MASTER OF TICKET SALES: THE TICKMASTER AND LIVE NATION MONOPOLY

11/29/25

What the hell happened to getting concert tickets for face value? You have to dig through countless added fees to even find out what the original price was. Like a needle in a goddamn haystack. It's like sifting through endless paperwork with little knowledge of the actual meaning behind the numbers and letters on each page. Seriously, why am I paying 20% over face value for a ticket?

I'll tell you why. Ticketmaster. The bastards. The masters of ticket sales. Honestly their name is very fitting. Think about Kim Jong Un's title; Supreme Leader. Similar and obviously comparable. Ticketmaster is the fascist ruler of the ticket sales world. A massive conglomerate led by who, anyone can assume, are not fans of live music. They are only money hungry fat cats who sit in their cushy offices pampered by the overinflated service fees they charge while artists exhibit their craft and contribute to the fabric of society. Shameful! Force them through the streets, tied together with banks rolls, with X amount of expletives shouted at them as they're paraded towards the city center to have tomatoes thrown at their vibrant white collars. Does this count as hate speech towards the Ticketmaster executives? If it is, fuck it. Yeah. I'm leaving that one uncensored.

The Ticketmaster monopoly is a runaway train and should be treated as such. After the Live Nation x Ticketmaster merger in 2010, the pair have been able to corner the market of live events and entertainment. According to several sources, Live Nation/Ticketmaster control more than 70% of the ticketing market. They are a corporate power to be reckoned with, vertically integrated to be in control of promotion, ticketing, venue operation, and artist management. 

There is a particularly acute issue with this monopoly. Not only is there near hegemonic control of ticketing, but an almost bully-like influence over mid to large size venues. Live Nation controls over 60% of large venues (150+) in the United States, all of which use Ticketmaster as their ticketing platform, thereby forcing artists to use their "services". Artists either have to, remain in cahoots with Ticketmaster and Live Nation or be stuck with nowhere to play at key tour stops. With Live Nation's promoting influence, they are able to silently divert tours and shows to venues that have Ticketmaster or Live Nation contracts. Only 3 years after their merger, Live Nation was found to be quietly moving a Matchbox Twenty/Goo Goo Dolls tour stop they were promoting in Atlanta from Gwinnett Center to another venue owned and operated by the company. Gwinnett Center had switched from Ticketmaster to AXS (a ticket platform alternative), prompting Live Nation retaliation. 

Osees recently had a run in with Live Nation in New York. The band was set to play two sold out shows in late October at Warsaw and Live Nation, who owns the venue, wanted to kick out Osees so Sam Smith could play. Sam Smith had/has 24 shows across October, November, and December at Warsaw, none of which sold out. Tickets are like $130. F**k that! Live Nation was trying to make more money, even though they had a fully sold out show that was actually affordable. Think of the bar tabs! Less money on tickets = more on booze. John Dwyer, Osees frontman, was asked to move their sold out show to another date on an already jam packed tour across the U.S. Thankfully, Adam (no last name) from Warsaw was adamant about Osees keeping their show. The band made an emergency merch order for tees to commemorate the "Sam Smith/Warsaw Incident". Hear JPD's exact words about what happened here.

Ticketmaster has been charging overreaching fees for decades. On their website they only have 2 fees listed: Service fees (which is left vague, but implies that there are several fees within) and Facility fees. They forget to mention the Order Processing Fee, which is around 1% of the order total. Facility fees are not always included, as is mentioned in their description. According to Ticketmaster's site, "service fees are generally negotiated and shared between various parties involved in organizing the event and may include a profit to them. The service fee is charged once per ticket...Venues often use their share to pay local staff, manage day-to-day operations, and keep the venue running year-round...Ticketmaster uses its share to provide the tech, customer support, and secure tools that power your ticket-buying experience—including the equipment venues use to scan tickets and run their box offices to get everyone into the venue on event day." Seems like a load of BS. I don't know if I buy it. The percentage of all the fees are not actually disclosed, but they're normally between 20-30% of the face value. That's crazy right? Am I being unreasonable? Absolutely not. A $35 ticket with a 30% service fee jumps to $45.50. God forbid someone doesn't want to pay $10 more for a ticket for a vague reason. 

