Hacker News Reader

Comment by derrik0709 | Hacker News Reader

As someone who works in the industry (but not Ticketmaster) and has spoken frequently to higher ups at TM, people should realize that the majority of the time "handling charges" are a way for performers to generate more revenue from sales while deflecting the bad PR to Ticketmaster. That's one of the services TM provides to their clients (performers/venues).

If you're a performer and you want to sell tickets for a face value of "$50", but generate revenue at the $60 or $65/ticket range, you add on some fees and let TM take the hit from the fans for "gouging" them. It's very common.

View on HN

Interesting that you'd create a new account, which parrots a commenter in the previous ticketmaster thread about them buying a YC alum. The only positive comment in the thread, in fact.

What you are saying flies in the face of what bands said when they testified before congress about Ticketmaster [1]. I'll believe the people who swore under oath, thanks.

1. http://www.fivehorizons.com/archive/articles/testimon.shtml

I've never heard of TM sharing ticketing fees with artists.

In my experience TM fees are for TM. They may share with the venue, but the venue isn't sharing that with the artist. In fact they are taking a cut of the face value from the artist directly.

In fact I've even seen TM take a small percentage of the gross face value!

But sharing with the venue means that the artist is taking a higher cut of the ticket than you'd expect.

I read once that some parts of the US have laws requiring X% of the ticket price to go to the performer and that Ticketmaster fees were partly designed to allow the venue to charge its venue hire fees at a higher percentage than is allowed by these laws. Any truth to that?

You're splitting hairs between who is considered the TM client: venue or performer. Of course there may be any number of organizations between you the ticket buyer and the actual person singing and dancing onstage (venue, promoter, manager, record label, etc.).

Regardless of which of these is getting the biggest cut of the "fees", the reality is that in most cases the "fees" are line items used to increase revenue without raising ticket face prices, and TM is not the primary beneficiary.

Hard to tell considering they have a monopoly on the original purchase industry (most venues, and I'd venture to guess 90%+ of venues that would actually attract large acts) <strike>and the reseller industry as well </strike>. The worst is going to the box office to buy a ticket and being told that they can't sell the ticket at the box office, you have to buy through TM or you have to pay the same fees as if you bought through TM's site / services.

Regarding your last point (and also from the POV as someone who works in ticketing but not for TM) -- many organizations I work with (non-TM venues) and for are now transitioning to a lower unified fee structure. That is, a single fee that is the same no matter the sales channel. This trains our customers to expect a small fee at all times, we can keep that fee very consistent, and is often more in line with the nature of the agreement held with the performer regarding net adjusted gross income.

I've heard the same thing from their CMO when I spoke with him, but I think that in itself is just something they tell people.

I've heard it's almost always the venue - but same thing. TM is happy to take the hate, they're used to it.

I'm sure that is happening, but do kickbacks to the artist really make up a majority of the fees? I find that surprising.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com