Speaker 1: For the first hour, we have some music news, music
industry news to discuss.
Speaker 2: You know, I love this stuff.
Speaker 1: I'm a music industry nerd and I do some things
in the industry, and I have for a long time.
But we were talking last week. I think it was
last week. Was it last week or the week before?
I have to be honest with you, It all blurs together, but.
Speaker 2: No, I think it was last week.
Speaker 1: We were talking about Oasis and this debacle. We have
an update on this well, and it relates to another
issue happening in the music industry.
Speaker 3: But so.
Speaker 1: Oasis tickets went on sale. It's the first time they're
touring in fifteen years. The Gallagher brothers loll. I'm sorry,
not loll Noel and Liam. I do that once in
a while. I create amalgams of words. I combined Nol
and Liam into loll. I'll just call them loll. So
Lowell actually managed to stop arguing enough to say, let's
go make some money. That's how the uh, that's how
people who are cynical about it or talking about it right, Oh,
this is just a money grab.
Speaker 2: Oasis is there. They're coming for our cash.
Speaker 1: They just want to make some money now, that's not
how I think about it necessarily. I mean, again, I
do understand that that's very often a purpose of doing this,
but but I also am a fan of Oasis. Although
it's funny so back in the day, back in the
nineties when Wonderwall was on the radio every five minutes,
I actually really liked it that Wonderwall. I thought was
such a great song. And I still think it's a
great song. But if I hear it now, I'm like, eh,
I'm over it. Oh, I was over it a long
time ago. Acquiesce is my favorite Oasis song, which was
actually a B side. But anyway, I'm I think it's cool.
I mean, I'm not gonna go spend gobs of money.
I don't know if they've even put any US tour
dates on sale. I know they've got a bunch of
UK dates, but you know, I'm not gonna go see
them because I don't want to pay all that money
and it's going to be expensive. It already is expensive
because tickets went on sale in the UK, and that's
what set off this whole controversy around the ticket sales themselves.
But anyway, so Oasis, no matter how you feel about them,
love them, hate them. They're kind of polarizing. I've always
been a fan, but I also understand, and again, as
someone who's done things in the industry, I have kind
of a you know, I can look at it both
as a fan and as a business. I can see
it from both perspectives. So, yeah, maybe it is a
money grab. I don't, you know, but it's a business.
You got to make money, right, you got to make
a living. You know, these guys probably.
Speaker 2: Spend a lot.
Speaker 1: They just seems, well, at least Liam does, probably spend
a lot. Noel always struck me as a down to
earth of the two, but I'm sure Liam has quite
the lifestyle anyway.
Speaker 2: But put all that aside, regardless of how you feel
about it.
Speaker 1: So we were talking on the show last week about
tickets went on sale and the websites were crashing. I
say websites plural because obviously you know Ticketmaster, which is
owned by Live Nation. They put the tickets on sale,
nobody could get them because the site kept crashing, but
also the secondary sites were crashing, and then Oasis's management
put out a statement saying, actually, don't even buy these
tickets on secondary sites because those will be canceled. Those
are not authorized. And we got into this a little
bit last week Jenny and I talking about how, you know,
you've got what a big tour like this goes on sale,
So you've got Ticketmaster, which sells the tickets, but very
often what happens is for I think a lot of
people are probably pretty savvy to this already. But the
reason that something can go on sale and then it
sells out like immediately, I'm sure people probably assume, well,
that's because of the Internet. You know that that didn't
happen pre Internet for those of us who are old
enough to remember, you know, when you would have to
actually go and stand in line somewhere to buy tickets.
But you know, things would sell out quickly, which is
why if it was a big tour that you really
wanted to see, you'd have to go and stand in line,
you know, Like Jenny has told stories about, you know her,
I think her and her mom standing in line for
Prince tickets and like camping out overnight or something, or
being there for hours.
Speaker 2: When Prince was touring.
Speaker 1: But then so the Internet comes along, for lack of
a better way of putting it, and everything's available online.
So things sell out instantly, and yes, uh, because in theory,
you know, thousand, tens, hundreds of thousands, potentially millions of
people can go and try to buy these tickets immediately
once they go online in the digital age, so to speak.
But there's another element to that. Very often these tickets
are bought up by scalpers. And I don't mean when
I say scalper, I don't mean the guy standing out
in front of the venue trying to sell you a
ticket to a sold out show because the show has
sold out, but this random guy has tickets that he's
willing to sell you at a premium cash only. I
mean scalpers, these services, these ticketing sites that buy in
bulk these tickets and then resell them at a profit.