Ticketmaster should be haunted by the exorbitant prices of tickets WITHOUT added fees. The price of tickets have continued to rise for years, surpassing the rate of inflation by a numerous amount. Bruce Houghton, a senior advisor at Bandsintown and professor at Berklee College of Music, claims that ticket prices have risen 430% since 1996. Inflation is only at 96%. Tickets that cost $25 in 1996 should cost $49 relative to inflation. The average cost to see a big-name artist is $136, 3 times more than what the cost should be. According to Ben Treanor, the age of streaming has created this phenomenon. Artists are increasingly relying on tours to make money, a result of poor revenue from streaming. Of course, Ticketmaster has a hand in this. Their dynamic pricing model is similar to that of airline tickets; when there is more demand, the prices will go up significantly. Not entirely fair is it? Artists do, however, have to opt-in to using this pricing model. I have yet to see any smaller artists use this, but there are plenty of bigger names that have. Oasis was accused of using dynamic pricing for their comeback tour this past year, but it was something a little different, engineered by Ticketmaster. Fans found that floor tickets, originally promised at £150 quickly became 2 times more and were called "In-Demand". In seated sections, the prices ranged, but "Premium" tickets were priced at £440 with no benefits. The British Competition and Market Authority launched an investigation into Ticketmaster for alleged breaches of consumer protection laws. They found that they did not use dynamic pricing, but failed to disclose all ticket prices and the meaning behind them. They were meant to mislead fans in to paying more for a ticket with no explanation as to why. During the same tour, Oasis' management made it clear that reselling tickets could only be done through Ticketmaster or Twickets and any ticket sold on another site was void, capped at face value in the name of avoiding outrageously high prices. This was largely ignored by resellers and tickets were found at over £11,000. Stellar work there. 

Resellers have also ruined the ticketing industry, highly enabled by Ticketmaster. There is very little protection from speculative ticketing for fans. Speculative ticketing is when a reseller will claim to have tickets they don't actually have, more times than not, scamming anyone who buys them. On Ticketmaster's official reselling site, speculative tickets have been found, despite the VP's statement that they don't allow speculative ticketing and that the site is thoroughly policed. While it's not a common enough occurrence for blame to be placed on Ticketmaster, shady methods have been used by the company in conjunction with ticket resellers. There's a great BBC article that explains how employees of Ticketmaster owned reseller sites helped ticket touts and the company make millions of dollars of the backs of fans. Give it a read. Ticketmaster also has the power to cap the resale prices of tickets to their face or market value, but in many cases, refuses to do so. 

It's also an undeniable fact that artists have a say in how much their tickets are, Ticketmaster serving as the scapegoat. Robert Smith of The Cure said in an interview, “It was easy to set ticket prices, but you need to be pig-headed. We didn’t allow dynamic pricing because it’s a scam that would disappear if every artist said, ‘I don’t want that!’ But most artists hide behind management. ‘Oh, we didn’t know,’ they say. They all know. If they say they do not, they’re either f**king stupid or lying. It’s just driven by greed.” He has famously spoken out against Ticketmaster's high fees and convinced them to offer partial refunds to fans as well as canceling over 7,000 tickets on secondary reselling sites. If more big-name artists had spines, maybe Ticketmaster's vice grip on the industry would start to loosen.

Pearl Jam attempted to boycott Ticketmaster through the mid-90s after cancelling their tour in the summer of 1994, refusing to play venues with Ticketmaster contracts, and embarking on a "retaliatory" tour in 1995 at independent venues and spaces where they could build a stage. The band had been wanting to organize a low-cost tour for fans with tickets priced at $18, but Ticketmaster had added their own fees on top, enraging Eddie Vedder and the rest of the band. Bailing on such a large part of the concert industry is not an easy feat, especially against a company that holds so much power. The tour ended up being an expensive and logistical nightmare to plan and carry out. While they did pull it off, it came at a price. They would return to Ticketmaster in 1998. I'm sure that they were nothing short of disgruntled to be head back towards the giant's lair. 

The U.S. Department of Justice and 30 states launched a massive anti-trust lawsuit against Live Nation-Ticketmaster in May 2024. From the DOJ's official statement and Attorney General Merrick B. Garland, “We allege that Live Nation relies on unlawful, anticompetitive conduct to exercise its monopolistic control over the live events industry in the United States at the cost of fans, artists, smaller promoters, and venue operators. The result is that fans pay more in fees, artists have fewer opportunities to play concerts, smaller promoters get squeezed out, and venues have fewer real choices for ticketing services. It is time to break up Live Nation-Ticketmaster.” The suit claims that Live Nation-Ticketmaster's monopolistic and anticompetitive practices are in violation of Section 2 of the Sherman Antitrust Act. Information about the allegations and reasons for the suit can be found here. In September this year, the Federal Trade Commission and 7 states sued Live Nation and Ticketmaster for engaging in illegal ticket resale tactics. All information can be found here.

We're headed in the right direction. The U.S. government is finally taking action to break up a breeding ground for greed and to protect the arts the greedy profit off of. As I mentioned above, the U.K. has already investigated Ticketmaster for breaching consumer protections. I'm not sure I can say how long this will take to get resolved, but the sooner the better. I need to go to more shows. Take away the absurd face value prices and the fees and I'd be able to. I'm curious to see how it'll affect the music/touring industry if they do get broken up. I don't think I'm qualified enough to make an official prediction. I guess we'll see what happens.

I apologize for posting a day late. The holidays get in the way. I've got something special planned for next week. Look forward to it. Get 'yer speakers ready.

Stay informed. See you next week...

Cheers,

Jack