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Yes I noticed that just received my Bob D tickets for the Usher Hall. Service fee and charges were £11.55 per ticket. Cheeky beggars.
Big corporation ripping off fans shocker!! It's one reason I stopped going to gigs.
Service fee? Facility charge? Processing fee?
We all know they're really just a way a way of offshoring tax liability but i'd love to see a breakdown of what they claim to cover, because they all sound like the same thing to me.
Now wait til an event's cancelled...
Lol at square festering balls!
Agree the fees seem utterly unjustified, as do pretty much any entertainment ticket price. Why do we pay though?
Why do we pay though?
"We" don''t. A scattering of witless Muppets do, and then whine about it on the internet afterwards.
Which Ticketmaster is presumably perfectly happy with.
And there's the rub. If you want to see the gig what's the alternative to Ticketmaster?
Who is it that chooses TM as the purchasing conduit? I went to see a gig in Cardiff last night. I made the decision to buy the tickets last May after seeing them advertised on Facebook. The bands Orbital and Leftfield made the decision (probably via their management)to tour, to use the Utilita Arena in Cardiff and obviously to accept my money. Who makes the decision to use Ticketmaster? Could I have purchased directly from Orbital? Leftfield? Utilita?
The additional charges seem to me to be extraordinarily high. It's all on-line payments nowadays so afaik all you are paying for is a bit of simple coding. If it was a bit more transparent about what the fees were for I reckon that I know Yr9 pupils who could step up to the mark and write it. And anyway, once written it only needs an event specific tweak each time.
Thieves they are, but they have us over a barrel until venues and performers do something about it.
another lol @ Cougar 🙂
did you enjoy the gig Ambrose? we thought orbital good, and i didn't recognise some of what they were playing - new album? leftfield were cracking.
the real robbery was going on behind the bar. 2 pints and a large glass of red was 32 flipping quid!!
Utter shite. Biggest yes, best? At what, extracting money from wallets? TicketMaster have a near monopoly, someone tried to take them to task in the 90s but fans just ignored them and here we are today.
@somafunk linked a decent article explaining it all.
The expense is nothing to do with artists making money, dynamic pricing is just profiteering pure and simple. Other shitty practices like charging to print your own tickets is utterly taking the piss. And as we see, folk lap it up and even defend it. Unbelievable.
Well, one of those two statements is true.
At this point it's pretty much a monopoly, it's all Live Nation. The reason you can't buy tickets if you're not there with your finger on the refresh button across seventeen devices at 7:59:59 for an 8:00 ticket drop isn't because of popularity, it's because the scalpers have botnets which hoover up half of them in bulk. The ticketing companies pay lip service to caring because as per the OP a twenty quid fee to "process" two gig tickets by actually doing the square root of **** all prints money faster than the Royal Mint.
It's a parasitic industry in dire need of regulation. Remember when you could turn up to a gig on the day and buy a couple of tickets from the box office? Halcyon days. Sacking off Ticketbastard and making people physically go to the venue to purchase tickets would fix most of this problem at a stroke, but there's no appetite for it when the alternative is free money.
IIRC it was The Cure and Pearl Jam who kicked back against ticketmaster, but before then you had the "admin fee" for bookings with the venues direct.
Pearl Jam for sure, I remember it, there was a big fuss made at the time. I think it was on that same tour they were boasting a different set list at every gig to reward frequent flyers.
The Cure, no idea.
@del, we arived after the start but got most of Orbital. As you say though there was some stuff new to me. By the time Leftfield came on I was properly revved up and loving life. If you were the bloke in the bogs in the yellow barbour jacket I appologise.
Leftfield were spectacular, it was good to see some instruments being played although I thought 'Melt' wasn't their best version. Son #1 was there, he's in the industry and reckons there was a technical problem. Needless to say I've been blasting out both bands all day today 🙂
Anyway, my next gig will be in a smaller venue with no ticketmaster involvement.
[Paul] Heaton was trending online recently as an antidote to Oasis. While some Oasis fans ended up paying more than £300 for tickets to their reunion tour because of dynamic pricing, Heaton capped the price for his upcoming arena dates at £35. “If you feel strongly about your fans, go to the meetings where they discuss things like dynamic pricing.”
