Speaker 1: From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
Speaker 1: riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
Speaker 1: learn the stuff they don't want you to know. A
Speaker 1: production of I Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Greetings, welcome
Speaker 1: back to the show. My name is Matt, and our
Speaker 1: pal Noel is on some adventures, but we'll return in
Speaker 1: the future. They called me Ben. We are joined as
Speaker 1: always with our super producer Paul, Mission controlled decade. Most importantly,
Speaker 1: you are you. You are here that makes this stuff
Speaker 1: they don't want you to know. Welcome to the show.
Speaker 1: You did not have to buy tickets, that's right. You
Speaker 1: did have to buy a phone or a computer or
Speaker 1: something that has a microphone and a processor and at
Speaker 1: least headphone outputs or some kind of speaker. Let's call
Speaker 1: those associated fees. So the show is free. It takes
Speaker 1: some doing to get it in you, to get it
Speaker 1: in your ear right, all the all the paraphernalia is
Speaker 1: not included. I mean, sure, this is a show. This
Speaker 1: is a recorded show, right we we do a call
Speaker 1: in line. We've taken the show on the road and
Speaker 1: probably will do again and then near to mid future.
Speaker 1: But nothing, nothing quite beats the experience, right, if you're
Speaker 1: in your favorite music or your favorite performance whatever it
Speaker 1: is live, right, Like, what are some of the memorable
Speaker 1: concerts you've been to? Man, I haven't really been to many.
Speaker 1: But Dave Matthews back in the day, oh boy, some
Speaker 1: of that DMB baby, Oh it was the best. And
Speaker 1: you know what tickets were always like, Okay, they were
Speaker 1: not insane back in the early two thousand's doing some
Speaker 1: old d m B. Though, you know, you get to
Speaker 1: you know, that's a fairly large act, right then you
Speaker 1: get to um newer shows nowadays, and you're going to
Speaker 1: a much smaller venue with a much smaller band. And
Speaker 1: I'm paying more now to see those bands than I
Speaker 1: did to pay a big ticket band when I was
Speaker 1: you know, coming out of high school in college. So
Speaker 1: like you would go see Dave Matthews band in a
Speaker 1: in a stadium or something, uh, something that large, and
Speaker 1: you would get maybe some reasonable tickets on the lawn
Speaker 1: or max thirty bucks with everything, yeah, just to get
Speaker 1: into Lakewood Amphitheater, which not called that anymore, but who cares?
Speaker 1: And also, you know, inflation, obviously everyone is saying inflation,
Speaker 1: matt but inflation, but that's not at all. Let's call
Speaker 1: it fflation. Okay, maybe okay, asides from sounding very dr
Speaker 1: susy and that that is a word that could work
Speaker 1: for today's episode, because you know what bothers me about
Speaker 1: buying tickets probably the same thing that bothers everyone they
Speaker 1: buy tickets nowadays, when you buy a ticket for something,
Speaker 1: you're overwhelmingly going to do it online or else you're
Speaker 1: gonna show up at a show the day of, you know,
Speaker 1: and it's it's probably sold out, if it's worth anything, perhaps, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: and it's it's really it's relatively rare for someone to
Speaker 1: be walking down the street see tickets for a show
Speaker 1: like next week or that weekend, and then say I'm
Speaker 1: gonna walk in and buy those now in person. People
Speaker 1: don't do that near as often, so most of the
Speaker 1: time we buy tickets online. And here in the United
Speaker 1: States there's been one game in town for quite a while,
Speaker 1: and this game continues in other countries as well, a master,
Speaker 1: if you will, of tickets, some sort of ticket master. Yes,
Speaker 1: took a while to get to that one, but it's true.
Speaker 1: Right since about the late nineteen seventies, it's become increasingly
Speaker 1: difficult to get tickets to live events, Broadway plays, uh, symphonies,
Speaker 1: the DMB. It's difficult to get these tickets without running
Speaker 1: somehow into ticket Master, even if you don't know that
Speaker 1: you're running into ticket Master. So what exactly is this thing?
Speaker 1: It's been here for for the three of us, for you,
Speaker 1: mission control of myself, for our entire lives, yeah and
Speaker 1: beyond and before. Yeah. So let's go back to Phoenix, Arizona,
Speaker 1: nineteen seventies six. A couple of gentlemen. We got Albert Lefler,
Speaker 1: Peter Godwa and another man of businessman named Gordon Gunn.
