitive monopoly position," Perry said, adding that the bill was being reconsidered in Congress. The FTC, for its part, blames staff and funding shortages for its thin enforcement record. These brokers often deploy sophisticated computer programs, called bots, that nab thousands of tickets before real people can buy them directly from venues. In April, five members of Congress signed a letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland and acting Federal Trade Commission Chair Rebecca Slaughter urging strong antitrust-regulation enforcement against Live Nation Entertainment "to protect consumers' future access to live events.". But getting tickets to see one of the biggest boy bands is not an easy task. I felt hopeful about getting a pair of floor seats for at least one of the concert days. Get it in your inbox. Brad Glasser, StubHubs director of global communications, said the companys user agreement requires sellers to abide by all applicable laws, including those that forbid the use of bots. Emeryville, CA 94608 Stay up to date with what you want to know. Meanwhile, according to accounts on Twitter, countless tickets were already popping up for outrageous prices on resale websites used by scalpers. The Official Subreddit. Editor's note: Ticketmaster did not immediately respond to Insider's request for comment. the seller doesnt need to post/ship the ticket to the person buying it? The company has a long history of monopolistic practices, acquiring its rival Ticketron in 1991 and merging with Live Nation in 2010 despite the objections of several lawmakers. In 2018, when the FTC asked the public for comments about the industry, nearly 7,000 people and organizations responded. This phrasing didnt bother Pender when the money left his bank account. Earlier this year, fans of Lorde criticized Ticketmaster's endless queues and website crashes as they tried to secure tickets to the singer's "Solar Power" tour. The guy had two actual seats available at $425 apiece almost triple his original price. I thought, Whoa, this is really a scam, Valentine said. Im like, just buy them. The FTC sued the reseller and two of its partners in 2014 for knowingly profiting from deceptive venue-mimicking tactics. The partners named in the suit had employed audacious methods to fool consumers into believing theyd arrived at an official venue box office, according to the complaint. Pender and his buddies, all avid golfers, were eager to attend. Tickets for the Ryder Cup, an international mens golf competition, were slated to go on sale in minutes. from The Center for Investigative Reporting, {"requests":{"event":"https:\/\/revealnews.org\/wp-content\/plugins\/newspack-popups\/includes\/..\/api\/campaigns\/index.php"},"triggers":{"trackPageview":{"on":"visible","request":"event","visibilitySpec":{"selector":"#c616","visiblePercentageMin":90,"totalTimeMin":500,"continuousTimeMin":200},"extraUrlParams":{"popup_id":"id_171634","cid":"CLIENT_ID(newspack-cid)"}}}} When "fans" "resell" through Ticketmaster, Ticketmaster makes money off of this "resale" as well, at a much higher price - scammers sell $50 tickets for $600-$800, as I have seen recently. My brothers were trying to do it. The Department of Justice investigated Pearl Jam's allegations, but the band ultimately lost, with the DOJ concluding Ticketmaster didn't breach antitrust laws. Legislation introduced by Rep. Bill Pascrell, D-N.J., in 2019 would require the same for ticketing. Read more: Owner of Avengers: Endgame URL is holding it for ransom. We recommend saving this file in an easy-to-remember location in your computer. He bought two, at a cost of $150 each. Hey yall! If you already have your season tickets, look for the barcode on the right side of your ticket. Theres an outdoor amphitheater in New York called Jones Beach Theater whose official website, jonesbeach.com, features a cartoon seahorse on the homepages top left corner. He manages Reveals Reporting Networks, which provide more than 1,000 local journalists across the U.S. with resources and training to continue Reveal investigations in their communities. The Bills needed a victory against the Miami Dolphins. Yati Sanghvi experienced a lot of challenges while buying tickets for a BTS concert on Ticketmaster. Nearly three hours after I first joined the ticketing queues, I finally landed a pair of 400-level seats. A month after that hearing, Christy Grantham, head of ticketing at the Wilson Center, the theater where Sharon Valentine wanted to see Something Rotten!, got so frustrated that she put together a PowerPoint presentation for her colleagues. Twenty-five years ago, they might have lined up in the sweltering heat or skipped work to camp out for days in front of a venues box office. When tickets went on sale for the US leg of Harry Styles' "Love on Tour," which was postponed from 2020 to 2021 because of COVID-19, fans on Twitter were especially vocal about Official Platinum Seats, which Ticketmaster's website says are tickets sold at flexible prices by event organizers to enable "market-based pricing.". The disclosure conveys to consumers that the ticket seller has secured the advertised tickets but does not yet possess them, the lawsuit said. 1400 65th St., Suite 200 When it came time for Pearl Jam's next tour, they were forced to use Ticketmaster just like everyone else. Others sell so-called speculative tickets, which the