It’s possible to get tickets through See Tickets and Gigantic, as well as Ticketmaster, for quite a few venues. It’s not always possible to print your own now, though - to try to cut out the touts and scalpers, you have to use an app that has a dynamic ticket; the QR Code changes all the time, so a screenshot or printed version won’t be recognised by the scanners at the entrance to the event.
... which by turns is a "screw you, we've got our money" to people who can't attend and want to pass on tickets to a mate. Oh, wait, you can buy insurance at an extra £5 per ticket you say? I got stung by this just last week buying tickets as a gift, she'll need my login credentials to both my Co-Op app and my Ticketbastard account in order to validate the e-tickets.
It's difficult and I don't know what the solution is. I'm not wholly sure that there is a simple one even, otherwise someone would have done it by now.
Now wait til an event’s cancelled…
"But it was cancelled, so I'd like a full refund."
"We still provided our service."
"No you didn't. There was no event, therefore I could not attend. I shouldn't have to pay charges for something that didn't happen."
"But we sold you a ticket even though the ticket was for an event that never happened. So we get paid."
Which is why the fees are separated out like this.
Why not just show one fee instead three? It’s a bit like calling extra income tax National Insurance and hoping folk don’t notice how much is being taken overall, maybe that’s the point 😉
that’s so the pensioners can pay no NI whilst complaining about winter fuel payment cuts and self employed people can have different rules - presumably because that suits lots of politicians!
Last big gig I went to was a couple of years ago to see Bicep at Alexandra Palace. They used a company called Dice, great app, reasonable price and even had the option of transferring the ticket if you couldn't go.
But yeah I hate Ticketmaster. I refuse to use them.
Interesting. That argument isn’t far away from the bike shop saying “nothing to do with us if Trek / Specialized / etc sell a bike that breaks”.
If it was that easy certain bike shops would separate their “selling fees” from the bike price.
To be fair I do go to some high profile gigs, and just accept that Ticketmaster are raiding my bank account, but in reality I prefer seeing bands in small venues (The Cresent York anyone?) as it’s just a better experience - and that cuts Ticketmaster out a lot of the time.
At this point it’s pretty much a monopoly, it’s all Live Nation. The reason you can’t buy tickets if you’re not there with your finger on the refresh button across seventeen devices at 7:59:59 for an 8:00 ticket drop isn’t because of popularity, it’s because the scalpers have botnets which hoover up half of them in bulk. The ticketing companies pay lip service to caring because as per the OP a twenty quid fee to “process” two gig tickets by actually doing the square root of **** all prints money faster than the Royal Mint.
… which by turns is a “screw you, we’ve got our money” to people who can’t attend and want to pass on tickets to a mate. Oh, wait, you can buy insurance at an extra £5 per ticket you say? I got stung by this just last week buying tickets as a gift, she’ll need my login credentials to both my Co-Op app and my Ticketbastard account in order to validate the e-tickets.
Surely we can’t have it both ways
Come to SevernFest 25 next year.
Headline act to be announced soon 🙂
It's free :-).
We had the The Wurzels this year 🙂
I've used DICE to buy tickets - they seem to pretty fair with regards to fees, etc.
They need paying. The business has to make a profit to function.
Sure, but I reckon that's more of an argument in business to business transactions, not end user. Plenty of costs to setting up and running a restaurant but if there's no food put on the table the punter is not expected to pay.
If you didn’t have a good time, get your money back on the way out
Sounds like Oasis Heaton Park 2009 - anyone asking for a refund got a cheque signed by the brothers. 90% got cashed, the 10% kept are I think worth quite a bit more now.
Looking for tickets for Sheffield City Hall I noticed they sold via Ticketbastard. Looking for alternative purchase options (there aren’t any that don’t involve TB), I stumbled on this which to some degree addresses the smorgasbord of fees being levied
Our Ticket Fees Explained
Seeing your favourite band or show is a great experience. And we’re here to help you enjoy that must-see act, without any unnecessary confusion.
Our ticket prices are transparent and made up of four elements:
1. The Face Value – this is the price agreed with the promoter or organiser of an event. We work hard with promoters to ensure that this is a fair price.
