Have you bought tickets for an "event" lately? A local music concert, a sports event, theater during your planned trip to New York, even a dogfight two blocks down from your house...you just can't avoid "Ticketmaster," the company that seems to have a lock on the tix for every entertainment in the country -- nor its exhorbitant add-on fees.
It turns out that Ticketmaster doesn't just seem to be everywhere, it is, with a recently reported 83% market share. According to Steven Pearlstein in the Washington Post, a degree of competiton emerged about a year ago, but in short order, Ticketmaster and its rival LiveNation decided to merge; this in turn was challenged by antitrust authorities. You can read all the details of the antitrust action in the article, but what comes through clearly to me in all of it is "monopoly."
I don't begrudge a company a profit for services rendered, but on a typical order I made recently, Ticketmaster's fees and charges added 15% to the price of the event. And that was before I declined the extra 4.75 they wanted just to e-mail the tickets (...wait, isn't e-mailing easier and cheaper than snail mail? Shouldn't the e-mail be free, and the postally mailed tickets cost extra?) Welcome to the world of monopoly pricing, prices that we unfortunately can't pay with Monopoly money.
The approval of the merger comes with some limitations aimed at benefitting consumers, but it will be interesting to see if anything really changes. The basic fact is that - as in many other businesses in the past decade or so - you're being charged again for something that's already included. Admission prices have always included the costs of printing, selling, tracking, and delivering the actual tickets. It's part of the cost of doing business, so when you purchase admission to an event, you have a right to assume you don't get charged a separate fee for the receipt (which is effectively what a ticket is).
At the arena/theater/stadium box office, you don't; consumers can still normally avoid the add-on charges that way. But if you don't want to drag yourself to the box office, or physically can't (e.g., buying tickets in advance for another city), you'll pay more. Ticketmaster offers a degree of convenience that some people in some circumstances may value, but any website, not just Ticketmaster's, can offer the benefits of ordering across the country, or receiving your tickets quickly by e-mail.
The event venues have abdicated their responsibility to their patrons by not running their own ticket operations. More should. Too many of those that do will still charge you a fee for online orders (figuring, I guess, that if Ticketmaster can get away with it they can too). That practice should cease.
Note: This piece is also being published on The Tin Lizard,
because its subject matter is also relevant there.
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