Speaker 1: What a great name. Yeah, seriously, Gordon gun So Leffler.
Speaker 1: He comes up with this name, this idea for a thing,
Speaker 1: uh uh, and he calls it ticket Master. And it's
Speaker 1: this new company that's just gonna control tickets and for
Speaker 1: these guys when they founded in nineteen seventy six, really,
Speaker 1: all they're trying to do in the beginning is sells
Speaker 1: some tickets to an electric light orchestra concert at the
Speaker 1: University of New Mexico. That's the first big thing. And
Speaker 1: electric light Orchestra is something that my dad told me
Speaker 1: about actually that he really enjoyed. Um, look it up,
Speaker 1: Google it. If you don't know it, Spotify it. I'm
Speaker 1: sure you can find it. Mr. Blues Guy is a
Speaker 1: great song. It really is. It really is. Uh. But anyway,
Speaker 1: so this one little thing in Albuquerque, New Mexico. I'm
Speaker 1: so sorry to interrupt that to say, Turned to Stone
Speaker 1: is also a great song in my in my mind,
Speaker 1: it's one that I've had stuck in my head. Awesome, right,
Speaker 1: Blue Sky, turned to Stone. It's the seventies, it's Albuquerque,
Speaker 1: out of college. Awesome, good times rolling, right, Let the
Speaker 1: good times roll. And so then uh, they figure out, hey,
Speaker 1: this is working. We're just you know, control a hub.
Speaker 1: We're controlling the tickets to one thing. We're good at this.
Speaker 1: Let's keep doing it. So they keep doing it for
Speaker 1: a few years. Then by night they have their first
Speaker 1: international clients, um, coming in from Norway, Oslo, Norway. And
Speaker 1: that same year they signed their first major venue, this
Speaker 1: place called the Louisiana Superdome, along with their first Major
Speaker 1: League team, the New Orleans Jazz, which is now the
Speaker 1: Utah Jazz, but in the city of New Orleans it
Speaker 1: was the Jazz. So they actually have the NBA as
Speaker 1: one of their major clients, one one team on the NBA.
Speaker 1: But still that's huge for just a couple of guys
Speaker 1: starting with a startup, right, Yeah, And it happened so quickly.
Speaker 1: It's just a few years. When Leffler and Godwa originally
Speaker 1: thought of the company, they were going to be licensing
Speaker 1: software for tickets, really, and they've got on from that too,
Speaker 1: being the ticket provider for stadiums, which sounds kind of
Speaker 1: like maybe a boring business, right it's not as uh,
Speaker 1: you know, endlessly fascinating as being a professional uh skydiver,
Speaker 1: maybe a podcaster or something like that, you know, an
Speaker 1: underwater tattoo artist. But but still, what we have to
Speaker 1: realize is they get a cut of every ticket sold,
Speaker 1: and when you get to something as large as a superdome,
Speaker 1: that's a lot of money in a very one like
Speaker 1: in one night other people knew about the game. There
Speaker 1: were other things that existed at this time before Ticketmaster.
Speaker 1: There was a business called ticket Tron like ticket and
Speaker 1: then the movie Tron, and that's nineteen sixty. So it's
Speaker 1: difficult to It's hard for me to imagine computerized ticket
Speaker 1: sales being organ eyes and enough with software with computers
Speaker 1: of that are powerful enough to like do it in
Speaker 1: any large scale. But it was happening, Yeah, yeah, it wasn't.
Speaker 1: It wasn't necessarily happening on the customer end, but you
Speaker 1: would make a phone call to take a tron and
Speaker 1: they would have this database. Right, So can I tell
Speaker 1: you fun fact about Aron. They were purchased by a
Speaker 1: thing called the Lovecraft Investment Group. What's the Lovecraft Investment Group? Had?
Speaker 1: All I know is it's Lovecraft. There's a Lovecraft involved,
Speaker 1: That's all I know. Oh boy, let's see it's true,
Speaker 1: the Hewlett Packard Lovecraft. I don't know what the I
Speaker 1: don't know what the Lovecraft Investment coming. This may be
Speaker 1: fodder for another podcast. Here's the thing. As you said,
Speaker 1: there were other there are other similar creatures around in
Speaker 1: this more ticket right, other places that wanted to be
Speaker 1: the ticket provider, in the middleman for that. But like
Speaker 1: a hungry invading species, Ticketmaster consumed and digested these competitors.
Speaker 1: In one it opened its first overseas operation. In two,
Speaker 1: they got a new CEO, a guy named Fred Rosen.