2. The Booking Fee – this is a charge made to cover the costs of our ticketing service, for example the costs of the ticketing software, call centre and our colleagues.
3. The Facility Fee – this is a small charge that contributes to the upkeep, safety and security of the building to ensure that you enjoy your visit.
4. The Fulfilment Fee – this is the cost of getting the tickets to you, so includes things like postage costs or organising collection facilities
The prices shown in our literature and on our website combines the Face Value and Booking Fee. This means that the price you see is the price you will pay for your ticket. You can then choose the best method to get hold of your ticket and any costs for this at the time of booking.
Why do we charge fees?
Sheffield City Hall is a part of Sheffield City Trust, a not-for-profit charitable organisation. We are proud to run some iconic buildings and regularly invest in their maintenance and upkeep. As a not-for-profit organisation, we don’t have shareholders; instead any surplus from ticketing and hosting events are reinvested into our venues and activities to deliver a quality events programme. We work hard to ensure our pricing is fair and transparent.
Sheffield City Hall holds a special place in the minds of Sheffielders. With a Grade 2 listed status, we ensure that any improvements are of a standard befitting the history of the building; this can come at a cost. The facility fee will ensure that you are able to enjoy an event as much over the next 80 years as today.
The charges we make are there to cover the costs of safety and security improvements, our ticketing service; the ticketing software, call centre, counter service and colleagues. For most events, the face value of your ticket goes directly to the event promoter.
https://www.sheffieldcityhall.co.uk/box-office
If only things like "insurance" existed. They're quick to sell it to the consumer.
Yeah, at ten quid per ticket. Buying a train ticket or a cinema ticket online, the transaction charge is something like 50p. That's the whole point of this thread, not ticket prices themselves.
In the days of Cloud, it's trivial to spin up extra compute power to cope with bursty loads. If your ten quid went towards not sitting at position fifty thousand in the queue only to have your connection reset after two hours I'd have more sympathy.
And as everyone knows, they're wildly successful at this.
I’ve not checked this but I expect the booking fee (‘this is a charge made to cover the costs of our ticketing service, for example the costs of the ticketing software, call centre and our colleagues’) fluctuates significantly based on the face value i.e. they charge what they can get away with, not what it costs which would be simple to ‘fix’. No idea what a venue pays to use online ticket services, but you can bet TB are charging the venue and the punters.
I believe TM was the only company to charge the punters, that's how they got market dominance, other companies were charging the venues/promoters, so they switched to TM as that was a better deal for them and the other companies faded into obscurity. Once they had market dominance they started pumping up the additional costs. It wouldn't surprise me if they were charging both sides now.
Meh. You are told up front so you make the choice. How is it different to paying 4 quid for a cake in a cafe as opposed to buying your own from a supermarket?
How is it different to paying 4 quid for a cake in a cafe as opposed to buying your own from a supermarket?
The last time I paid four quid for a cake in a cafe, I wasn't charged a surprise additional two quid to go and get it from the counter myself.
Ticketshafter
It's gouging, and if I've made a purchase of an item I expect the vendor to supply the item described or refund my money. All of it. I don't have a problem with them making a living, but them expecting me to underwrite the cost of them doing business is pretty ripe. In what world is the vagaries of their business the responsibility of their customers? Touts and bots? The Glastonbury festival appears to have been able to navigate those problems.
The additional charges seem to me to be extraordinarily high. It’s all on-line payments nowadays so afaik all you are paying for is a bit of simple coding. If it was a bit more transparent about what the fees were for I reckon that I know Yr9 pupils who could step up to the mark and write it. And anyway, once written it only needs an event specific tweak each time.
My job would be a lot simpler if even half of that was true. But hey! It's all just ones and zeroes, how hard can it be???
Still struggling to understand the issue. Artist wants to make as much money as possible, manager does a deal with Ticketmaster who also want to make lots of money. People still queue electronically to be pay the prices quoted and tickets sell out in minutes. Next tour everyone goes ummm we can charge even more this time.
Still struggling to understand the issue.
Main issue with Ticktmaster/Live Nation is that it's close to a monopoly, and can use its weight to force bands to work with them rather than any alternative.
