Hacker News Reader

Comment by bonestamp2 | Hacker News Reader

Actually, TicketMaster was involved in each transaction. Let's revisit the first paragraph: "TicketMaster is taking massive fees each time the same ticket is sold."

I'll lay it out in detail so it's more clear: TicketMaster sold the original ticket to the scalper. Then the scalper listed the ticket on TicketMaster's secondary market. Then I bought the ticket on TicketMaster's secondary market and TicketMaster collected a $50/ticket fee from me. TicketMaster also collected a fee on each ticket the first time TicketMaster sold those tickets to the scalper.

TicketMaster also charges the scalper a fee to list the ticket, so TicketMaster actually made more than the $50/ticket fee that they collected from me.

It's also possible that the ticket was sold on TicketMaster's secondary market several times before I bought it on TicketMaster's secondary market, which would allow TicketMaster to collect many fees on the same ticket.

View on HN

Yes, I misunderstood what you wrote.

There are plenty of scalpers who sell tickets outside of TicketMaster, despite their best efforts. Do you think the $50/ticket fee that you paid would have been lower if you'd done your transaction outside of TicketMaster's platform?

I have purchased secondary tickets outside of TicketMaster many times and the fee has always been lower. But, that's anecdotal of course... there's no reason why they couldn't be higher. But, let's leave the actual fee amount aside for a moment...

I'm slightly less concerned with the actual amount of the fee and more concerned with the fact that ticket scalping has apparently become legal and that the original ticket seller is not only in on it, but getting even higher fees on the scalped tickets than the original tickets.

It's disturbing that it's illegal to scalp a single ticket in person outside an event, but if someone does it online with hundreds of tickets then they're a "ticket broker" and that's legal (in California at least).

> It's disturbing that it's illegal to scalp a single ticket in person outside an event, but if someone does it online with hundreds of tickets then they're a "ticket broker" and that's legal (in California at least).

Legal space around ticketing is... insane. The laws protecting "ticker brokers" are cloaked as consumer friendly regulations, and ironically TicketMaster actively lobbies against online "ticket brokers".

> I have purchased secondary tickets outside of TicketMaster many times and the fee has always been lower. But, that's anecdotal of course... there's no reason why they couldn't be higher.

In general, TM's share of resell is much smaller, and the resell market is heavily fee sensitive, as the brokers like to keep as much of the money as they can, so the fees tend to be set by the market (and they didn't go up when TM got in to the business).

Reply on news.ycombinator.com