Stevie Nicks’ concert tour kicked off on March 15, and the twenty upcoming dates on the tour still have plenty of tickets available. With ten days left before the upcoming concert at Paycom Center in Oklahoma City show on Thursday, March 30, huge numbers of tickets remain available, both from the box office, and on resale sites. But there’s a drastic pricing difference for consumers shopping for tickets on the “official” Ticketmaster page vs. competing marketplaces.
Tickets at Ticketmaster are at least two times more expensive after fees than the competition. For example, purchasing two tickets in Section 302, Row M, on the Ticketmaster site will cost you $259.75, with taxes and fees. You will only pay $134.70 for the same seats at MegaSeats. This ticketing website bills itself as a “no fees” marketplace, but even without the fees the Ticketmaster seats are $87 more expensive than Megaseats tickets.
For the concert goer, the tickets could be even lower if it were not for the floor pricing. The reason? It appears that either the venue, the artist, or the ticketing vendor has chosen to put a price floor on the event, meaning that people listing tickets for resale cannot price tickets below a minimum value set on the marketplace. Floor pricing or limiting the ability for ticket resellers to list prices below a price demanded by the venues or artists, is arguably harmful for consumers, and many consider it to be openly discriminatory against lower-income individuals. “Resale price floors harm consumers twice-over,” says John Breyault of the National Consumers League. “First, they keep discounted tickets from being available to fans who would otherwise be unable to attend a show. Second, they harm sellers who simply want to recoup at least a portion of their ticket investment when they are unable to attend an event. Fans should not be the ones to pay the price when Live Nation and its clients fail to anticipate lower-than-expected demand for an event.”
Recently, the US Senate Judiciary Committee held hearings on the ticket market, slamming Ticketmaster and Live Nation for decreasing competition in the market by controlling venues, tickets and artists. At the hearing, megastar Garth Brooks gave the proverbial finger to the ticket consumer in written testimony. Brooks, the country star who has been selling out venues and making millions of dollars for a generation, admitted that artists are a major factor in determining the price of tickets, and the “the price of the ticket is going to be high” because ticket costs are “pushed by the price the artist is demanding from the venue.” He suggested that for consumers to get lower priced tickets, “it is up to the Entertainer to find other ways for people who can’t afford the cost of that ticket to sing along for a lesser price or even free.”
We contacted Brooks’ publicist to see when he might be lowering his ticket process for the benefit of his fans, but we have not received a response yet. We also reached out to Ticketmaster and Paycom to ascertain who may be responsible for the floor pricing policy. Again, no response. Finally, we contacted the Senate Judiciary’s majority and minority offices to better understand what may be the next steps for protecting consumers in this marketplace. Their press secretary stated that “Senators Klobuchar and Lee – Chair and Ranking Member of the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Competition Policy, Antitrust, and Consumer Rights – sent a letter to Live Nation following up on their testimony and pressing them further on the lack of competition in the ticketing industry. Last month, Senators Klobuchar and Lee sent evidence from their bipartisan hearing to the Department of Justice and called on them to continue examining Live Nation and Ticketmaster’s anticompetitive conduct.”
While consumers wait for artists and the government to come to their rescue and figure out how to lower prices for fans, ticketing sites like MegaSeats have stepped in to provide some relief.