The cake analogy. You choose your cake and go to pay and the price is £2 more than previously advised.
I can live with that (£2 for a £4 cake is excessive, but I get the point)
My issue is that if I want 2 cakes, it's still one transaction - hold out the machine, tap the card. Ten cakes - one transaction. With tickets you aren't even handling them really, it's like a self service cake shop. Yet with ticket sites it's a per ticket fee, and that feels like a rip off.
Or, if I want a £5 cake - mysteriously for doing exactly the same thing (hold card machine out, etc.) it's now a £2.50 fee.
Sorry not read whole thread (internet experts eh), but read up on Ticketmaster previously - means I'll never buy a ticket through them. You only have to [url= https://www.google.com/search?q=ticketmaster+monopoly+explained&oq=ticketmaster+mono&gs_lcrp=EgZjaHJvbWUqBwgEEAAYgAQyBwgAEAAYgAQyBwgBEAAYgAQyBggCEEUYOTIHCAMQABiABDIHCAQQABiABDIHCAUQABiABDIHCAYQABiABDIHCAcQABiABDINCAgQABiGAxiABBiKBTINCAkQABiGAxiABBiKBdIBCjExMjg2ajFqMTWoAgiwAgE&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8 ]Google it[/url]
They are mainly responsible for the ****ing ridiculous ticket prices people are paying. Obviously, the people paying for the tickets are partly responsible, but yeah Ticketmaster should be avoided.
And if the cake is in some way inedible, I get all my money back, not just the wholesale cost and the cafe still charges me for going to the cafe instead of eating the supermarket cake at home.
I know, I don’t know exactly Ticketmaster’s business model, but here’s the rub - I’m the customer, I don’t care.
if I buy something from a shop (worse that shop is an effective monopoly) and I don’t get what I ordered, I want my money back. I don’t mind the dip making a margin when they deliver, but they should take the risk for that margin.
Taking my money (and I pay the money to Ticketmaster or the bike shop, not AC/DC or Trek) and taking the risk/ hit if the gig falls through - that’s what I would find annoying.
Can I just check, is that what Ticketmaster do, or do the refund all the money I paid to see the show, including any sundry adds-ons?
PS - I note the CMA, the US federal government and a number of US states are investigating a number of aspects of Live Nation / Ticketmaster behaviour.
Maybe it will come to nothing. Maybe they will be found to be abusing a monopoly position.
Dancing on the head of a pin. If the gig is cancelled, then Ticketmaster did not furnish a ticket to get into a gig, because there was no gig.
if the gig starts and was rubbish I have some sympathy with you, though even then that’s like the bike shop saying they only sold an order being sent to Trek. If the bike breaks it was because Trek employed Shane McGowan - nothing to do with the bike shop.
I think you are claiming to be like a pools agent but, you are correct, I am not a CMA (or American equivalent) lawyer - why don’t we just wait for them to have their say?
But me, I think you are sailing close to the wind on abuse of monopoly position given how many gigs you have pretty much exclusive rights to sell. But I don’t know.
PS - I’m bored on a train, so please don’t take any of this too much to heart.
I get my Wrexham AFC tickets via Ticketmaster without paying any fees. I assume the club covers the costs but it must only be a nominal amount so it can be done e.g. £5 for Wrexham AFC Women tickets.
Likewise. I am trying hard to spend no more than £20 face value on a ticket - prefer to go to unknowns and support local venues, and when you're paying £12 and £14 type tickets then any more than a couple of a quid for fees really stands out (ie - I'm not paying more than that, and not enough to really get annoyed about)
I'd have thought with the economies of scale, if anything the big gigs have less admin per ticket.
So for sure (and in defence, I guess) the fees being charged are at a level that people will just about pay, counter is that you don't have a choice, there's no competition really, they have the monopoly on that event/tour so you can't use a cheaper vendor so the choice is just don't go (or as above go to see someone else)
Yeah, they've sold me a ticket. And that sale includes all the pricing, admin fees and whatever. They want to make money selling tickets, they should also take on that risk. If the venue burns down / the singer's drunk / whatever that's not my problem. I bought a ticket from them to see Oasis, if the show doesn't happen that's their problem, not mine. They need to take it up with the Gallaghers, not me.
the issue is that if the gig doesn't go ahead the additional fees are forfeit. i'm curious as to why the sale of goods act doesn't apply?
