Ticketmaster is angry that bots and brokers are getting a cut of ticket sales. Ticketmaster wants their monopoly on gouging every band at every venue kept intact.
"The odds are absolutely stacked against the fan," said Joe Berchtold, chief operating officer of Live Nation, the world's largest tour promoter and owner of Ticketmaster, which sold tickets for the Hip's final tour.
Here's a bit of a rebuttal to Ticketmaster's business model, and although it is six years old, I think it still applies.
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/…/ticketmaster-a-new-era-of…
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/…/ticketmaster-a-new-era-of…
But to me it just seemed like a bunch of guys (and somehow I suspect they were all guys) got together one day and said, "Lots of people go to concerts. How can we get a piece of that?" and then found a way to attach themselves to the ticket buying process. They did it so well, that now they are completely embedded into the process, they are simply a living part of it. But just because you're really good at gouging people, does that mean you should be rewarded?
For instance, say I was a good friend of Joe Berchtold, and I told him that I was a pretty good drawer, and showed him some of my work, and then said, "Hey Joe, what if we include with every ticket a print of a drawing of the performer? We could charge $12 for the mandatory print fee; $5 for the rights to use the image fee; $1 for the sore fingers fee (you don't think artists have it tough?); $2.50 resale fee (in case some chump who actually went to a show and got a print decided he'd try to make some money and resell his print); $20 facility fee (my gold drawing table is NOT going to pay for itself); $5 process-at-home option fee, in case the customer would like to print the print on their home printer; $10 Bad Printer Fee, just in case a customer decides they want to use their very bad printer to print the print at home, in which case my reputation would be tarnished when people see the bad print; $25 delivery fee (we only use high-quality shipping tubes); $6 handling fee (how do you think the prints get into the tubes and down to the post office, you idiot?); 5% GST; 8% PST (I don't care where you live, that's what we pay in Manitoba so suck it!); and finally, 13% HST just for the hell of it.
I'm thinking this is a good idea. I suppose we could revisit the fee structure at a later date, but for the time being, who wouldn't want an awesome drawing of Nikki Sixx (and if I can find it, you will see it here later) on their walls?
So, the next time the Rolling Stones wheel their way into town, you can bet that Joe and I will skim a cool $3,520,000 off the top of all ticket sales (assuming 40,000 tickets sold - shoot, forgot to add the Investor's Group facility fee (the other facility fee was to pay for MY facility, remember - oh well, I'll eat that one).
Now of course, that is a bit over the top. But think of this. Ticketmaster does this for just about every show that happens at every large-ish venue (outside of house concerts and private clubs) in North America, and probably loads of other countries too. I don't think it's too big of a stretch to say that Ticketmaster is making billions of dollars a year.
To skim.
For instance, say I was a good friend of Joe Berchtold, and I told him that I was a pretty good drawer, and showed him some of my work, and then said, "Hey Joe, what if we include with every ticket a print of a drawing of the performer? We could charge $12 for the mandatory print fee; $5 for the rights to use the image fee; $1 for the sore fingers fee (you don't think artists have it tough?); $2.50 resale fee (in case some chump who actually went to a show and got a print decided he'd try to make some money and resell his print); $20 facility fee (my gold drawing table is NOT going to pay for itself); $5 process-at-home option fee, in case the customer would like to print the print on their home printer; $10 Bad Printer Fee, just in case a customer decides they want to use their very bad printer to print the print at home, in which case my reputation would be tarnished when people see the bad print; $25 delivery fee (we only use high-quality shipping tubes); $6 handling fee (how do you think the prints get into the tubes and down to the post office, you idiot?); 5% GST; 8% PST (I don't care where you live, that's what we pay in Manitoba so suck it!); and finally, 13% HST just for the hell of it.
I'm thinking this is a good idea. I suppose we could revisit the fee structure at a later date, but for the time being, who wouldn't want an awesome drawing of Nikki Sixx (and if I can find it, you will see it here later) on their walls?
So, the next time the Rolling Stones wheel their way into town, you can bet that Joe and I will skim a cool $3,520,000 off the top of all ticket sales (assuming 40,000 tickets sold - shoot, forgot to add the Investor's Group facility fee (the other facility fee was to pay for MY facility, remember - oh well, I'll eat that one).
Now of course, that is a bit over the top. But think of this. Ticketmaster does this for just about every show that happens at every large-ish venue (outside of house concerts and private clubs) in North America, and probably loads of other countries too. I don't think it's too big of a stretch to say that Ticketmaster is making billions of dollars a year.
To skim.
No comments:
Post a Comment