That goes on all the time. There are those who
have tried to push back on it, trying to find
ways to prevent that from happening, but it still goes on.
And then, of course you've also got the other element
of Ticketmaster itself. Some people think that, for example, the
Live Nation Ticketmaster merger never should have been approved by
the government. That gets into a whole other thing. So
you know, a lot of people are dissatisfied with Ticketmaster
itself as an entity. Remember back in the day again,
this was yeah, this must have been in the nineties
or early two thousands when Pearl Jam was kind of
the first to say, hey, we don't even want to
deal with Ticketmaster anymore. We don't like the way they
do business, we don't like the way the fans are
kind of getting the shaft. And so they started working
with smaller you know, in various markets around the country.
They started working with these smaller market ticketing agencies, which
didn't really work out that great, and in the end
pearl Jam had to give in, had to capitulate and
go back to working with Ticketmaster.
Speaker 2: It's just the reality of it.
Speaker 1: So you've got all of that, and then you've got
this new element. And this we did not talk about
last week, but again it is part of this whole
story with Oasis and these tickets. Is the dynamic pricing. Now,
for those of you who don't know, you may have
heard the term, some of you will know, some of
you will not know what this is. But dynamic pricing
is this concept where, well, you know, basic free market economics, right,
supply and demand, When supplies low demand is high, things
cost more money. Well, this concept has been applied to
tickets and Ticketmaster uses it where Okay, so if demand
is high for a show and supply is low, only
so many tickets available, those tickets will automatically increase in price.
Speaker 2: There's even been who was it. There was a.
Speaker 1: Fast food restaurant chain that tried to do this, and
I want to say it was Wendy's. They either tried
it in some of their locations or they were testing
it in maybe one location and they were thinking about
rolling it out nationally or something. I don't remember all
the details, but they tried to do some sort of
dynamic pricing concept where at busy times of day the
food would cost more. But I think they probably pulled
the plug on that pretty quickly. I think it was
Wendy's who tried to do this. But anyway, so this
has been done with Ticketmaster, and that factors into the
Oasis debacle, as it were, because now Ticketmaster is being
investigated about the dynamic pricing. Now, if you're a ticket buyer,
you may not like this very much. You might long
for the days when tickets would go on sale and
you know what the price is and you just go
and you buy the tickets at the price that you're
expecting them to be because that's what they're announced at,
and that that is over, you know. I mean, if
you're buying tickets to a smaller sh like, for example,
if you're buying tickets to go see John Posse at
Dart at the Rex Theater on Friday night, I don't
think those prices are going to change, right, you know.
But but when you're a ticketmaster, uh, and you can
afford all this technology to control the prices and everything,
you know, you can do whatever you want. I mean Ticketmaster,
it is truly a monopoly. They can do whatever they want.
But that doesn't mean that they can do whatever they
want without some consequences. So let's look at this again.
The newest wrinkle in the what did I say?
Speaker 2: I'm calling them loll loll Gallagher.
Speaker 1: I should if you're just joining us, I should clarify
it's an amalgam of NOL and Liam, because apparently I
have difficulty say NOL and Liam, so it's easier to
just say loll. They are almost indistinguishable in terms of
I mean, they don't look exactly alike. But if you
listen to an interview with them. You know what's funny
about OA Back in the nineties when they first got big,
that first album definitely maybe really blew up. I remember
seeing interviews with them on MTV and MTV would actually
they would actually subtitle the interviews. Obviously the Gallaghers were
speaking English in the interviews, but their accents were such
that you almost couldn't understand them, so MTV would actually
subtitle the interviews.
Speaker 2: It was funny.
Speaker 1: And I don't know if they were doing it to
be funny or kind of doing it to be funny,
but it was funny. They can be difficult to understand.
By the way, Noel Gallagher is very funny too.
Speaker 2: He's got it.
Speaker 1: I don't think Liam's particularly funny, but Noel has a
very dry sense of humor that I like anyway. Okay,
so here's the newest wrinkle, and this is from Music
Businessworldwide dot Com. UK competition regulator launches investigation into Ticketmaster
over Oasis ticket sale. So now the government's involved, says here.
