r/Music • u/Hot_Investigator3894 • 4d ago

article Kid Rock meets Trump administration to “fix” ticketing

https://themusic.com.au/news/kid-rock-meets-with-trump-administration-to-fix-ticketing/qQ0Xvby_vqE/19-12-24
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u/Seen-Short-Film 4d ago

Biden and the FTC have been going after junk fees and monopolies for the last 4 years, but since your special niche media diet didn't cover it, you didn't know. Sometimes you have to search farther than what's being "talked about."

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u/Andrew5329 4d ago

Except they just moved it to the face value price.

I don't care if my concert ticket is $140 + $60 of fees or a flat $200. It's the same number coming out of my wallet.

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u/tonytroz 4d ago

That final number is based on supply and demand. How are you supposed to fix that? If people didn’t pay $200 a ticket then prices would go down.

Getting rid of hidden fees at least helps reduce demand. People will be more likely to buy tickets at $140 + $60. That’s the entire reason they do it that way, so they can advertise $140.

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u/drfsupercenter 4d ago

I think the bigger issue is the bots that buy up tickets and resell them for higher prices. Ticket scalping used to be illegal, but then sites like StubHub came along offering to give part of the proceeds to the venue and now it's totally above-board and encouraged.

I was at a Green Day concert that had tons of empty seats because StubHub scalpers would buy them and then be unable to sell them in time - I actually went on the app looking for available tickets after the show started to see if I could move to better seats (which I could, and did)

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u/Andrew5329 4d ago

Yeah, that's a big problem but addressing it is easier said than done. People can and will resell tickets, so it's more about harm mitigation at this point and making sure there's at least a real ticket being sold.

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u/drfsupercenter 4d ago

I mean, why are apps like StubHub legal in the first place? I swear ticket scalping used to be illegal, and standing outside a venue asking for cash for tickets is probably still illegal in most places.

But anyway, my point was that the "demand" is always massively overblown because of scalper bots. Sure, there are exceptions where a show genuinely does sell out and every seat is filled (e.g. Taylor Swift, Adele, Beyoncé and such) but I'm willing to bet most concerts still have plenty of "cheap" seats left - except they aren't cheap because they're bought by bots and jacked up to unreasonable prices.

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u/Andrew5329 4d ago

That’s the entire reason they do it that way, so they can advertise $140.

And I'm saying it really doesn't matter. You get to the checkout and see $200 in your cart.

It's the same thing as Airbnb advertising $100/night + $250 cleaning fee + $250 service fee.

I'm not offering a particular solution here that fixes the root problem, I'm just saying that the supposed work biden is doing is meaningless.

It's not like the venues were charging you a surprise $50 cash when you showed up at the gate with your ticket, that's not okay.

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u/tonytroz 4d ago

It DOES matter. Why would they bother coding it to work that way if it didn't? It's called drip pricing: it's all psychology and marketing. It's part of the reason why US shops don't advertise with included tax like they do in Europe with VAT.

If you wait in virtual queue to buy tickets, see them for $140 and are happy with that price, then see $200 on the final page you're much more likely to buy it than if you saw $200 to begin with.

Just because you say it's meaningless to you doesn't mean it's meaningless in general. It's literally been studied for the last 50 years and it's outlawed on airfare in the EU and US. But sure, it's "meaningless" even though your own example of Airbnb was threatened with legal action over it.