Speaker 1: Rosen told the l A Times back in that his
Speaker 1: competitors were asleep at the switch he said he was
Speaker 1: an aggressive businessman and proud of it and got this
Speaker 1: American psycho vibe going on. Right. He was so good
Speaker 1: at dominating the ticket industry that it became the only
Speaker 1: game in town. And other people, other artists, primarily not
Speaker 1: just uh wound up consumers, other artists started to take
Speaker 1: issue with it. Pearl Jam launched a campaign in that
Speaker 1: they called a strong language for some people ticket bastard,
Speaker 1: because he's you. Pearl Jam was hearing from their fans
Speaker 1: that they literally couldn't afford tickets to a show, or
Speaker 1: that they were getting saddled with these egregious hidden fees,
Speaker 1: and so they said, well, look man, we we want
Speaker 1: to make a living, but we want our fans to
Speaker 1: see our music. We don't want to uh milk them
Speaker 1: for every penny they're worth, Like what are we kiss?
Speaker 1: You know what I mean? They don't want to do that.
Speaker 1: They want to be human, They want to stay humans.
Speaker 1: So they wanted to offer summer tour tickets to fans
Speaker 1: for under twenty bucks, and they asked ticket Mastered, you know, hey, guys,
Speaker 1: can you just not charge another twenty bucks and fees?
Speaker 1: Can you actually keep the fees around two dollars or
Speaker 1: whatever that your cost of doing businesses and they said no, no,
Speaker 1: your pearl Jam, and we our ticket Master. Yeah so yeah,
Speaker 1: that but it's easy to think about because they really
Speaker 1: did say no, and Pearl Jam just decided, well, it's
Speaker 1: not worth it. We're not even going to go on tour.
Speaker 1: We're canceling everything. We're not gonna like go and play
Speaker 1: a bunch of empty stadiums where nobody can show up
Speaker 1: for for this these exorbitant prices. They end up going
Speaker 1: to Congress and guess what, Pearl Jam one and everything
Speaker 1: was okay and everyone was happy, and ticket sales went
Speaker 1: down to twenty dollars for the rest of our lives.
Speaker 1: Thanks so much for tuning in, folks. We hope you
Speaker 1: enjoyed this episode. Oh wait, nope, nope, that's not what happened.
Speaker 1: What happened ticket Master one? Right, And there's one more
Speaker 1: sort of detail for this story. The band, the members
Speaker 1: of the band Pearl Jam maintained and say to this
Speaker 1: day you can ask them today and they'll confirm this
Speaker 1: that private investigators were sent to snoop around in their lives,
Speaker 1: sent by Ticketmaster and having a p i um sicked
Speaker 1: on you by a company, very common occurrence. Unfortunately, what
Speaker 1: they were probably trying to do, what the allegation implies
Speaker 1: is that Ticketmaster was attempting to find something discrediting to
Speaker 1: members of Pearl Jam, not something that had anything to
Speaker 1: do with their crusade to get better ticket prices. They
Speaker 1: wanted to be able to say, well, this person is
Speaker 1: doing heroin and we'll put it in the news if
Speaker 1: you guys don't straighten up until the corporate line. But
Speaker 1: you know, again, that's a terrible example because this is
Speaker 1: the nineties in Seattle grunge, right, So doing heroin may
Speaker 1: unfortunately not have been the huge scandal that they would want,
Speaker 1: but they wanted something to hold over their heads, and eventually,
Speaker 1: probably more so, through just the sheer, ungodly amount of
Speaker 1: money Ticketmaster has, they were able to they were able to,
Speaker 1: as you say, prevail. So that brings us to the
Speaker 1: modern day. A company called Interactive Corps, oddly enough not
Speaker 1: a video game company, purchased a majority stake and ticket Master,
Speaker 1: and then it bought the rest of the company n
Speaker 1: the name changed to Ticketmaster Online. Dash City search doesn't
Speaker 1: exactly roll off the tongue, right, So they didn't care
Speaker 1: that it didn't roll off the tongue. The company expanded, diversified,
Speaker 1: it kept evolving its business model, increasingly going from phones
Speaker 1: to online sales, and this constant evolution, the way of
Speaker 1: many businesses right uh, unfortunately, did not go in the
Speaker 1: direction that critics wanted it to. They didn't see cheaper tickets,
Speaker 1: they didn't feel like things were more transparent. These moves
Speaker 1: did not quell all of the critics, and today ticket
Speaker 1: Master controls and estimate aided of the little more than
Speaker 1: of the ticketing market in North America. M So they're
Speaker 1: doing something right. But let's get back to the critics.