The UK's Competition and Markets Authority CMA has launched an
investigation in the Live Nation owned ticketing giant Ticketmaster. The
reason for the investigation last Saturdays on sale for Oasis'
twenty twenty five UK Actually, what was the date on
this article, September fifth. Okay, so it is referring to
last Saturday. So it's referring to the on sale that
happened one week ago for Oasis' twenty twenty five UK
and Ireland stadium tour, including quote how so called dynamic
pricing may have been used unquote, the CMA said in
a statement on September five. The Competition watchdog says the
plans to scrutinize quote excuse me, whether the sale of
Oasis tickets by Ticketmaster may have breached consumer protection law unquote,
because again, like I was saying, not everyone thinks that
the dynamic pricing is right or ethical, And I'm not
saying that I have a problem with it. I'm just saying,
you know, well, apparently it's people in government who are saying,
we're not sure that this is the correct way to
be treating consumers.
Speaker 2: I'm not making a judgment about it.
Speaker 1: I'm agnostic on that part of it, but I think
it's interesting that you know, what I do think will
be really interesting is does this stick around the dynamic
pricing concept in terms of tickets. It's already lasted longer
than I thought. This has been going on a few
years now. When it started, I remember thinking this isn't
going to last. There is going to be so much
backlash to this. People are not going to like it.
People are used to tickets go on sale, They go
on sale for a particular price. If a show isn't selling,
rarely will you even see the price go down, right,
You rarely see that. You very rarely see discounted tickets.
Speaker 2: In fact, you're.
Speaker 1: Look, if you're a promoter and you've got a big
show in an arena, say right, and tickets aren't moving,
you'll give away tickets before you'll lower the prices. That's
true if you've got if you've got a show in
a ten thousand seed arena. Again, this is if you're
the promoter putting on the show, not the band's management
has no say in this, or certainly not the record label, nobody,
or even the venue. You're the promoter and you're deciding.
You're making decisions based on how these tickets are moving.
If it's soft, meaning you're not selling enough tickets, you're
not selling as many as you thought you were. What
you'll do is very often is they call it papering
the room, which means because what you don't want at
the end of the day is a half empty arena.
So if you're in a ten thousand seat venue and
you're only on track to sell five thousand tickets, you
don't want that. It just doesn't look good right to
have a ten thousand seat arena that's only half full.
So if you were thinking you're gonna sell eight thousand, right,
so you'd be at eighty percent capacity. Sorry, if I'm
getting two into the weeds, but I know a lot
of people in the industry listen to the show.
Speaker 2: So if you're only at you think you're gonna be.
Speaker 1: At eighty percent capacity, you're gonna sell eight thousand out
of ten thousand seats, and but it's looking like you're
only gonna hit five thousand. You don't want a half
empty arena, So you will give away tickets to that show.
It happens all the time. You'll you'll be contacting every
radio station you can find that you think might be
interested in doing a ticket giveaway, be giving them out
to businesses and saying, here, give these to your employees,
or do some kind of contest, do whatever you want
with them, just make sure people.
Speaker 2: From your company show up at the show.
Speaker 1: You'll do anything that you can to get more people
in the door. And at that point, it's all about
the optics of it. It's all about what it looks like.
Because you don't want to put on a show in
a ten thousand seed arena that's literally half full and
then have that, you know, have people hear about it,
have people seeing on social media tickets of a half
empty arena, just.
Speaker 2: All of that.
Speaker 1: You want it to look like everything that you do
is successful. So you're going to paper again, it's called
paper in the room. You're going to try to get
as many people in there as you can, and if
that means because you have nothing to lose, right, if
you're not going to sell those tickets, you might as
well give them away because the show's gonna happen no
matter what, and you're gonna have to pay everybody.
Speaker 2: No matter what.
Speaker 1: If you're the promoter, you've got financial obligation tied up
in this. You might take a loss on that show,
but you might as well get as money as many
people in the door as you can, so at least.
Speaker 2: It looks good.
Speaker 1: So the point being, what you'll rarely see. I can't
say never, but what you'll rarely see is a promoter say, Okay,
these tickets they're not moving at sixty dollars, so I
think we're going to drop the price to fifty or
to forty and see if we can sell some more.
