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Internal emails reveal Ticketmaster helped scalpers jack up prices, FTC says

(arstechnica.com)
327 points dthread3 | 1 comments | 19 Sep 25 18:47 UTC | HN request time: 0.213s | source
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leakycap ◴[19 Sep 25 19:15 UTC] No.45305308[source]▶
Hard to care what happens to a company like TicketMaster. As you build your company, ask yourself how they ended up like this.

Do you think the founders had this outcome in mind when they started (everyone hating them and seeing them as an evil money grab)? They probably started with a different ethos.

A good reminder that what we do can change - we need to instill our values into the basics of everything we build, otherwise we'll just be building the next TicketMaster, Oracle, or Meta.

As far as I know, we get one go. Let's build things that matter and make the world a better place. Greed will even ruin concerts otherwise.

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quickthrowman ◴[19 Sep 25 19:42 UTC] No.45305632[source]▶
I go to a few concerts a year and enjoy them, but the only Ticketmaster concert I’ve ever been to was last year. I paid $115 each (with fees!) for good floor seats to see Weezer, Dinosaur Jr, and the Flaming Lips in 2024. The multi hundred or multi thousand dollar event tickets are insane, I’d never pay that much for a concert.

I am lucky to have local independent music venues (First Avenue in Mpls, they own a few local venues) with sub $100 ticket prices that have acts I want to see, which isn’t the case for everyone. Taylor Swift fans (for example) are squeezed as hard as possible for every penny, I think it’s absolutely disgusting.

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1. magicalhippo ◴[19 Sep 25 20:00 UTC] No.45305862[source]▶
Here in Oslo Norway, Ticketmaster is almost everywhere. Yet the local venues, Ticketmaster ones included, have tons of shows in the $30-50 range. That's for venues with a capacity for 500-1500 people.

We have larger venues for larger artists, almost always international ones, and there ticket prices are often starting at around $80-100 and quickly go way up if you want a good location.

However personally I found I enjoy the sub-$40 concerts the most. Mainly because the smaller venue lets you get close, sound is usually much better and quite often I find a lot more passion on stage at these venues, which turns into more memorable experiences. And if the concert ends up not being my thing or just not that great, then I've just wasted the price of a few beers so no big deal.

One thing that keeps Ticketmaster in its reins here in Norway is our legislation, which limits the kind of processing fee shenanigans and similar they can do. Also scalpers became much less of a problem after they introduced a law that you can't charge more than the original price when reselling tickets.