TBF they've got a fantastic business model. /s
the issue is that if the gig doesn’t go ahead the additional fees are forfeit.
And as a punter that's exactly the problem. I don't care about how the fees add up - if I'm happy to pay 300€ to see a band that's my problem. I don't care if 15€ is the ticket price and 285€ "admin fees". I paid 300€, and I want to see my band. If it doesn't happen, I want my 300€ back.
I am trying hard to spend no more than £20 face value on a ticket – prefer to go to unknowns and support local venues, and when you’re paying £12 and £14 type tickets then any more than a couple of a quid for fees really stands out (ie – I’m not paying more than that, and not enough to really get annoyed about)
That's what I try and do also. One of my recent gigs the ticket cost £17.60. £16 ticket + £1.60 fees so 10% (See Tickets)
£10 fees on a £45 ticket is double for exactly the same service.
Just greed.
Yeah, I know. That's the problem. I'm happy with TM selling me tickets. I work in IT, and I realise that implies a cost, and I'm happy to see that reflected in ticket prices. What I'm not happy with is TM offloading all risk and just taking the profit.
Sorry. Cross posting.
🙂
^ that is definitely greedy - but my point is more that if a small gig can sort tickets (yes, via a smaller agency like Dice or SEE) for £1.60, then even if it is 10%, on £100 tickets even if they stick to 10% that's £10. I don't know why it costs any more than £1.60 full stop, maybe even less given economy of scale.
Example again
My local small venue is 275 capacity (and I've seen some great bands and gigs there)
If a decent sized band play there (Personal Trainer) it was about £15, so I reckon I paid maybe £1.50 a ticket, perhaps £2 booking fee. Per ticket, despite my argument above.
To load onto a ticketing site and input that there's 275 tickets available can't be that hard once a site is up and running. So they'll make between £400 and £500 say for ticketing
Now a big band play a big venue - not a stadium gig but say Hammersmith (Eventim) Apollo. 3600 capacity and according to this report £11.30 or so.
https://www.theguardian.com/money/2024/mar/19/fees-uk-music-ticket-prices-which-ticketing-sites
That's £40k for as far as I can see doing little more than you do for the 275 capacity venue. Even if you go by # tickets, it's still 7x the cost for doing the same thing, loading up details and telling the computer how many it can sell.
I'm not on the inside, but my daughter recently was involved in organising a theatre press night and it sisn't seem that hard liaising with the box office who arranged the sames and reduced the public numbers to allow for the freebies. So maybe RR can explain why it costs so much more in total for doing 'the same thing'
Well, that's a surprise, I never thought I could turn up for a cancelled gig and they'd let me in to sit in the warm and dry for a couple of hours. I must give that a go next time, I'm sure it'll turn out just as you say.
And yet many venues are rebooked after an event cancellation, meaning that any such ticket would not get you into the venue.
So maybe RR can explain why it costs so much more in total for doing ‘the same thing’
I’ll have a go for you.
It’s because they can.
Some artists try to make a stand but if you want to plan a tour and play some arenas then you’ll have to do business with live nation. Live nation will insist on Ticketmaster. If you want to avoid the hegemony then a tour is suddenly much more difficult to organise.
I bet live nation charge artists a shit load for towels and riders etc etc
its time for change.
Just to make it clear I was happy to pay £1.60 on a £16 ticket.
The greedy bit was directed at the £10 fees on a £45 ticket via TicketMaster.
But I agree - if it's £1.60 for a smaller band then why shouldn't it be the same fee for more expensive ticket. It shouldn't be more expensive to administer ticket sales just because the ticket price is higher.
agreed - I was meaning the agency is greedy, I think exactly the same as you, I can't understand why it isn't cheaper if anything because of economies of scale.
Why’s that again? <chinscratchyemoji>
But surely the promoters have a say in all this. Hahahahaha
I wonder what happens if next time a gig gets cancelled each paying customer separately takes Ticketmaster to the small claims.