You just don't see that they'd rather paper the room
than lower the price on the tickets. Reason being, if
you lower the price on the tickets, again not using
Ticketmaster's dynamic pricing, I'm just saying, if you decide, as
the promoter, you're going to lower the price, now you're
you're risking well, first of all, you're risking alienating the
people who already bought the tickets at the higher price,
So you don't want them going on so media saying
hey I got ripped off. But although that's probably not
that likely. But what you also don't want to happen
is what if you lower the price but it doesn't
it doesn't juice the sales. Now you're taking an even
bigger loss. You could lower the price, but it doesn't
increase your sales. The same number of people who were
probably going to buy tickets end up buying the tickets
anyway regardless. Right, So they would have bought the tickets
anyway if they were still ten dollars more, twenty dollars more.
So you lower the price, you still only sell five
thousand tickets. You're you've still got a half empty room,
and you've actually made less money.
Speaker 2: So it's not worth the risk.
Speaker 1: So the best thing to do, at least in my
experience and from what I've seen, is in that situation,
you leave the ticket price as it is and you
just hope that you know, you get a lot of
walk up right, you know, people coming showing up on
the day of and and you try to paper the room,
you try to give out some tickets too. But this
dynamic pricing has changed to everything. So again getting back
to this article, over ten million fans from one hundred
and fifty eight countries are confirmed to have queued up
on Saturday, August thirty one to buy tickets to the tour.
Yeah so it was yeah, so, like I said, it
was last weekend that the tickets went on sale. Two Additionally,
additional Wembley Stadium shows have been added due to quote
unprecedented demand during the sale, which Oasis said in a
press release Saturday, quote saw all ticket platforms struggling to cope,
resulting in immense frustration and disappointment for fans who missed
out after queuing for many hours.
Speaker 2: Unquote. By the way, the.
Speaker 1: Same thing happened in the United States. If you remember
with Taylor Swift, same thing. You know, people were frustrated.
They were trying to get I remember seeing people on
social media just you know, in tears over it. They
were so desperately trying to get Taylor Swift tickets and
uh and couldn't because you know, you wait, you log
onto the website, you're in the queue, You're waiting and
waiting and waiting, and then eventually something happens. You know,
maybe the site crashes, or you know, there's something something
goes wrong, maybe your computer suddenly wants to update and
shuts itself down and restarts or whatever it is, right,
you know, after you've already invested hours of your time
and then you now you're you're at the back of
the line, or now you log back in and the
shows sold out. So you know, so this this is
not in and of itself unprecedented, but to put the
extent of that demand into context, Wembley, where Oasis are
now set to play seven of the tours nineteen dates,
has a capacity of ninety thousand, which means that the
band would need to perform one hundred eleven dates at
the stadium to meet the demand for next year's tour.
The following Wednesday, and the same press release announcing the
two additional Wembley shows, Oasis publicly distanced themselves from the
decisions that led to the use of Ticketmaster's dynamic pricing
tools during the sale.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so a.
Speaker 1: Lot of this went on. Where now Oasis, the Gallagher brothers, Lowell.
Speaker 2: I'm calling them.
Speaker 1: I've melded them together into one person, Lowell Gallagher. It's
just easier economy of language.
Speaker 2: My friends.
Speaker 1: So now fans are pointing at them and going, you
guys are bad, you guys are greedy.
Speaker 2: All this.
Speaker 1: In reality, it really doesn't have much to do with them,
but they're going to take the blame. Of course, they're
the public faces of this. I'm I have a hunch
that they probably don't care that much because.
Speaker 2: You know, they they're extremely.
Speaker 1: Rich and famous, and you know is you know it
probably doesn't affect that much. I don't think a mean
comment from a fan is going to hurt the Gallagher brothers.
But but that is, you know, they're they're the face
of it, so it's they're going to take the brunt
of the anger and ire from people. It says here,
informed sources speaking to MBW, which is Music Business Worldwide,
This is a great website. This week estimated that ten
to fifteen percent of the one point four million tickets
sold over the weekend were quote dynamically priced on ticket Master,
meaning the price automatically adjusts based on supply and demand.
The price for these tickets more than doubled from a
face value of around one hundred and fifty pounds I
assume that's pounds to an in demand price tag of
around three hundred and fifty five, causing fan outcry on
social media platforms and much discussion in other media outlets
including MBW on Tuesday, and again, that takes us back
to what I was saying before about how long will
this last? People don't like the dynamic pricing, They end
up feeling taken advantage of, and they end up feeling
ripped off as a free market economist. I'm not an economist.
I'm sorry as but as but as a I don't
know why I said economist, but you know, as someone
who believes in free markets, let me put it that way.