Speaker 1: What are these critics saying. Well, they're saying that we
Speaker 1: need to take a quick break to hear from our
Speaker 1: sponsor and then we'll find out what ticket Master may
Speaker 1: or may not have been getting into. Here's where it
Speaker 1: gets crazy. So it turns out that in addition to
Speaker 1: be massively successful, Ticketmaster has been accused of numerous abuses,
Speaker 1: breaches of law, and shady business practices. There's genuine stuff
Speaker 1: they don't want you to know here. It's probably not
Speaker 1: gonna stop snow Compellingnipetus to stop it. And yes, ticket
Speaker 1: Master has been sued for conspiracy. Oh snap, the big
Speaker 1: c all right, stake another time traveling trip here to
Speaker 1: two thousand nine. Bruce Springsteen. Oh everybody knows or Bruce
Speaker 1: the Boss. Yeah, he's the boss. He's your boss and
Speaker 1: my boss. He publicly calls out ticket Master in two
Speaker 1: thousand nine for a little um, let's say, misdirection, redirection,
Speaker 1: if you will, from from a website. So as fans
Speaker 1: were going and trying to buy tickets through ticket Master
Speaker 1: to the Springsteen concert, they were getting sent to this
Speaker 1: other place called ticket now dot com, completely separate site.
Speaker 1: It looks very different. There's no you know, when you're
Speaker 1: on that site, you don't understand what's happening. You feel
Speaker 1: like a pop up maybe has occurred, or you've gotten
Speaker 1: redirected through an ad maybe, or this is your last
Speaker 1: chance to get some kind of ticket to see the
Speaker 1: Boss live. Well, yeah, there's a certain desperation that's happening
Speaker 1: when you are being redirected to this ticket now dot
Speaker 1: com because guess what, the tickets are marked up by hundreds,
Speaker 1: sometimes thousands of dollars at ticket now versus ticket Master.
Speaker 1: So then all these fan complaints are coming through because
Speaker 1: of this weird steering to this place called tickets Now. Um,
Speaker 1: a New Jersey congressman gets a call and basically this
Speaker 1: guy says, Hey, we need a federal antitrust investigation into
Speaker 1: whatever the heck is going on between ticket Master and
Speaker 1: ticket Now. What is this? Let's figure this out. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So here's what they find. They find that ticket Now,
Speaker 1: in addition to having a very similar name to ticket Master,
Speaker 1: is owned by ticket Master, and when Bruce Springsteen's fans
Speaker 1: were going to a website to buy tickets to his show,
Speaker 1: they were automatically redirected to ticket Now, which, as he said,
Speaker 1: met sells tickets from much higher than their face value.
Speaker 1: And it prays on that desperate san Right, that's psychological
Speaker 1: fear that someone else will get the thing I want. So,
Speaker 1: you know, I may not necessarily think this is a
Speaker 1: good financial decision, but I will be gosh darned and
Speaker 1: gali ged if I allow somebody else to get that ticket.
Speaker 1: You know what I mean, It's an artificial scarcity essentially.
Speaker 1: Bruce Springsteen found out about it, and he was he
Speaker 1: was righteously indignant. He wrote a public statement about this
Speaker 1: because what he found out was that this sort of
Speaker 1: second chance or reselling site. Ticket Now was something that
Speaker 1: Ticketmaster was sending the audience to when there were still
Speaker 1: regular tickets available. So they could have gotten that you know,
Speaker 1: thirty or forty or whatever dollar ticket to sit on
Speaker 1: the lawn in the back and have a great time.
