Ticketmaster's Nontransferable 'SafeTix' Are Anticompetitive, DOJ Suit Claims (theverge.com) 43
The Department of Justice has amended its antitrust lawsuit against Ticketmaster and Live Nation, alleging that Ticketmaster's introduction of nontransferable tickets and the SafeTix system was primarily intended to stifle competition from rival platforms like StubHub and SeatGeek, rather than merely to reduce ticket fraud. "The complaint, which was amended on Monday after 10 states joined the DOJ's lawsuit, cites internal Ticketmaster documents obtained during the legal process," notes The Verge. From the report: In 2019, Ticketmaster rolled out SafeTix, which replaced static barcodes on electronic tickets with encrypted barcodes that refresh every 15 seconds. Ticketmaster marketed SafeTix as a way of reducing ticket fraud, but the complaint claims reducing competition was "a primary motivation" for the new ticketing system. [...] The amended complaint includes new information about Ticketmaster's dominance of the events market. One internal Live Nation document cited in the complaint notes that Ticketmaster is the primary ticketer for approximately 80 percent of arenas across the country that host NBA or NHL teams. As of 2022, Live Nation-promoted events accounted for 70 percent of all amphitheater shows across the country, according to internal Live Nation events mentioned in the complaint.
The DOJ alleges that because of Ticketmaster's conduct, consumers have "paid more and continue to pay more for fees relating to tickets to live events than they would have paid in a free and open competitive market." The exact amount of monetary harm is still unknown, the complaint claims, and will require discovery from Ticketmaster and Live Nation's books, as well as from its third-party competitors.
The DOJ alleges that because of Ticketmaster's conduct, consumers have "paid more and continue to pay more for fees relating to tickets to live events than they would have paid in a free and open competitive market." The exact amount of monetary harm is still unknown, the complaint claims, and will require discovery from Ticketmaster and Live Nation's books, as well as from its third-party competitors.
It'd be cool if they really weren't transferable (Score:2)
You get your tickets, and you can either get a refund or use them.
It would completely eliminate scalping.
I know there are some burns that do this.
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It would also eliminate a lot of legitimate uses like buying tickets as a gift for someone or buying for a group of friends
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Fair point on the gift.
The group of friends would work as long as you all showed up at once.
They would never do it anyway since it allows for refunds, and I bet they make a lot of money on tickets for people that don't go.
Re: It'd be cool if they really weren't transferab (Score:1)
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Buying tickets can be a hassle and they're not always available at the time the gift is given.
Yes it is a first world problem, most things on /. are
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It's definitely a first world problem, but how often do people attend a concert or a show where they're not buying multiple tickets for a group? Especially given that when you buy tickets at most big shows you pick your seats. So it makes sense to buy the entire group's tickets in one transaction, almost always. This should be something that is extremely trivial to do, allowing you to then re-assign the tickets to each individual member of the party so one person doesn't have to be the ticket holder for eve
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Then they could institute "gift tickets" where the buyer can specify the name of the attendee at purchase time, which would then be non-transferrable, only refundable. If your ID doesn't match what's on the ticket, you don't get in. Either way, scalpers are currently a much bigger problem than Ticketbastard's exorbitant fees and scalpers need to go.
Re: It'd be cool if they really weren't transferab (Score:2)
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Ugh so much hassle, I have to know my friends real names now?
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As someone who goes to concerts on average once a week, often buying tickets months in advance while fobbing them off to friends last minute when I can't make it, or buying them off others who can't go. Please kindly fuck off. The scalping industry is no where near a big enough problem to warrant the reduction of flexibility by making a ticket non-transferable.
Even for highly desirable shows, scalping is an insanely minor problem making up around 10% of the second hand ticket market.
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Uh, fuck off yourself. We used to be able to go to concerts for bands that weren't mega attractions and pay reasonable prices.. Now, the tickets are instantly bought by bots and immediately posted on StubHub for anywhere between $750 and $1,500 per seat, when the original ticket was $75. You keep refreshing, and no tickets available through TicketMaster (including for "restricted presales).
Maybe consider not buying tickets for events if you aren't sure you will be able to go. Alternately, you can get your r
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It wouldn't eliminate scalping, it would just mean TicketMaster gets to do all the scalping for themselves. And besides that, if you can't use your ticket because you have a conflict come up, too bad, so sad, they get their money anyway.