I you know, I'm not I'm not really taking a
position one way or the other. It's it's supplying demand,
it's being applied here. It's almost like an auction in
a sense. Right, but buying the tickets, I'm not taking
a position. I'm gonna remain agnostic on it, at least
for now. But I'm telling you this could be the
nail in the coffin of this particular strategy, because people
are you know, the last thing you want is your
consumers or your fans to feel that they've been victimized.
You know, I saw one comment somebody directed at the
Gallaghers saying, you know, I wouldn't have thought. I wouldn't
have thought you would be so greedy. You know, your
fan base is, you know, kind of working class people,
and here you are being so greedy. And again it's
but it's not it's not them. I'm not saying they're
not greedy. Maybe they are.
Speaker 2: I don't know.
Speaker 1: Again, you know, you get when you get to that level.
I mean, there's been plenty of research and studies done
on this. When you get to a certain level of
fame and money, there is a certain almost as sociopathy
that sets in.
Speaker 2: Right, So you know, I'm not.
Speaker 1: Saying they're not terrible people. They may be, they may
not be. I don't know. I'm a fan of their music,
but if I actually met them, I might be horrified.
They say, don't meet your heroes.
Speaker 2: I don't know. But it's ultimately not their fault.
Speaker 1: But but if there's enough outcry over this, over this
whole dynamic pricing thing, this might be the beginning of
the end of it. So the band's press release said, quote,
it needs to be made clear that Oasis leave decisions
on ticketing and pricing.
Speaker 2: Entirely to their promoters.
Speaker 1: And management, and at no time had any awareness at
dynamic pricing was going to be used.
Speaker 2: Unquote.
Speaker 1: Is that satisfactory? Probably from a pr standpoint, probably not.
No one's going to believe that. No one who's no
no one who's angry about this is going to read
that statement and say, oh, Okay, it's really got nothing
to do with them. I mean, it's true in a
sense right. But there's a big hole in this though too.
Let me read part of this again. It needs to
be made clear that Oasis leave decisions on ticketing and
pricing entirely to their promoters and management. One little problem
with that. So promoters are people you're in business with, right,
the promoter is the one. Well, the promoter first of all,
takes all the risk. Again, I have experience in this,
so I know how this feels. Not on this level obviously,
but you know the promoters putting on the shows and
handling all of that, so you are somewhat at a
promoter's mercy. The problem is the sentence says that they
leave this to their promoters and management. And management is
a problem to me because that's there's a cop out there.
Oh that's our management. Well, here's the thing is management
works for the band. The band doesn't work for management.
It's not how you know, it's not. It's not like
in the corporate world, you know, when if you have
a manager, you work for your manager, right, they're your boss,
you know. In the music industry it's the other way around.
In that if if you are an artist and you
have a manager, the manager is someone you hire they
work for you. You hire them to run your business,
the business of your music. So for the band to say, well,
that's not up to us, we leave that to our management,
Well that the management works for you, dude.
Speaker 2: You know, you can't really pass the buck.
Speaker 1: You know, they're your employee in a sense, not literally
an employee.
Speaker 2: They you know, they've got contracts and everything. But you
know what I'm saying, you know, So.
Speaker 1: To say it's one thing to say, I you know,
you can kind of let it fly a little bit
and say, well, it's it's not our fault, it's you know,
we leave that to the promoters. Well, yeah, that's what
the promoter does, right, that's their function. But to say
and management, well, that's your management is they're your management.
You You can fire your management if you want to.
You can tell your management don't do it this way.
It's upsetting our fans. You can tell your management to
handle it differently.
Speaker 2: Okay.
Speaker 1: So there's more to the statement quote. While prior meetings
between promoters, ticket Master and the band's management resulted in
a positive ticket sales strategy which would be a fair
experience for fans, including dynamic ticketing to help keep general
ticket prices down as well as reduced touting. The I
don't know touting is that maybe that's a term for
that almost sounds like a might be another term for scalping.
In the United States, we call it scalping. Maybe there
they call it touting. I don't know, Sorry, I just
I don't know what that word means in that, but
I assume from the context it might be another term
for scalping. The execution of the plan failed to meet expectations.
All parties involved did their utmost to deliver the best
possible fan experience, but due to the unprecedented demand, this
became impossible to achieve. M I feel like there's a
contradiction here. Did anyone else here a contradiction? Yeah, there's
a there's a pretty latent contradiction self contradiction in this
statement that to me seems glaringly obvious. So let's back
up a little bit. So the statement opens with it
needs to be made clear that Oasis leave decisions on
ticketing and pricing entirely to their promoters and management, and
at no time had any awareness that dynamic pricing was
to be used, So the band had no idea according
to that paragraph or that opening statement, that opening sentence,
that of the statement that dynamic pricing was to be used.