brokers do not actually yet possess. Further along in the transaction, the sites payment step included another HURRY! timer, this one set for 10 minutes, as well as a disclosure revealing that tickets would be delivered by Jan. 23, 2022 nearly a year from the date I was checking out. Ticketmaster's secondary sites GetMeIn And Seatwave, where tickets could be sold at crazy inflated prices, were recently closed down. This past October, Ticketmaster faced a lawsuit following allegations that it was working with online ticket scalpers. Ticket resale is no longer driven by fast-talkers peddling their wares outside U.S. arenas. Minutes after the event sold out, plenty of inventory suddenly became available, priced well above face value, on a variety of secondary market sites. Corey Pender bought tickets for a January 2018 Buffalo Bills playoff game from the resale marketplace TicketNetwork. Photo by DaShaunae Marisa for Reveal. In fact, for more than a decade, secondary resale markets have cranked up their own profit margins by allowing the sale of tickets that sellers dont yet possess sparking reams of consumer complaints, as well as warnings from regulatory agencies. A 74-page spreadsheet the company produced included more than 4,000 of them: chittychittybangbangonbroadway.com, jerryseinfeldtickets.com, foofighterstickets.info, chicagowhitesoxtickets.org and more. Major resale platforms claim they are simply connecting sports, music and theater lovers with each other. I had to sell some because my wife got sick. Are we going to Jacksonville? he mouthed silently as the father of the bride took the mic. In 2014, the prominent reseller StubHub piloted a solution to hidden markups called all-in pricing. The prices seemed a bit steep, but Something Rotten! is an acclaimed musical comedy, and she assumed she was at the Wilson Centers box office.

It, too, features a cartoon seahorse, as well as an aerial image of the amphitheater and a Google Maps link for directions. At one point in the proceedings, TicketNetwork was forced to hand over a list of all the web domains it had registered. Ticketmaster, the official seller for the United Center in Chicago, had announced that listings for a Jan. 24, 2022, show wouldnt go on sale until four days later: Feb. 8. Grantham said she knows this personally because shes observed brokers on StubHub advertising Wilson Center tickets she still had in her inventory: On Granthams own seating chart, the price to one event was $49.43; StubHubs, meanwhile, was $88. By using "verified" resale, your seats will appear on Ticketmaster.com. Press question mark to learn the rest of the keyboard shortcuts. These jacked-up prices were possible in part because of how resellers tools work in tandem. TicketNetwork has also landed in hot water for other consumer practices. It would not only take away some of the stress and pressure associated with ticket purchases but also create a more equitable system for all music fans. For me, the stress and anxiety stemmed from one question: How will Ticketmaster screw me over this time? They are safe. But trying to secure tickets for the BTS stadium shows was by far my worst experience yet. As a huge fan and someone who'd had tickets to the group's canceled 2020 tour before getting reimbursed, I was thrilled. On day two, when I began trying to get tickets, we were told VIP soundcheck seats wouldn't be available. Were all sitting there, Did anyone get tickets? Pender recalled. In a recent op-ed for The Hill, Perry wrote that Ticketmaster could also hold back tickets to create a false sense of scarcity. Duncan is based in Reveal's Emeryville, California, office. He also helps lead audience engagement initiatives around Reveals stories and assists local reporters in elevating their work to a national platform. By the end of the week, I felt fortunate that I managed to get any tickets at all. While sometimes, when looking for tickets that were sold out, these sites can be helpful, Ticketmaster is directly scamming fans out of getting tickets entirely. Sign up for our newsletter to get our investigations and reporters insights delivered straight to your inbox. Taking on powerful interests demands lots of time, a strong backbone andyoursupport. Improbably, miraculously, the Bills were headed to the playoffs. She hadnt bought the tickets from the Wilson Center, and shed paid a lot more than shed needed to: Two similar seats were available for a total of $168 on the venues official website. Ahead of a July 2015 U2 concert in New York, a single bot purchased 1,012 tickets from vendors in one minute. that is only if you buy the tickets through ticketmaster! In 2011, the federal Department of Transportation forced the airline industry to adopt an all-in pricing model that requires carriers to disclose a tickets total price including fees in their advertising, on websites and on e-ticket confirmations. There was an error and we couldn't process your subscription. A file should pop up. Our number one priority is to get tickets into the hands of fans so that they can go to the events they love," said Ticketmaster UK's Andrew Parsons in a statement. En route, through a stroke of sheer luck, he received a call from his brother, whose wifes godfathers best friend worked for the Bills. Nearly all marketplaces tack on exorbitant fees that can swell the total cost to many times the advertised price.