Photo: Joe Berchtold | By Jared Gans, The Hill / In The Know | Live Nation Entertainment President and Chief Financial Officer Joe Berchtold said “speculative ticketing” is to blame for people’s difficulty with buying event tickets. Berchtold said during an interview with Axios Publisher Nicholas Johnston at the outlet’s “What’s Next Summit” on Wednesday that speculative ticketing is legal but would be considered a “deceptive” practice for any other industry.
He pointed to secondary sellers as the cause of tickets starting to be sold before TicketMaster officially puts them on sale — explaining that while a sale for Beyonce concerts was set to happen on a Friday a few weeks ago, the tickets were already being sold on secondary websites days in advance.
“They’re selling a ticket that they don’t have, and they’re betting that when that on-sale happens on Friday, they can use bots, swoop in and buy tickets to fulfill the order,” he said. “And if they can’t fulfill it, they’ll refund you. No harm for them. But that’s not clear to the fans.”
Berchtold said consumers mostly blame TicketMaster, which is owned by Live Nation Entertainment, as part of their belief that the company “controls all of this.” He said TicketMaster does not set the price of the ticket and most of the service fee that consumers are charged goes to the venue for the event.
Controversy arose in November after millions of fans of singer Taylor Swift were not able to buy tickets through TicketMaster as the website crashed due to high demand or did not receive their tickets despite buying them.
Live Nation has argued that demand exceeding expectations and availability caused the technical difficulties, but the situation caused members of Congress to launch an investigation into possible monopolistic behavior from the company and demand answers about what happened.
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Read the rest of the story here:
https://thehill.com/blogs/in-the-know/in-the-know/3923844-live-nation-head-says-speculative-ticketing-to-blame-for-difficulty-with-buying-event-tickets/
[Thanks to Alex Teitz for contributing this article! http://www.femmusic.com]
Photo: Joe Berchtold of Live Nation
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March 30, 2023| Music-Related Business| Barb Dye