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Ticketmaster is one of the few companies that can compete with Comcast or payday lenders to be the most hated company in the US, and a new report is not going to help. Canada CBC Earlier this year, two investigative reporters participated in a boxing industry conference in Las Vegas, and what they discovered is rightfully breathtaking.
In short, CBC journalists – who posed as small ticket scalpers – found that Ticketmaster encourages (privately but privately) to resell and support resellers who use its site, both in systems to make the process more efficient. While Ticketmaster was publicly speaking out against scalpers, its sales team is privately courting the company, which has a significant and measurable advantage over Ticketmaster's bottom line.
Some of the quotes in the report reveal how flagrant the system is:
"I have brokers who literally have a few hundred accounts," said a sales representative. "It's not something we look at or report on."
Casey Klein, director of Ticketmaster Resale, held a session that was closed to the media, called "We value your partnership: more brokers are listed with Ticketmaster than ever before."
The hearing learned that Ticketmaster has developed a professional reseller program and in the past year has launched TradeDesk, a web-based inventory management system for scalpers. The company presents it as "the most powerful ticket sales tool. Already."
"If you want to get a good show and the ticket limit is six or eight … you're not going to win six or eight tickets," he said.
"We do not share reports, we do not share names, we do not share account information with the main site. Period, "he said when asked if he was worried about whether the scalpers were using robots to buy their tickets.
CBC heard the same message from a Ticketmaster employee during an online demonstration of the TradeDesk video conference at an earlier stage of the secret investigation in March.
"We have spent millions of dollars on this tool. The last thing we would like to do, is to catch up with the brokers where they can not sell their stock with us, "he said when asked if Ticketmaster would ban scalpers that prevent the purchase of tickets. use.
"We are not trying to build a better mousetrap."
In a second article, CBC explains how Ticketmaster's revenue is derived (at least in part) from the resale sector:
For example, Ticketmaster collected $ 25.75 on a $ 209.50 note on the initial sale. When the owner posted it for resale for $ 400 on Ticketmaster, the company is held to collect an additional $ 76 on the same ticket.
CBC has counted more than 4,500 Bruno Mars resale tickets on Ticketmaster, which means that if Ticketmaster sold all the seats of the arena for Saturday's show, the initial service fee would rise to 350,000 $, plus $ 308,000 for scalped bills. $ 658,000.
Both articles deserve a reading to understand how the system works.
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