CA seeks to make concert ticket sales competitive
The service fee for that ticket to attend a Sacramento Kings game or a concert may comprise a modest fraction of the overall cost. Still, we’re forced to pay it simply because companies like Ticketmaster monopolize the tickets for the events we want to see.
To even call it a “service fee,” is an abuse of the words but it’s our reality.
Ticketmaster has managed to control an estimated 80 percent of the nation’s ticketselling market for athletic and music events. And now a Bay Area legislator known for challenging the new titans of American industry is taking on Ticketmaster and its parent company, Live Nation.
Buffy Wicks, D-Oakland, envisions a day when all ticket providers share the sales platform to sell entry to the same event, with the market rewarding the companies with the lowest fees.
Once again, California finds itself trying to address national problems the rest of the nation is ducking. Congress has held hearings. The U.S. Justice Department is investigating. Wicks wants to do something.
“I view it really like a fairness issue and a consumer protection issue,” said Wicks. She hopes to “strengthen the fan and artist relationship….And right now, that relationship is really controlled by Ticketmaster.”
Part of the Live Nation conglomerate based in Beverly Hills, Ticketmaster makes its fortune between the huge demand for popular events and a limited supply of tickets driving up prices, particularly in the secondary sales market. Ticketmaster admits it is big, but its size is not the reason for higher ticket prices. It’s business practices are the reason. If you don’t pay what they demand, even when the service fee is excessive and unfair, you don’t get a ticket to see the show.
Enter Wicks, whose Assembly Bill 2808 outlines what could be detailed legislation. She envisions a one-stop show for Californians to buy entertainment tickets online. Ticketmaster, StubHub, and all other qualifying providers would offer the same-priced ticket with each provider proposing its service fee to consumers, giving them a choice they don’t currently enjoy.
Computer systems can speak to one another if they share a common language, software known as application programming interface or API. Under AB 2808, Ticketmaster and every ticketing merchant would need to provide software to its sales system that “enables any participating ticketing provider, as defined, to integrate with the ticket manifest to list and sell primary tickets or secondary tickets.” In theory, competition to sell tickets would lower those surcharges. “I mean, we put a man on the moon,” Wicks said. “We can sell tickets in a safe way.”
The companies controlling the entertainment ticket market scoff at this and even say they are not to blame for high ticket prices - fan behavior is.
At a Feb. 13 informational hearing in the State Assembly, Ticketmaster Executive Vice President Dan Wall said that the ticket company profit on a typical concert “is on the order of 2% of the ticket price.”
That initial price of a ticket typically starts low, Wall said. “Artists always under-price their tickets,” he said.
Fans, in essence, have only themselves to blame for paying a much higher ticket on a resale market because they want to see a concert so badly. Then there are the fans who buy their tickets and sell them at higher prices instead of attending shows themselves.
Buyers using sophisticated software known as “bots” can buy tickets in bulk, despite