Speaker 1: But instead they were going directly to this place where
Speaker 1: it was you know, this huge markup, and that that
Speaker 1: that markup goes to Ticketmaster. Man. So Ticketmaster gets a
Speaker 1: fifteent cut from tickets Now, which it owns. H So
Speaker 1: that's in addition to the fees it already gets as Ticketmaster,
Speaker 1: so that that money is already spent and baked into
Speaker 1: the price. So uh, a lawsuit comes about, and essentially
Speaker 1: what they're doing is making money off the same ticket
Speaker 1: two times. Clever, you know, brilliant, very clever, evil, lawful evil,
Speaker 1: and so uh. Probably because Friedenstein himself took such a
Speaker 1: strong stance against the Ticketmaster issued an apology to the
Speaker 1: fans and said, we will refund you the price difference
Speaker 1: between the face value of the tickets and those you
Speaker 1: got from ticket Now, which is a lot of you know,
Speaker 1: it's a lot of scratch. But that's also that's also
Speaker 1: like being caught stealing, you know, being caught stealing a
Speaker 1: car and then saying I'm I'm gonna drive it back
Speaker 1: to your house. Yeah, and then like I feel bad,
Speaker 1: I mean some gas money here, just a little bit gas. No,
Speaker 1: they didn't they but but it's strange, right, and this
Speaker 1: is just one of the allegations against Ticketmaster. We've got
Speaker 1: that Pearl Jam example. But let's talk about those fees,
Speaker 1: because that's where a lot of this comes back in. Right.
Speaker 1: Have you ever bought a twenty dollar ticket only to
Speaker 1: find that it becomes more than forty dollars by the
Speaker 1: time you get to the actual place your order? No? Never, Never, Tabernacle,
Speaker 1: that's a that's a local venue here in Atlanta. What
Speaker 1: kind of fees have you run into? Literally twice as much?
Speaker 1: I mean, yeah, I've seen I have seen tickets double
Speaker 1: when I buy them for just a local You're here
Speaker 1: because of ticket Master's weird fees to get me my
Speaker 1: ticket somehow that I can print out already. Yeah, there's
Speaker 1: like a two to five dollar fee for getting a PDF.
Speaker 1: Essentially you can print somebody. I'm paying somebody's salary who's
Speaker 1: just on a floor somewhere making calls like I need
Speaker 1: three Pearl jam but like no, no, I got four
Speaker 1: Radiohead No. And it's like it has to be that
Speaker 1: to justify twenty or thirty dollar fees on top of
Speaker 1: everything else. Otherwise I do not understand. Yeah, you're absolutely right.
Speaker 1: There's a there's a service charge, and that would be
Speaker 1: ticket masters charging you for the privilege of giving you
Speaker 1: a ticket. And then there's the facility charge, which is
Speaker 1: a charge added by the venue. So ticket Master takes
Speaker 1: its cut, and then the Tabernacle, for example, takes its cut.
Speaker 1: And then there are shipping, convenience and processing charges. So
Speaker 1: that's a charge for you know, using your visa American
Speaker 1: Express US, that's a charge for having the tickets delivered
Speaker 1: to you via post or choosing your own printer. But
Speaker 1: then who who pays Cardi b e? Then is what
Speaker 1: I'm trying to figure out, Like what's her cut? Everybody
Speaker 1: else is taking their cut. Who's where's Cardi B's money?
Speaker 1: Unless you're a huge name artist, which I guess Cardi
Speaker 1: b is now. Uh, the the amount of money you
Speaker 1: get per ticket can be surprisingly alarmingly small because the
Speaker 1: label will take some money, you know what I mean,
Speaker 1: Your road crew will take some money and all all
Speaker 1: this other stuff craft services. Eat that cheese because it's
Speaker 1: coming out of your kind of the profits, right. Uh,
Speaker 1: but all all this adds up to u to an
Speaker 1: unpleasant experience for people when we're buying these tickets. The
Speaker 1: problem is there's not really any transparency with this fees
Speaker 1: between events, very even at the same venue and pre
Speaker 1: princes of the artist as well is some people will
Speaker 1: try to buck like Radiohead or Pearl Jam. And the
Speaker 1: problem with it is that none of this, none of
Speaker 1: this ultimately goes into a situation where and ticket prices
Speaker 1: are lower. None of this is meant to nor will
Speaker 1: it ever create cannot yes, none, None of this is
Speaker 1: meant to create a situation where artists get paid more
Speaker 1: and the audience pays less. Absolutely none. If anything. It's
Speaker 1: kind of like, you know, nobody talks about this, but
Speaker 1: it's pretty weird that you and you know historically can't
Speaker 1: buy a car directly from the people who make cars.