Firstly I bet the legalities of the imposed contract agreed to under the timer Ticketmaster impose (signed under pressure?) start to look a little unfair and paying private customers have some level of protection there.
Secondly the nuisance value of that very reasonable action might well encourage Ticketmaster to consider that fees position going forward.
Just wondering.
Again, you're conflating ticket pricing with additional booking fees. Though if you think the rail networks don't operate a demand-based pricing structure then either you haven't used a cross-country train in years or you're deluded. Jump onto thetrainline, cost up a Glasgow > London return six weeks from now, then do the same for a trip tomorrow.
Demand may be orders of magnitude higher and require scaled-up compute power to process, but it's not more difficult.
Bullshit it does. Either it's a wholly automated process or you're paying through the nose because you're dealing with imbeciles. No-one is "sat" doing anything when a high-profile ticket drops, maybe aside from the IT wonks rebooting woefully under-provisioned servers.
The individual? 100% agree, I've worked in Support. Their employer? Bastards.
Bingo. This is surely the one justifiable reason why we get reamed for booking fees, because they take the hit in the wildly unlikely event that it goes sideways. I've been going to gigs for 35 years and I can count the number of outright cancelled events on one hand with change for the bus fare home.
Don’t lots of organisations occasionally have both foreseeable and unforeseeable circumstances that mean a whole stack of execs, managers and ops people need to get together to work through a problem? Isn’t that the cost of doing business? How is TB special other than being part of a cartel that can pull any and all of the levers? On that crazy Oasis day, what were the fees levied by TB on the surge tickets? Were they flat regardless of surge or did they surge too?
There were I think 14 dates sold on that first Saturday, the BBC is reporting 1.4 million tickets across 17 dates so conservative says what, 1.1m tickets sold that day?
If the total TM levy per ticket was £1 (and it wasn't - MEN report says between £8 and £20 and that was before dynamic came in) that would be over a million in fees - reality is likely more like 10x that. How much were these over 40 people being paid?
Had to deal with live nation & Ticketmaster for a ticket to manchester Ritz a few weeks back.
Gig good. Buying experience terrible. Won’t be doing it again.
Fees for my trip to Wembley to watch the NFL in October. 3x£130 tickets for context.
Name: Ticket Booking Fee Amount: £46.80
Name: Digital Tickets Delayed Amount: £2.00
Name: No Donation Amount: £.00
Name: Wembley Sustainability Fee Amount: £8.25
Name: NO Collector Ticket Amount: £.00
A ticket should be a ticket. If the event don't happen= money back.
End of.
PS I don't know why you guys torture yourselves with people like Ticketmaster etc.
Boycott them, if it's upsets you that much.
Couple of specific things...
Ticketmaster have enough industry share to be while not a monopoly, often an effective one, they have exclusivity with venues and they often have exclusivity with tours/artists. And don't take it from me that this is problematic, take it from ticketmaster themselves, this is why they have their "totally not ticketmaster" sites like "Gigsinscotland" in order to create the superficial illusion of choice.
As for how great they are at it- let's be honest, they are straight up bad at it and the reason they are bad at it is that they do not need to be good at it, for the same reason. Big events routinely crash their site- not just that one event but the whole site. There's absolutely no meaningful queueing or attempt to mitigate that. There's no sense of protection or fairness, you can be in at 10am, have tickets in your basket and reserved to you then the website crashes and you lose it all. That can happen to you 4 or 5 times. And of course touts miraculously manage to get around it all. It doesn't even need to be a massive event to be a complete disaster, their handling of the 6 Biffy Clyro shows next month was a total farce, that was only midsized venues but it was constant failures and loops, I finally got my tickets about an hour after they went live just because that was when they finally went through and reset a ton of failed transactions but it was officially "sold out" before that. Just a fiasco. Failure is standard for ticketmaster and like I say they are not motivated to fix that because they've rigged the game well enough that they don't have to be any good.
And the fees, oh yeah, of course an e-ticket is as expensive as posting the ticket was. Oh and also stops you from reselling except through their own service.
Oasis stuck a thing on Insta earlier stating the TM systems couldn't cope with demand. Good to see those 40 hard working poor souls earned their keep that day.