Ticketmaster and dynamic pricing

The in demand algorithm is really quite simple. A range will be set by the promoter and as tickets sell the price creeps up. If too many people reject a particular price, then the demand price starts to fall. Demand pricing tries to find the correct market value for a ticket at a particular time.

So for example, we will say during a sale demand pricing is triggered, and prices rise to €300. All of a sudden people at the top of the queue stop buying and pull out. The price will then fall back to a level to where the ratio of buys to fails becomes acceptable.

As tickets continue to be sold, the market becomes aware of the scarcity and the price rises. The purchase to fail ratio changes too and also reflects the size of the queue remaining.

The only way to defeat demand pricing is a collective refusal to engage with it. That requires a level of organising which I doubt is possible these days

But the consumer is spending hours of their time and being kept in the dark as to what they’ll actually have to pay. If they do manage to get through the queue then they’re presented with obscenely high priced tickets and given a few minutes to decide whether or not to pull the trigger. Between the stress of it all, hype and fomo, it all seems designed to prey on fans and bleed them dry.

It’s a completely scummy practice that people shouldn’t be subjected to.

I think it is unfair that price information is withheld from the queue. All people have to go on regarding the state of the ticket market during a sale is social media, which really isn't good enough.

I think dynamic prices should be required to be provided in real time to the queue. I think this is something that promoters and acts would strongly resist. If the queue starts to collapse as prices increase then that takes away much of the pressure of making the purchase when presented with it.

Yes, quench the instantaneous demand would be a good idea, except there's a massive hole in this plan, and that's the bot accounts which is buying up tickets. Even if you could get the humans to agree to back-off, the bots would just attempt to snap up the tickets.

The solution here is probably the blockchain as a means of controlling all of this mayhem.

No matter what "system" there is, the consumer won't know until they get to the top of the queue what price options are availabe (because lower priced tickets may no longer be available). They might know the tiered prices that MIGHT be available to them and MAY have had the chance to decide before hand how much they were willing to pay.

And again, the consumer is not forced into anything - they have the opportunity to decide/chose.

Just because it can be identified as a component within an economic system doesn't make it ok.

😮😨😕…you could raise some eyebrows over in the Oasis reunion thread…! 😉

At the rate things are going with ticket price inflation we may have to mortgage our homes to buy tickets for concerts in 10 years time !

Regulation can't come soon enough imo .

Right now in Ireland the small gig economy is healthy in Dublin anyway .. But that is not the case over in UK where these big giant concert venues and hyper groups are sucking the money and life blood out of the music business , with smaller venues closing down and less and less smaller groups playing gigs. UK has been hit worse than we have in the last few years and people just don't have a lot of spare cash to go to gigs .

If people are putting money aside for entertainment out of a tight family budget , one or two of these high priced big events might mean a cut for any smaller gigs or nights out that they may have gone to before .

This is what the greed of these gougers are bringing about , the demise of music industry , and exactly why people like Robert Smith and a few others, who could charge higher prices if they wanted to , are speaking up about it .

Disgusting that these bands who go for this quick money have the utter cheek to talk about working class roots as in the Gallaghers , or helping food banks as with Taylor Swift, when they are dismantling the fabric of the industry and making it difficult for fans and younger bands starting out , alike .

Oasis say they want 200 million net for the "tour" but only want to play 15 shows. Average ticket price is going to need to be 333 odd euro (lets just forget about the other income streams that maybe available via the concerts, merch, food drinks etc)

That there is where it all clearly went wrong because Live Nation obviously stood up and said… "errum - the average ticket price for a stadium gig is 89 EUR, but with dynamic pricing and our monopoly of the market we can get you the average of 333 EUR".

You see if the opportunity hadn't been there in the first place to facilitate that request by the Gallagher brothers, then they would have been told to walk back their payment demands and we wouldn't be having this conversation. Capiche?

Ah yeah, poor Liam and Noel. Being frogmarched against their will into a dastardly scheme.

They were given a range of options to make their money and they and their management picked one.

Look, I get that there is a massive dynamic there in terms of the net weight of the brothers reforming, but at the end of the day there is a facilitator within the equation who isn't being upfront or independent in their dealings with the public and are an established monopoly as well as a closed marketplace. That's the crux here and if there was better competition out there then Joe Public would be getting a better deal and a fairer hand dealt to them.

If you disagree with that then we have other issues.

Sure. But the ultimate blame lays with them who signed off on it.

Except some who got presale lottery tickets..

