Ticketmaster sale of Oasis tickets

I wanted to fly to Birmingham last week at short notice. The flights were €325. I chose not to go.

If you don't want to pay €1,000 to see Oasis, then don't. Let someone else who wants to pay that price go.

I am not a fan but if I had got tickets at €20 each, I would probably have gone to see what all the fuss was about thus depriving a real fan.
 
Dynamic pricing exists in a lot of industries, airline and hotels being one. There are other sites that sell tickets, tickets.ie is an example.

Real issue here is Oasis and their management allowing the dynamic pricing to kick in, the artist sets the price, not ticketmaster.
 
Brendan Burgess said:
How are they abusing it?
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It seems that there is vertical integration with the promotional end of it with long-term contracts with venues.

Ticketmaster in and of itself doesn’t have much of a moat. It’s just an IT system.

Otherwise there is lots of concentration in the industry - every gig I go to seems to be promoted by either MCD or Aiken.

I don’t really understand the economics of it all and I think few enough do.
 
Brendan Burgess said:
I wanted to fly to Birmingham last week at short notice. The flights were €325. I chose not to go.

If you don't want to pay €1,000 to see Oasis, then don't. Let someone else who wants to pay that price go.
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Sure, I get that, and agree - but not when your are messed around for periods of up to 5 hours, to find out the price!

Keep in mind, you can't simply ask for a quote and come back later when it arrives, to decide if you want to take it, or not, with TM.

If they weren't permitted to have such a dominant position, their service would be better, amongst other things..
 
Gordon Gekko said:
If you look at the cold hard numbers though, there were 160,000 tickets and around 500,000 people looking to buy them. If it was a bond issuance, we’d say it was too cheap.

The dynamic pricing piece, whilst very irritating, is genius. I have two friends who paid €1,200 for two normal standing tickets (insane). It’s genius and just commerce at its best/worst to have a system which can extract that sort of money from paying customers.
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Yup, that's a fair point, from a commercial perspective it's certainly beneficial for the vendors - but we are entitled to put a value on our personal time, and being left swinging on TMs rubbish website for several hours, with no idea if we can buy, or what price we can buy at, is just wrong!
 
MrEarl said:
Sure, I get that, and agree - but not when your are messed around for periods of up to 5 hours, to find out the price!

Keep in mind, you can't simply ask for a quote and come back later when it arrives, to decide if you want to take it, or not, with TM.

If they weren't permitted to have such a dominant position, their service would be better, amongst other things..
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That’s my biggest problem with it. People spend hours in the queue and then have to decide in a split second if they want to buy tickets. I think it’s aggressive selling
 
MrEarl said:
If they weren't permitted to have such a dominant position, their service would be better, amongst other things..
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DeeKie said:
That’s my biggest problem with it. People spend hours in the queue and then have to decide in a split second if they want to buy tickets. I think it’s aggressive selling
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The live entertainment industry has always been notorious for shoddy customer service and aggressive selling.
 
MrEarl said:
Sure, I get that, and agree - but not when your are messed around for periods of up to 5 hours, to find out the price!
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What else can they do?

Go back to the old way of selling the tickets from HMV shops and see 500 000 people queuing for 150,000 tickets.

To save you wasting your time, they could have an auction open for a week or two. You bid what you are prepared to pay and they allocate the tickets that way. That might work quite well. But I would be annoyed if I paid €200 a ticket to find myself sitting beside Mr Earl who paid only €50.

A bit like when I pay for the extra leg room on a flight only to find some cheapskate student randomly allocated the seat beside me that morning.

Brendan
 
DeeKie said:
I think a pure lottery is the best way to allocate tickets. Like Wimbledon
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This is best for the fans that aren't willing to pay high prices. It's not the best way for the band (if they're looking to maximise revenue, which Oasis probably are) or for the fans that are willing to pay high prices to be guaranteed a ticket.

The reality is there's no allocation method that is going to make everyone happy when demand vastly exceeds supply.
 
Brendan Burgess said:
What else can they do?

Go back to the old way of selling the tickets from HMV shops and see 500 000 people queuing for 150,000 tickets.

To save you wasting your time, they could have an auction open for a week or two. You bid what you are prepared to pay and they allocate the tickets that way. That might work quite well. But I would be annoyed if I paid €200 a ticket to find myself sitting beside Mr Earl who paid only €50.

A bit like when I pay for the extra leg room on a flight only to find some cheapskate student randomly allocated the seat beside me that morning.

