A comprehensive study on the underworld of events ticket distribution
“Why Can’t I Get Tickets?: Report on ticket distribution practices”
1999 report conducted by the New York Attorney General’s ofice. It was written at the perfect time when online marketplaces like Ebay were gaining traction.
Having experience in the ticketing industry, I can tell you that the report is mostly comprehensive and accurate. Online and conventional distribution is covered, making this report still seem current ten years later.
Besides the obvious ticket resale industry, nonpublic venue ticketing is exposed, which is the true problem with ticketing today.
Scalping is a distraction from the real threat to the open market posed by the venues and promoters themselves, mostly without their clients’ (the artists) knowledge. The ticket retail industry is becoming more and more of a farce to facilitate the economic distribution of tickets.
In other words, everyone involved on all levels of the ticketing industry wants to sell tickets at market value (sometimes higher through manipulation, false shortages and induced rushes). Everyone, that is, except the artists. The entire retail industry exists now only to appease the artists. And hence….
THE RETAIL INDUSTRY HAS BECOME THE WHOLESALE INDUSTRY.
It’s becoming more evident as promoters and ticketing agencies merge.
It’s becoming more evident with acquisitions of resale companies and brokerages by ticketing agencies.
An artist gazes into the crowd and sees every seat filled, but doesn’t realize how few of those people were firsthand consumers (or how few bought their tickets from firsthand consumers).
I’ve seen events with far less than fifty percent of seats available to the public. The majority of tickets in circulation in the resale market is put there in cooperation with the retailers.
The criminality of consumer to consumer scalping interlopes with commerce and should not exist. States like Florida now allow for resale of up to eleven times retail price. It’s a good entryway into abolishing the law altogether once a method of reducing the hoarding racket by the sellers is introduced.
//
A quote from Billy Joel opens the report: “I am tired of being part of the rip-off.”
Joel’s awareness is uncommon, and he has stuck by his word by touring infrequently. An artist is implicating himself when he jumps into the business of culture as entertainment. In a live venue with limited space, seats are a commodity that the artist has grown. Thus, he should not complain about the market he has created.
Nobody is entitled to culture— especially when culture is sold as entertainment and artists perform as a career.
Artists who are passionate about propagating their craftwork need to find new ways of delivering culture in which the only beneficiaries/profiteers are the recipients.