But then they say, oh, okay, I'm sorry. No, I
was wrong. I was wrong.
Speaker 2: I retract. There is no there is no contradiction.
Speaker 1: I thought there was a contradiction because it sounded like
they're saying that Oasis had no idea, the band had
no idea. And then I see this sentence while while
prior meetings between promoter, Sigmaster and the band's management resulted
in a positive ticket strategy, you know that everyone thought
would be fair, and I thought I took that as
everyone was involved in that decision. But no, that's not correct.
The band the band is not mentioned in that part.
So there is no contradiction. I was wrong about that.
I apologize. Okay, all right, Well, so taking that into
a count, it's probably the best possible statement that you know,
it's the best damage control they could do. Let me
put it that way. It's not going to satisfy people,
but its damage control is about just doing the best
you can with a rough situation. The CMA said today
that and again that's the part of the government that
does consumer protection in the UK that it is at
the initial stage of its investigation. It will now engage
with Ticketmaster and gather evidence from various other sources, which
quote may include the band's management and event organizers unquote. SJM,
Live Nation, MCD and DF Concerts are promoting the Oasis tour.
Ticketmaster was one of the three sites used, along with
Gigs and Tours and See Tickets. The CMA stressed in
its statement on Thursday that quote, it should not be
assumed that Ticketmaster has broken consumer protection law unquote No,
I mean and from look, I'm not a legal expert
of any kind, and there may be an element to
this that I'm missing, but I don't see any anything
that makes me say, oh, it sounds like, Look, we
can talk about this whole dynamic pricing strategy as being
kind of dirty business. Right again, I'm going to remain
agnostic on it for now, but that doesn't mean it's
and that anything's illegal about it yet. Right, There's nothing
illegal about it that I can see. The Competition Regulator
added that it will quote also consider whether it is
appropriate to investigate the conduct of anyone else in relation
to the matter.
Speaker 2: Unquote.
Speaker 1: Dynamic ticket pricing sees prices surge in real time as
demand rises, similar to airline.
Speaker 2: Tickets or Uber Live.
Speaker 1: Nation has previously argued that the program addresses the issue
of scalper is buying tickets at face value and then
selling them at a higher price point. Wait, they have
I gotta click this link they have. That's their argument
that it reduces scalping. That's why they do it. Uh,
I just clicked and our I just looked another article
that might explain it. But well, we might come back
to this later if we have time.
Speaker 2: I don't see how that would be the case. But
I'm open to the argument, but.
Speaker 1: I don't see how how would that How would that
prevent scalping? What am I missing? Maybe I'm missing something again.
I'm trying to be fair, all right. The CMA said
on Thursday, they quote this is not the first time
that the use of dynamic pricing has raised concerns among
fans of live sporting events and music events unquote. According
to the CMA, while the practice is quote not automatically unlawful,
it may breach consumer protection or competition law in certain
circumstances unquote. Sarah Cardell, chief executive of the CMA, said, quote,
it's important that fans are treated fairly when they buy tickets,
which is why we've launched this investigation. It's clear that
many people felt they had a bad experience and we're
surprised by the price of their tickets at checkout. We
want to hear from fans who went through the process
and may have encountered issues so that we can investigate
whether existing consumer protection law has been breached by the way.
That's something there's more to the statement, but that's something
we can all relate to. Right, you go to buy
tickets and again, I you know this doesn't I don't
think this really happens with smaller ticketing agencies or smaller tours.
But you go to buy tickets from Live Nation and
you go to check out, and the ticket price is
suddenly much higher, not necessarily because of dynamic pricing.
Speaker 2: But all these all these fees.
Speaker 1: And taxes and everything, and you thought you were gonna
spend one hundred dollars on a ticket, and all of
a sudden it's you get to check out and it's
one hundred and fifty and you're like, where did this other?
I mean no, I'm not even exaggerating, Right, it'll be
that much more it's it's wild and and there's like
all these fees and you know, there's a yeah, there's
just any any fee you can you can imagine. I
don't remember too, It's been a while since I've even.
Speaker 2: Bought tickets from Ticketmaster. I don't know.