Speaker 1: It's weird. It's a weird thing. It's normalized and you know,
Speaker 1: I'm not choosing sides on it, but that that is
Speaker 1: something we think about. You know, you can buy almost
Speaker 1: you can buy so many other things directly from the
Speaker 1: people who make them. Vertical integration is scary though, and
Speaker 1: it can it can be highly it can be highly problematic. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and it can also be dangerous for the bottom line. Right, So,
Speaker 1: the allegation here is that Ticketmaster is sort of a
Speaker 1: rent seeker and it's now a middle It's maybe it
Speaker 1: needed to be in the process before everybody had a
Speaker 1: brilliant computer on their phone, but now maybe it doesn't
Speaker 1: have to be right, Maybe that kind of software is
Speaker 1: easier to handle. We don't really know. We just know
Speaker 1: that they are the largest game in town, and we
Speaker 1: know that the the entire operation is exceedingly opaque. We're
Speaker 1: going to take a break for a brief word from
Speaker 1: our sponsor, and then we'll come back with an investigation
Speaker 1: in Canada that that makes this even weirder. All right,
Speaker 1: here's where it gets crazier. This is hard for me
Speaker 1: to understand that this is real. Okay, what we're gonna
Speaker 1: talk about from now mostly through the rest of this episode,
Speaker 1: we got from a CBC news um investigation that was
Speaker 1: carried out and specifically there's a journalist named Dave Seglins
Speaker 1: who actually physically went undercover as a scalper at a
Speaker 1: ticket industry convention out there in Las Vegas. And you
Speaker 1: can watch video of this online right now. If you
Speaker 1: want to take a break, you can. You can search
Speaker 1: this up CBC ticket Master. UM segling l I N S.
Speaker 1: That's good, you'll find it. Check it out. It's pretty crazy.
Speaker 1: Could we set some just some axiomatic beginnings here. Okay, So,
Speaker 1: so imagine your ticketmaster. You make money selling tickets. Um,
Speaker 1: you want people to buy tickets from you? Definitely? Um,
Speaker 1: does it matter who that person is buying a ticket
Speaker 1: from you as long as somebody's buying a ticket from you, right, right,
Speaker 1: as long as the transaction occurs. But you want to
Speaker 1: be on the side of the people in the artists,
Speaker 1: and you would probably say hey, at least in public,
Speaker 1: you say, hey, I think scalpers are the worst and
Speaker 1: they take advantage of people. Yeah, because we want you
Speaker 1: to have low prices and see all the stuff you
Speaker 1: want to see. Don't be mad at us. Right, So
Speaker 1: it's it's established then in the public mind. The axiom
Speaker 1: is that uh, ticket distributors or these these middle segments
Speaker 1: between the artists and the event and the customer, that
Speaker 1: they should not not be down with scalpers, like you
Speaker 1: guys making it weird, you're making it worse. I don't
Speaker 1: want to be in a situation where, for instance, there are, uh,
Speaker 1: what's a great what's a great event that people would
Speaker 1: go to today? Like a band or a performance or
Speaker 1: alien Con alien Con. They're only, yeah, it's a one
Speaker 1: night only, four hundred, four hundred seat event and it's
Speaker 1: called alien Con. Who knows what it is. Maybe it's
Speaker 1: a mariachi band, and uh they ticket Master, one would assume,
Speaker 1: does not care for a situation where one person goes
Speaker 1: in and buys all four hundred or whatever those tickets
Speaker 1: in one block and then turns around and sells them
Speaker 1: through fifty more on you know eBay. Yeah, basically Ticketmaster
Speaker 1: is not down with O P t right other people's tickets.
Speaker 1: They don't. They're like, look, these these are the people's tickets, right, right, right?
Speaker 1: So what that's what we assumed, right, And it turns
Speaker 1: right and it turns out that we were very wrong,
Speaker 1: like cartoonistly, So they're all they're quite all right with
Speaker 1: anyone buying their share of the tickets as long as
Speaker 1: those tickets get sold, and especially if ticket Master can
Speaker 1: sell the tickets twice. What what are we talking about? Okay, well,
Speaker 1: let's go back to Las Vegas at that convention. Um
Speaker 1: so ticket Master, he's recording Ticketmaster at least some representatives
Speaker 1: from Ticketmaster. Maybe that's the best way to say it. Um,
Speaker 1: they are, these representatives are pitching scalpers on their ticket
Speaker 1: Masters trademarked professional reseller program that they have established. Okay, now,
Speaker 1: according to the investigation that you follow David David segments
Speaker 1: through with the CBC News investigation, um Ticketmaster was not
Speaker 1: only just deciding that if scalping is happening, we're just
Speaker 1: gonna put blinders on and pretend that it's not happening.