Brendan
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The majority of tickets for events are sold at fixed prices with different prices for different areas.

Dynamic pricing is securing the absolute maximum possible profit from an event instead of making a reasonable profit from it. They know their base cost, they know the profit they want from it, what's wrong with that? Instead they squeeze every last penny out of it, knowing that due to demand, there will be people who get the opportunity to buy tickets but won't be able to afford it and there's others behind them who will.

It is the same as touting but through the official selling agent. Ticketmaster must be delighted with their algorithm
 
DeeKie said:
I think a pure lottery is the best way to allocate tickets. Like Wimbledon
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Not for fans.

I might win a ticket and not be that pushed about going. So I might sell it on using my own dynamic pricing model. Oasis should get the profit, not I.

Then you might get a ticket to something that I really want to go to.

Pricing balances out supply and demand.

Brendan
 
If Oasis and MCD wanted to be up front and honest about it they could easily have done something like the following. They didn't and they fully deserve the criticism levelled at them imho. It is also no different to touting if you are selling the exact same ticket for different prices. You can call it what you like but it is extracting the absolute maximum price possible from fans.

Let's say there were 80K tickets available for the Saturday night concert.
The first 20K standing are at a set price, let's say €150 each.
The first 20K seating are at a set price, let's say €180 each.
Then there are an additional 20K standing tickets available at a higher price, let's say the extortionate €400 that Oasis were asking for.
Then there are an additional 20K seating tickets available at a higher price, let's say the extortionate €500 that Oasis were asking for.

Ask people to select which ticket price they are queing for before entering a queue. Randomly allocate a place in the queue once people enter it.
That way people have a choice and the prices are visible up front. You can opt for the cheaper tickets knowing that the volume in this queue will be high. Or you can opt for the more expensive tickets knowing your chances of getting them are better.
It is visible and up front so everyone knows what they are queueing for.

The current system of people queueing for hours on end only to finally get to the top of the queue and be told you can either fork out €400/500 for a ticket or leave the queue is absolutely awful. I don't see how anyone can state this is a reasonable system.
 
The law for Concert Ticket selling is....

Rules on pricing

Retailers and other business must follow strict rules on the way prices should be displayed. Find out more about pricing rules and your rights.
www.citizensinformation.ie www.citizensinformation.ie

  • A written advert must indicate the admission price
  • Any additional charge, and why it is applied, must be stated separately in either monetary or percentage terms – for example, an extra charge for paying by credit card must be stated
  • For all other forms of advertising the admission price must be stated together with notice that you may have to pay an additional charge in certain circumstances
And ....
"Traders must not display false or misleading prices. If a trader makes a mistake and the actual price is more than the price displayed, you must be told the correct price before you pay. The trader does not automatically have to sell to you at the lower price. They must correct the mistake as soon as possible. It is an offence for the trader to knowingly charge more than the price displayed."

I don't recall seeing the advertised standing price of 86.50e being subject to increase based on demand. Only extra service charges were advertised.

If a guy on the street had a ticket which showed 86.50e and sold it to a desperate fan outside the venue for 400e he could be arrested for being a tout. But apparently TM can do it because the extra profit 'goes to the stakeholder'. To the fan thats not much comfort i think.
 
T McGibney said:
The live entertainment industry has always been notorious for shoddy customer service and aggressive selling.
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That doesn't excuse the industry, in any shape or form, as I'd hope you will agree.
Brendan Burgess said:
What else can they do?

Go back to the old way of selling the tickets from HMV shops and see 500 000 people queuing for 150,000 tickets.

To save you wasting your time, they could have an auction open for a week or two. You bid what you are prepared to pay and they allocate the tickets that way. That might work quite well. But I would be annoyed if I paid €200 a ticket to find myself sitting beside Mr Earl who paid only €50...

Brendan
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Oh, come on, we'd have great craic sitting togeather ;-)

Getting back on topic, either your suggestion of an auction, or they stick to the price first advertised (regardless of the price set), is the way to go. Regardless, the transaction should only take a few minutes to complete, with no reason to keep people online for four - five hours.

If TM want is to commit a number of hours to being on hold, on their dodgy website, then we should all be billing them, at an appropriate hourly rate :)
 
MrEarl said:
Both Ticketmaster and Live Nation have the same ownership.

I believe that they are working togeather to keep rival ticket sellers from securing opportunity to sell tickets
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Belief is one thing, evidence is another.
 
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