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Not a bad thing (Score:3)
I'd rather see nontransferable tix to kill off the secondary market that jacks up ticket prices wildly and buys blocks of tickets, preventing you from getting them at face value. They should also be refundable up to a certain time. Now the "service" and "convenience" blood sucking fees are another matter.
Re: Not a bad thing (Score:2)
What about gifting? (Score:2)
Suppose your parents want to surprise you on your birthday with tickets to the Death Metal Satan Worshippers tour coming to your local stadium. I'm presuming they have to provide their information to purchase the tickets, so how do they gift it to you if it's non-transferable? Do they have to provide your information as well? What if your uncle/aunt or even your grandparents want to do this?
What if you don't have a "smart"phone? I'm guessing you're shit out of luck since this talks about digital tickets
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Two
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Two ways. First, one person buying say, 4 tickets, that person is 1 of the 4 people who are going in and has to show ID for everyone using the group of tickets bought.
So, if something comes up and that one person can't make it, the other three people are just out of luck?
Dutch auction (Score:3)
What I've always proposed is holding a Dutch auction. Everybody bids for their seats. For a given block of seats, everybody pays $1 or $0.01 above the highest losing bids.
IE, 100 seats. 200 bids submitted, $200 down to $1. Arranged from $200 down, you hit 100 buys at $102, $100 is highest losing bid(would have been the 101st seat). Everybody gets the tickets at $101 (or $100.01).
Put in some extra logic so people can, say, bid $500 for the good seats, $250 for the nosebleeds, and if they miss out on the good seats(they go for $600), they get a chance with the cheap seats. If they get the good seats, they're automatically withdrawn from the cheap ones.
You can even make the current winning bid level public.
Because everybody gets a shot, and can bid the max they're willing to pay, knowing they'll pay the minimum it would take to get the tickets. Wiping out the ability to profit from scalping. Except for people who decided they wanted to go at the last minute, of course. But that is a limited market you could do something like hold back 5% of the seats for double the price.
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Wiping out the ability to profit from scalping.
It won't. FOMO will drive up the second hand market price post initial sale. Oh you had a budget of $150 but now you're the only one of your friends not going? Suddenly your budget is a bit more flexible.
You can see that with people scalping actual products like Cybertrucks and graphics cards. These are things that will arrive at the RRP eventually and yet they are still selling at a premium for the impatient.
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Remember, I mentioned them, and suggested a solution - hold back a few seats to sell the day of at twice the price. Yes, discovering that their friends bid more and are thus going while they aren't is a possibility, but that happens right now with scalping ensuring that concerts/stadiums are sold out within minutes of them opening sales, ensuring that most are going to the secondary markets anyways, and paying a much higher price.
I should probably mention that "ability to profit from scalping" in my mind d
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hold back a few seats to sell the day of at twice the price.
So... scalping? Again this hasn't solved anything other than added uncertainty to the ticket price all the while increasing a class divide that will ensure that entertainment is for the wealthiest.
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No, scalping is third party sellers buying up stock and selling it at a (hopefully) higher price. The venue itself keeping some for sale 'day of' is part of the public terms of sale.
increasing a class divide that will ensure that entertainment is for the wealthiest.
And due to scalping sites buying up all the tickets, this isn't already happening?
At least with my proposal, the band gets to enjoy some of the extra money if ticket prices go high.
This may encourage them to do more shows. Also, increased profits by the primary venue, rather than resellers, might encourage more shows. For tha
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What I've always proposed is holding a Dutch auction. Everybody bids for their seats. For a given block of seats, everybody pays $1 or $0.01 above the highest losing bids.
IE, 100 seats. 200 bids submitted, $200 down to $1. Arranged from $200 down, you hit 100 buys at $102, $100 is highest losing bid(would have been the 101st seat). Everybody gets the tickets at $101 (or $100.01).
Put in some extra logic so people can, say, bid $500 for the good seats, $250 for the nosebleeds, and if they miss out on the good seats(they go for $600), they get a chance with the cheap seats. If they get the good seats, they're automatically withdrawn from the cheap ones.
You can even make the current winning bid level public.
Because everybody gets a shot, and can bid the max they're willing to pay, knowing they'll pay the minimum it would take to get the tickets. Wiping out the ability to profit from scalping. Except for people who decided they wanted to go at the last minute, of course. But that is a limited market you could do something like hold back 5% of the seats for double the price.
That will never work as it means that people may get good prices. The ticketing companies wont be able to rip people off by pricing tickets on the cusp on what they can afford.
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I don't see this working either. I like the non-transferable, with refund idea though. Keep that.
