and sub rosa reblog
Ticketmaster Tweaks Ticket Fee Transparency Via Twitter
Ticketmaster now lists fees in the beginning of the purchase process, but it stops short of including them in the price of a ticket.
Ticketmaster has announced that it intends to “do a better job” explaining those universally-detested “convenience” fees. They telegraphed this on Twitter — on a Sunday — maybe because there isn’t much to see here.
The number one complaint by music fans (who tend to agree on little) is the additional cost which are disclosed late in the ordering process when you have more invested in closing the deal.
Ticketmaster’s fees are divided between Ticketmaster, venues, promoters, artists, managers, tour managers, etc. on a sliding scale depending on how the deal is structured. They aren’t trivial: As the illustration to the right shows, this fee can add 45 percent to the cost of the transaction.
Tickemaster boss Irving Azoff Tweeted the news on a lazy, end-of-summer Sunday that doesn’t seem to befit an major announcement, perhaps it is much less than meets the eye. Ticketmaster will — we don’t know when — just list these fees up front so that potential customers can see them without clicking all the way through.
Ticketmaster echoed Azoff’s Sunday morning tweet with an official blog post Monday:
We get it — you don’t like service fees. You don’t like them mostly because you don’t understand what the heck they are for. We’ll try to do a better job in this space over the coming months of helping you understand our business, and how our fees compare to others in the industry (both in ticketing and e-commerce in general). But the reality of the live entertainment business is that service fees have become an extension of the ticket price. Most of the parties in the live event value chain participate in these service fees either directly or indirectly – promoters, venues, teams, artists, and yes, ticketing companies – and service fee rebates are our largest annual expense at Ticketmaster.
This new system is not totally transparent because Ticketmaster doesn’t explain the exact breakdown of the fees between the various stakeholders in each transaction. (As Azoff tweeted, “The fees don’t go to TM. Only a portion do.”) If transparency is the point, why not tell fans where these fees are going?
That’s not all. When you select a certain number of tickets from the dropdown menu, Ticketmaster does not update its prices to include the total price and fees for all the tickets, but instead, keeps listing the single ticket price. To that charge, Azoff tweeted in response last night that Ticketmaster “can’t boil all fees down to a per ticket fee until we know how many tix are bought and shipping method chosen, so it has to happen later.”
We understand that the bit about the shipping method, but why not reveal the fees as pertain to single versus group purchases earlier in the process? Ticketmaster charges a flat per-ticket fee now, so it has nothing to hide on this front other than the way those fees add up.
Ticketmaster as much as acknowledges that it’s ridiculous to list the fees separately, saying in its blog post, “You will begin to see many of our clients move to truly all-in pricing, because they know it sells more tickets and makes you happier.”
But the company should go even further and require its clients to list “all-in” prices, even if some artists and other stakeholders are insisting that the fees be listed separately.
Read the original post on Epicenter
This entry was posted by one of one hundred trained flying monkeys employed to retrieve items from The Net with brass and steam powered prosthetic limbs on Tuesday, August 24th, 2010 at 9:27 am and is filed here to tease your curious mind. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response below, or trackback from your own site.
10 Reader Comments (Reply Now)
August 24th, 2010
@ 10:09 am
So let me get this straight, Ticketmaster #1 complaint is service charge, so they will burry it into the ticket price so no one sees it and they can continue to raise these fees. How is this helpful? Futhuremore like some folks mentioned in these comments that service charge will now be included with tickets sold at the box office as well (More revenue for Ticketmaster) So while they say one thing the purpose is another. They really should be called Ticket Magicians because they continually find ways to pull the wool over the consumers eyes. Come on Ticketmaster how bout just eliminating those fees and not burrying them or capping them. You started this business model of shared revenue on service charges and it got be so much and so many hands in the cookie jar that the consumers are pissed and now your answer is to burry the service charges so no one sees it and consumers stop complaining?
August 24th, 2010
@ 10:20 am
45% of the total ticket cost? Try 85%, when I bought Metallica VIP tickets (not cheap to begin with). I used to work near their offices and their employees would get free or pre-sale tickets that they would turn around and sell. To say that music fans are pissed at Ticketmaster is the understatement of the century. Hell, even the musician’s have tried to get around them, but are thwarted every time they try.
August 24th, 2010
@ 10:54 am
agree with this article and abarnold2
Why won’t Ticketmaster require all-in pricing for all shows? The answer could lie with @irvingazoff’s very first tweet from under three weeks ago: “So if you want ticket prices to go down, stop stealing music.”
What a professional this guy is, he attacks his very customers that support the artist by buying the tickets witch his company profits from. Mr. Azoff the people that are more likely to pay the ridiculous ticket prices, are people who are willing to buy these artists albums in support.
August 24th, 2010
@ 10:55 am
I’d like Azoff to open the books about his collusion with LiveNation, the other side of the concert monopoly coin. When LiveNation signs management contracts with venues, the Ticketmaster deal soon follows. Oh yeah, don’t forget how the main beneficiary of Ticketmaster is the scalpers, who are working inside the Ticketmaster system to pick our pockets before we get to the show. Ticketmaster and LiveNation should be investigated for anti-trust crime.
August 24th, 2010
@ 11:15 am
I think I’m missing something here. According to this post, “Ticketmaster’s fees are divided between Ticketmaster, venues, promoters, artists, managers, tour managers, etc. ….” If the prices of tickets, without “Ticketmaster’s fees,” are not “divided between … artists, venues, promoters” and so on, who receives that revenue? Don’t just tell us who gets Ticketmaster’s fees. Tell us who gets the revenue from the underlying ticket price. The easiest assumption for someone not on the inside to make is that a ticket buyer pays once and then pays a portion again — to pay the same people — depending on what can be extorted. Show me the holes in my analysis.
August 24th, 2010
@ 12:08 pm
@xiard I’ve got friends scattered around the country when I want to go to a show far away I ask them to take a visit to the box office. When they want to come to a show round here I buy tickets at the box office. Saved 225 in fees one time.
August 24th, 2010
@ 12:59 pm
I wanted to add a comment here, because I assume people from TicketMaster will read this article. I felt like being something other than a silent objector on this issue for once. I haven’t been to a concert in years, in large part because when it comes down to actually paying, I just can’t stomach the fees. It’s just not in my nature. When I did finally see a concert (KT Tunstall), it was only because I was able to drive to the Botanical Gardens where she was playing and buy a ticket without having to pay the fees. Perhaps I’m the only one that takes a stand like that on principle, but I doubt it. Obviously they (and all of the other people involved down the line) have the right to charge whatever fees they want, but the consequence is that they have made it essentially impossible for me to embrace the idea of going to see live music on a regular basis.
August 24th, 2010
@ 1:07 pm
ticket fees are bullshit just like all of the charges phone companies tack onto your bill.
just roll it all into one price…
August 24th, 2010
@ 1:07 pm
If the 9/11 terrorists had struck TicketBastard instead of the Twin Towers, nobody would have been mad enough to start a war…
(attn gov’t terrorism folk: this is just an ill attempt at humor…. Terrorism = BAD!)
August 24th, 2010
@ 1:26 pm
“Ticketmaster Tweaks Ticket Fee Transparency Via Twitter”
So close… by why not, “Ticketmaster Tweaks Ticket Fee Transparency Through Twitter”?