By Walt Hickey Check out this past week’s Sunday special, where I talked to Neil Paine about what to look forward to this Fall in sports. Ticketmaster The Canadians have cracked the enigma machine of our time: how sites like Ticketmaster manage to financially gouge music lovers trying to get a seat at a concert. By monitoring the 17,000 seats for sale to a Bruno Mars concert in Toronto, data journalists found how not all seats were listed when the formal sale began, how prices were hiked mid-sale, and how the service manages to collect fees twice when tickets are later scalped. Ticketmaster made $2.1 billion in ticket sales in 2017 and this one concert is a great look at how: they charged $350,000 in service fees for the first sale of tickets available for the Bruno Mars concert. 4,500 of those tickets went back up for resale on the service, and they collected a further $308,000 in fees on those tickets for
That info about Ticketmaster is interesting, but not surprising. It would be more surprising if Ticketmaster faced any repercussions for its obvious price-gouging.
That info about Ticketmaster is interesting, but not surprising. It would be more surprising if Ticketmaster faced any repercussions for its obvious price-gouging.