Speaker 1: Uh, I don't remember if it even itemizes it for you,
doesn't Maybe if somebody's in the chat room, I should
take a breath and say hello to everybody in the
chat room. But does it even itemize it for you?
Or does it just say taxes and fees and it's
this huge additional number that you weren't expecting, or you
were expecting if you buy tickets from Ticketmaster regularly. But
Alex Whiteley is in the chatroom. Are one of our
friends from the UK? Oh says touting is a term
used for people selling tickets on for higher prices.
Speaker 3: Okay, Oh.
Speaker 1: Miriam Banish also joins us in the Facebook clatchat Yeah,
thank you for that, Alex.
Speaker 2: Uh we don't use that.
Speaker 3: Term in the Uh.
Speaker 2: We we don't use touting. Uh.
Speaker 3: We have a call. It's see who we have here?
Speaker 2: Hi, welcome to Matt Conderson. Unleast, who's this?
Speaker 4: Hey?
Speaker 2: Hey, Charles Richardson, how are you?
Speaker 4: I've been better, but hanging in there?
Speaker 2: What's what? What's going on?
Speaker 1: I should, by the way, Charles, I should just tell
you upfront. We only have a few minutes because we
have a guest calling in UH at ten am.
Speaker 2: But what's on your mind?
Speaker 4: I want to try and make it quick. Number one
take a master Live Nation. All these other they're all
scam artists, uh. And the fact that they're going with
this this pricing technique is really embarrassing. Listen, if I
buy a seat in section one oh one, in the
first ten rows, it should be one price. The next
ten rows is another price. There should not be any
alternative pricing. But there's scam artists because you got this
ticket surcharge fee, you got this fee, that fee, the
damn fees costs more than the damn tickets sometimes, so
I think it's all just a really big joke.
Speaker 2: If you want my est opinion, well it is it
is true. I mean you get to the uh, you
get to the end of.
Speaker 1: The process, and the price is it just all of
a sudden It's Yeah. Sometimes the fees they are almost
as much or perhaps even more uh than the ticket itself.
Speaker 2: It's wild.
Speaker 4: It is, it is. It's embarrassing to buy tickets nowadays
because everything's done online and they're just reaping the benefits
the fact that they do alternate pricing for scalpers. Are
you kidding me? Please? That's such a lame excuse. That's
almost like the glib your honor.
Speaker 2: All right by Charles. Good here for me, my friend,
take care all right.
Speaker 1: That was Charles Richardson, of course, from the Charles Richardson Show,
although I think he's taking a little bit of a
break from that right now.
Speaker 2: But good hear from Charles. Yeah, I mean, I'm not
gonna go.
Speaker 1: I relate to his frustration, certainly, I think most of
us probably do. I'm not going to go so far
as to say that it's a scam, because you know,
to use that word, I would say a scam would
be in my mind, if you go to buy the
tickets and you after you've checked out, you end up
with a charge on your credit card or your debit
or whatever that's higher than what you thought it.
Speaker 2: Was going to be.
Speaker 1: You do know what the final price is before you
click that to pay that and make that purchase. But
it is true, so I would not. I would not
technically call it a scam. I would I would just
with Charles on that, although I'm certainly sympathetic with the
broader point that he was making. And again, and I
think a lot of us can relate to that frustration,
and it is interesting, like you you really and this absolutely,
I don't think anyone can argue with It is definitely
designed the process unless it's changed. Again, I haven't bought
tickets from Ticketmaster in quite a while, so unless the
process has changed, it is designed so that you don't
see that final number until the very end. So you're
going through the entire process of picking your seats and everything.
You're going through that entire process unless you have bought
tickets recently. Right If it's if you go to a
lot of shows, none of this will surprise you.
Speaker 2: But if you don't go to a lot.
Speaker 1: Of shows, you're going through that entire process with one
price in your mind. And then you get to that
final screen and that's where it shows you all these
fees and you're like, oh, this ticket just doubled in price.
Speaker 2: Let's see. Isaac Banks is also.
Speaker 1: In the chat room. Alex Whiteley says people had to
sign into their Ticketmaster way to be accepted into a ballot,
which took hours for some. Then some were told that
they were going to have to pay upwards of four
hundred pounds per ticket.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean again, I don't know that I would call
it a scam per se, but it certainly is. I
think we can all understand why, just from a consumer standpoint,
you might have a pretty bad taste in your mouth
after going through that, right,