Well that's not true. Check the Oasis thread and you'll see a load of posters say they got regular priced tickets in the general sale, myself included.

There's an assumption that every ticket was sold under dynamic pricing which clearly wasn't the case.

I haven't justified it. Not once. I've called Oasis greedy for what they've done a least a dozen times.

I've no idea how you think that pointing out who is responsible for the greed and pricing is somehow justifying it. I suggest you carefully re-read what I said and then maybe you can retract that bullshït claim.

I paid for my face value ticket at 8.42am. So there were at least 42 minutes of people paying face value.

And no, I wouldn't feel happy about being asked to pay 425 for a standing ticket as it's way too high a price. I'd have walked away.

I understand however I don't think the monopolistic nature of TM is a factor here. Ultimately they are just a platform for selling tickets that have a few features than can be turned on or off but at the end of the day the artist dictates the financial side of it. TMs main role is to work on behalf of its clients to get as many tickets sold as possible at a price point that the clients and consumers deem acceptable.

I don't think any other platform (and there are a few that come to mind) would work off any different a role so I really don't think that's as big a deal as is being stated.

Ultimately Oasis are the monopoly here. They set the prices, there's no competition for them. If you want to see Oasis you jump through the hoops that have defined and pay whatever price is presented to you at the final stage. Outside of possibly a few UI enhancements, maybe better traffic management/tech and perhaps less commission from both sides would there really be that much difference if there were more completion on the platform side had the artist made the same set of requirements for overall pricing?

Customers were “made” to sit through morning queues to find out what price the tickets were due to this “dynamic pricing”. Because of this anti-competitive system, there is no way for a customer to know the prices otherwise before they buy.

most of that goes to Coldplay and some to promoter! Coldplay will get anywhere between €2-4 of the ticketmaster fee

The idea of showing the price range available live while queuing would help the consumer. Have it update every few minutes.

If you're queuing and you see the cheapest tickets are available at €80 you might be happy to stay in queue. If they go to €150 you might have a think, and if they go above €200 you might decide to pull out. But you have time to think and decide while still queuing.

Everyone will just log on when it opens then so that doesn't solve anything.

I also only found out that your position is the queue was random recently, previously I would always log on as soon as the waiting room opened.

It's not like it took any effort, log on, make a cup of tea etc, do something else in the meantime. You know ticket sales aren't starting until they're starting so it's not like you have to be glued to the screen.

This isn't gonna solve too many problems either - especially if you give people more time to complete their transaction. There will always be situations where this information won't be correct and people will no doubt complain.

I don't have an issue really with dynamic pricing because if you do, what you are really saying is that an artist should not be allowed choose the price of their art. That's something I don't agree with.

What I think needs to be improved is information to the buyer. If artists want their tickets to be fully market priced then they need to provide information on the state of the market throughout the sale. This includes the amount of unsold tickets and the current market price, updated at least every minute.

IMO people conflate different issues and assign blame randomly. The process stinks to high heavens and everyone in this chain contributes to it.

On the ticket prices itself (regular and dynamic) there are 2 key factors: the artist and the promoter. The artist says "I need such and such money to come play at your city". Then the promoter says "it's gonna cost that much money to do the show and I want to make that much profit out of it" so they start calculating prices etc. In this part I think it is greed from the artist and the promoter. The whole dynamic pricing (as previously said) is because there are people that really want to go to the gig that can afford and are willing to pay the dynamic price. Thus the promoter can keep the majority of the tickets at a regular price (which is not cheap to begin with) and get the extra money from the dynamic prices. IMO so far Ticketmaster isn't to blame for the dynamic prices.

Two issues that TM are to blame.

First the extortionate fees. 10 euro minimum fee on each big concert ticket for what? What exactly do they handle? They are just a facilitator and do almost nothing. For a gig like Oasis, TM must have gotten 1.6 million euro (160.000 tickets x 10 euro) for doing nothing. Someone in another thread has said that this money are split between TM, promoter and artist - not sure if it is correct but I'll take their word for it. In my opinion, this is the one that governments etc need to go hard on TM.

The second (more minor) issue is that you only find the exact pricing only when you are ready to buy the ticket. I'm from Greece and old enough to remember before Ticketmaster where the promoters would advertise the prices before the tickets went on sale. Obviously dynamic pricing wasn't a thing back then but the promoter would clearly state if there was an early bird or that the first few tickets were cheaper etc. And the fees were reasonable. Not sure if anything can be done in this area.