Speaker 1: They're also literally recruiting people, professional people who have been
Speaker 1: scalping for a long time or maybe are very good
Speaker 1: at scalping, to cheat the ticket Master system itself, to
Speaker 1: expand their ticket Master's resale business, and again to take
Speaker 1: more money from the people that are just trying to
Speaker 1: go out and see a concert or an event or something.
Speaker 1: So just to recap it's Ticketmaster teaching scalpers to scalp
Speaker 1: Ticketmaster for their own profit for ticket Masters profits. Yes, yea,
Speaker 1: so they have. They've done more than turn a blind eye.
Speaker 1: They've gone They've gotten to a win win situation with
Speaker 1: scalpers and ticket Master. Right, So this is for the
Speaker 1: average concert goer. This is this is the part of
Speaker 1: the movie where the bad guys team up and once
Speaker 1: sales rep is on camera saying, I have brokers that
Speaker 1: have literally a couple of hundred accounts. It's not something
Speaker 1: that we look at or report. Because they wanted these
Speaker 1: scalpers to feel that they were that they were safe
Speaker 1: in this. Ticketmaster, for its part, denied the accusations. And
Speaker 1: once again, you can always go back to the idea
Speaker 1: that actions by a few people in the organization do
Speaker 1: not automatically mean the entire organization condones it, right tail
Speaker 1: as old as time. That's what any intelligence agency will
Speaker 1: say when it's undeniably caught doing something terrible and be like, well,
Speaker 1: that guy decided to topple that country on his own,
Speaker 1: and we we always knew that, We always knew that
Speaker 1: Jeremy was a little bit off. Yeah, and this is
Speaker 1: all compartmentalized anyway, Only a very few from all number
Speaker 1: of people knew anything about that. Yeah, Like I'm weirded
Speaker 1: out hearing hearing about it today, Congresswoman. This is the
Speaker 1: first first I've heard of it, and I've got to
Speaker 1: tell you, Frinkly, I am outraged. You know what I
Speaker 1: am too, And I hope you get to the bottom
Speaker 1: of it. And congratulations on all your work. Thank you,
Speaker 1: thank you. I'll be speaking at Georgetown UH this coming Friday.
Speaker 1: It's one one night only. You can yeah you can't
Speaker 1: get tickets through ticket Master or if those are sold out,
Speaker 1: go ahead to Yeah it is sold out, well, go
Speaker 1: to ticket noway tickets now, let's so and seen. So
Speaker 1: ticket Master developed a toolkit for these scalpers. It is
Speaker 1: a professional They don't call them scalpers. They call them resellers.
Speaker 1: A professional reseller program that they launched call used tickets,
Speaker 1: pre owned tickets, call certified pre owned U called trade Desk.
Speaker 1: Trade Desk is a quote web based inventory management system
Speaker 1: for scalpers. The company calls it the most powerful ticket
Speaker 1: sales tool ever. So here's what it allows you to do.
Speaker 1: You can buy a block of tickets from ticket Master
Speaker 1: through one of its many faces, and then you can
Speaker 1: upload those tickets to this trade Desk thing, and then
Speaker 1: you can just list them again for resale. This means
Speaker 1: you can hike or drop prices on tons and tons
Speaker 1: of tickets based on what you think fans are looking for.
Speaker 1: So it turns it into almost a stock market kind
Speaker 1: of thing. Uh, neither Trade Desk nor the professional reseller
Speaker 1: program are mentioned anywhere on ticket Master's website. You can
Speaker 1: go check we looked, it's not there. It's also not
Speaker 1: listed on any of its corporate reports. If you want
Speaker 1: to find the Trade Desk website, you first have to
Speaker 1: send in a registration request. So let's go ahead and
Speaker 1: take a look at what happens. If you do get
Speaker 1: through that registration process, you do have one of these
Speaker 1: things like a an account there, and you are reselling things.
Speaker 1: Let's see what Ticketmaster actually gets out of this whole process.
Speaker 1: So it just as an example, let's say ticket Master
Speaker 1: is going to sell a ticket for a little over
Speaker 1: two hundred dollars two d nine dollars and fifty cents.
Speaker 1: Okay um, that's just the price of the ticket. Ticket
Speaker 1: Master itself is going to collect twenty five dollars and
Speaker 1: seventy cents just on that initial sale. Now when the owner, now,
Speaker 1: if because we're saying this this is through trade Desk,
Speaker 1: the owner who's just purchased it through trade desk, then
Speaker 1: puts it back up for resale for roughly twice as
Speaker 1: much as it's the original cost, let's say four hundred dollars.
