“Why I Blame Ticketmaster/Live Nation”
Fed up with the issues around buying concert tickets? Then this article from Medium is for you. WARNING: There be much anger ahead.
To me, there is no feeling more sickening than putting cold hard cash in the pockets of dishonest people.
During an event ticketing panel at an industry conference I attended a few years ago, a representative of Stubhub claimed that their main value proposition as a service is to “reduce the number of unsold tickets, thereby benefiting the promoter, the artist, and the fan.”
Horseshit.
The only people who should be profiting from music, aside from the artists themselves, are those who actively participate in making that music available to fans — and yes, this includes ticketing agents, because they provide a necessary service.
But when a service such as event ticketing is inherently vulnerable to abuse by black market scum, it should also be their top priority to do what is necessary to prevent the resale market from growing into a $4.5 billion dollar business, where profits are completely disconnected from the financial ecosystem that makes these events happen to being with.
The fight against the secondary market is not about keeping ticket prices low — it’s about making sure the money goes to those who actually earned it.
Do you agree with Ms. Markov? I do. There doesn’t seem to be anything being done about it.