Different idea - reverse scalping. At the time tickets become available, all tickets are $1000+face value. One hour later they are $950+face value. And so on. Maybe a different multiple depending on how insanely popular the show is. Scalpers can't buy them all up at opening - they can never resell them for enough to recoup the extra costs. Or if they can, the market that can afford them is really small
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Different idea - reverse scalping. At the time tickets become available, all tickets are $1000+face value. One hour later they are $950+face value. And so on. Maybe a different multiple depending on how insanely popular the show is. Scalpers can't buy them all up at opening - they can never resell them for enough to recoup the extra costs. Or if they can, the market that can afford them is really small - too small to impact a large number of seats.
That's actually a version of the dutch auction [wikipedia.org]
Dutch auction initially offers an item at a price in excess of the amount the seller expects to receive. The price lowers in steps until a bidder accepts the current price. That bidder wins the auction and pays that price for the item. For example, a business might auction a used company car at a starting bid of €15,000. If nobody accepts the initial bid, the seller successively reduces the price in €1,000 increments. When the price reaches €10,000, a particular bidder—who feels that price is acceptable and that someone else might soon bid—quickly accepts the bid, and pays €10,000 for the car.
I was actually proposing the "eBay ascending uniform-price" method.
Okay, the problem I see with your proposal is that it encourages brinkmanship - IE waiting until the last moment, the moment of last discount, to buy tickets. This means that, say, you could have a guy who is willing to pay $1k for some tickets, but is hoping to score them for $250. But the scalpers know this, they have their bots buy the moment it hits, say, $300, then reoffers the tickets at
DOJ is messing up (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:DOJ is messing up (Score:4, Insightful)
My hope at least is that this is part of a larger case of Live Nation as a whole being an anticompetitive entity with it's vertical integration. I think the case they are making is that TM wasn't motivated by consumer protection but to kneecap the resale sites, especially if they have TM people talking about that. My personal feeling is TM has had the ability to do something like for this for a long time and chose not to until the money cons outweighed the money benefits. I can't prove that but it feels like something they'd do.
I would be in favor some sort of legal requirement to a system like this though because fuck the bot buys and all that, especially if LNE is allowed to exist as it does. A modified version of rules around airline tickets lets say.
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The DOJ considering them competition is absolutely absurd.
Ticketmaster has a ticket reselling and transferal business as well. They are the direct competition. Also the great thing about Stubhub is that they publish a lot of data, and data suggest that scalping for major shows makes up around 10% of the total processed ticket transfer volume. It really isn't the underlying problem in you not being able to get tickets and the practice of transferring a ticket is not worth stomping out just to stop a few scalpers.
Not even Ticketmaster is saying this reduces scalping
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Why would ticketmaster want fewer buyers?
Pretty sure that I dont live in a universe where ticketmaster hates money like you are claiming.
Whatever there motives are, its to increase their own profits, therefore it cant be the "point" you claim.
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Or, the venue can simply charge what people are willing to pay, leaving no room for scalpers.
People bid the max they are willing to pay and indicate how many tickets they want at that price.
Once all tickets are sold, then allocate the tickets by bid. Highest bidder gets the best seats. Next highest, gets next best seats, so on down the line.
Make a few minor adjustments for ensuring "seats together" as necessary.
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Or, the venue can simply charge what people are willing to pay, leaving no room for scalpers.
Or anyone lower class. Or teenagers who can't afford tickets at inflated prices. You can say what you want about scalpers, but at least right now it's actually possible for people to buy tickets at retail price. Scalpers literally don't get them all, in fact they don't get the overwhelming majority of them.
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Or anyone lower class. Or teenagers who can't afford tickets at inflated prices.
So what? Not all things are priced for all people. They can't go buy a Ferrari either.
I don't see a problem if people can't or won't pay the true market rate for luxury goods, like concert or sporting event tickets, and thus not being able to buy them.
You know what happens if there is an event that I'd like to go, but I'm not willing to pay the going price for the tickets I want? I just don't go. I doubt I will EVER see an NFL game. And you know what? Life goes on without much difficulty.
Headline (Score:3)
Ticketmaster [words here can be ignored] Are Anticompetitive
Break up Ticketmaster... (Score:2)
Ticketmaster should be broken up into 3 pieces, one being the Ticketmaster business, one being the events/touring/booking business and one being the ticket resale business.
StubHub Is Not Competition (Score:1)
NO FUCKING SHIT (Score:2)