Ticket trauma

Opinion

The law of supply and demand is alive and well when it comes to seeing your favourite performer or sports team, live and in person.

Concert tickets, notably to American music superstar Taylor Swift’s recent Eras Tour, can be so in demand, buyers are willing to pay thousands on legal resale sites.

Key players to lay blame upon are undoubtedly resellers — organized crime in faraway jurisdictions or maybe just a tech-savy teenager next door.

Whoever they are, many use bots (software purchased online) allowing them to rapidly and repeatedly purchase tickets on sale from generally the one main ticket source: Ticketmaster.

Of course, reseller is largely a euphemism for “scalper,” a longstanding activity that has gone almost entirely digital and is generally tolerated under the law.

“You used to stand outside a stadium to sell a ticket and they’ll lock you up for that, but these guys can now do it legally online,” says Joe Ruicci, a Canadian music industry veteran and author of the blog Joe’s Place, who has written about concert ticket pricing.

He notes artists today do charge more for tickets than in the past; it’s largely how they make their money in the age of streamed music. Yet it’s the resale market driving ticket inflation.

The head of Live Nation Entertainment, Inc., which owns Ticketmaster, recently said ticket prices are too low. One might infer he is suggesting the resale market is merely reflecting true market value.

The entertainment giant has plenty of critics — U.S. politicians included — for a variety of reasons. Live Nation Entertainment owns both Live Nation, the world’s largest concert promoter, and Ticketmaster, the world’s largest ticket seller.

While Ticketmaster has pledged to fight the modern-day scalping, Live Nation Entertainment also benefits from reselling through its Ticketmaster resale site.

Effectively, it can often charge fees on the initial sale and then on the resale. As well, it has an app to help the “professional reseller community.”

Its impetus for launching a resale site was to compete with online reseller hubs like StubHub, while giving fans of soldout shows a chance to safely buy resale tickets.

The Free Press reached out to Ticketmaster for comment, but it did respond by publication time.

Despite efforts like its Verified Fan program to stop the bots, average consumers still face challenges purchasing tickets directly from Ticketmaster.

That has left many feeling as if they’re trying to buy tickets in a system favouring resellers, Ruicci says.

After it announces tickets have gone on sale, an event is sold out in minutes and many tickets then show up on the resale market at inflated prices, he adds. “So if your kid wants to go to a hot concert, you’re going to pay a lot for it.”

Canada has a patchwork of provincial regulations aimed to prevent the gouging of parents and other consumers. For example, Ontario has banned using bots to buy event tickets, but it’s difficult to enforce, according to one Toronto-based law firm.

Up until 2023, Manitoba was the lone province banning reselling above face value. Ticketmaster and True North Sports and Entertainment (owner of the Winnipeg Jets and Manitoba Moose and Canada Life Centre and Burton Cummings Theatre) argued against the rule, as noted in a 2022 Free Press report.

The then-Progressive Conservative government passed legislation to remove the rule, which finally came into effect in 2023.

Ticketmaster and True North did have a point.

Without legally allowing reselling at prices above face value, desperate fans would take desperate measures, like buying tickets through social media, which is often a terrible idea, says Erin Benjamin, president and chief executive officer of Canadian Live Music Association.

“That leads to situations like five teens arriving at the same show with the same ticket that they paid a bunch of money for to the same seller,” she says. “Fraudulent ticket resales are a blight and very hard to police.”

Of course, Live Nation Entertainment takes plenty of lumps from the public. Its monopolistic behaviour doesn’t help its case.

Ticketmaster is also under investigation in the U.S. for allegedly facilitating ticket “brokers” — resellers — to purchase tickets in bulk.

Of course, Ticketmaster argues it is protecting consumers. That said, a CBC’s Marketplace report in 2018, and again in 2023, suggest its efforts are ineffective and even hurt honest consumers seeking to resell and buy tickets.

Ticket price gouging certainly isn’t new, says music historian Alan Cross, creator of the popular podcast the Ongoing History of Music.

He examined the issue extensively and notes, “It is a longstanding, seemingly unsolvable problem.”

Cross points to one of the first instances of predatory reselling practices in the mid-1800s, amid mania over female opera singer Jenny Lind (nicknamed the Swedish Nightingale). Lind’s North American tour was promoted by P.T. Barnum, who auctioned tickets to the highest bidders and profited marvelously.

“When you have demand that outstrips supply, then market dynamics take over just like for flights, hotels and anything else,” Cross says.

Of course, it’s hard to resell an airplane ticket because of regulations. It’s been recommended — including by Canadian Live Music Association — that Canada should have a cap on resale ticket pricing.

“Limiting the amount over face value is one measure, but that’s also might be hard to enforce,” Benjamin admits.

Many European nations do have limits, and tickets are generally less costly.

Still, Cross is skeptical a truly workable solution exists. He points to recent efforts by English rock band Radiohead to circumvent predatory resellers. “It tried probably harder than anybody to keep tickets in the hands of fans, but ultimately failed.”

That said, extreme cases of resale inflation generally occur for a fraction of live events, Benjamin says.

Overall, live entertainment remains widely accessible — just maybe not for the biggest acts — with thousands of artists increasingly relying on performing live for their income, she adds.

“There are a lot of incredible live shows that are reasonably priced and not sold out, and I would encourage people to get out and go see these artists, who really need their support.”

Joel Schlesinger is a Winnipeg-based freelance journalist.

joelschles@gmail.com