Speaker 1: The company, then ticket Master stands to collect an additional
Speaker 1: seventy six dollars on that same ticket. So so again
Speaker 1: you're looking at over a hundred dollars that you're gonna
Speaker 1: make um out of six dars in total of sales.
Speaker 1: And at this point that's legal to it's not against law. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And it's just a way to make sure that tickets
Speaker 1: get sold at least if you're looking at from the
Speaker 1: company's perspective, Trade desk basically insures that every ticket is
Speaker 1: going to get sold at in some way from that
Speaker 1: initial sale, the idea being that, you know, if you
Speaker 1: want that, the idea being that the lever moves and
Speaker 1: down so you could lower prices. Maybe day of ticket
Speaker 1: sales aren't where you want them to be. So someone says,
Speaker 1: all right, now this is no longer two it's fifty dollars.
Speaker 1: Let's see what happens, right, Yeah, And there are strategies
Speaker 1: the kind of line up with that at the like
Speaker 1: towards the end of a concert or something, or towards
Speaker 1: the end of a big game, people, there will still
Speaker 1: be scalpers outside of a well, okay, there will be
Speaker 1: resellers outside of a venue selling tickets for you know,
Speaker 1: pennies on the dollar if the show is almost over,
Speaker 1: something to get people in just to finally make a
Speaker 1: tiny bit of money on that thing. And that that
Speaker 1: exists throughout these markets. Yeah. Absolutely, we do want to
Speaker 1: say that while while we did mention that ticket Master
Speaker 1: h denied the allegations brought by this investigative report, maybe
Speaker 1: it'll be helpful for us to give the actual language
Speaker 1: that they used in denying this allegation. What do you think? Absolutely?
Speaker 1: All right, So, after the story was published there in
Speaker 1: CBC News, Ticketmaster issued a statement that went out to
Speaker 1: CBC News, but then also went out to other places
Speaker 1: that are reported on the stories, such as The Rolling Stone,
Speaker 1: saying it was quote categorically untrue the Ticketmaster has any
Speaker 1: program in place to enable resellers to acquire large volumes
Speaker 1: of tickets. It also said it had already begun an
Speaker 1: internal review of professional reseller accounts and employee practices before
Speaker 1: the CBC News story came out. So they said, look,
Speaker 1: we've already been investigating this internally and we would never
Speaker 1: try to game the system in the way that you're describing. Again,
Speaker 1: a representative from Ticketmaster is on camera completely completely doing
Speaker 1: what they say, what they're denying. Yeah, the biggest, the
Speaker 1: biggest thing that Ticketmaster had a problem with was that
Speaker 1: that representative acknowledged of of acknowledged the knowledge that one
Speaker 1: person essentially would have two hundred accounts, right, or one
Speaker 1: entity or one group would have two hundred trade desk accounts.
Speaker 1: That's that's where the big problem comes in. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: is it is this situation where the money got too good?
Speaker 1: Is a situation where we're finally maybe as the public
Speaker 1: or the uninitiated scene into a previously murky world, That's
Speaker 1: very possible. I would go ahead and just say it
Speaker 1: makes me think of something we we discussed at the
Speaker 1: very beginning of a competitive marketplace, essentially and having to
Speaker 1: always evolve, like consistently evolving to make sure that you're
Speaker 1: making more profit so that you can increase your margins
Speaker 1: year every year, or you know, your increase your percentage
Speaker 1: overall of gross income year every year, Like having to
Speaker 1: find new creative ways as a giant company like Ticketmaster,
Speaker 1: and it's you know, parent companies and all that. These
Speaker 1: kinds of reselling. It's a it's another way to increase
Speaker 1: those margins that isn't necessarily illegal. If you take out
Speaker 1: the some of the things from the sea, you know,
Speaker 1: some of the things were illegal, but not many. Right. Um,
Speaker 1: the reselling market, as terrible as it sounds, and as
Speaker 1: bad as it is for consumers such as us, it's
Speaker 1: just another one of those ways to grab more money.
Speaker 1: Allegedly illegal well, definitely illegal, but that they allegedly did. Yes, yes,
Speaker 1: apologies because it hasn't been I don't think it's necessary.
Speaker 1: This is just we're we're just being as fair as
Speaker 1: we can so, as you can tell by the use
Speaker 1: of the phrase allegedly and the fact that we're being
Speaker 1: fairly careful about how we discussed this. Ticketmaster has been
Speaker 1: in and out of court. In they suffered a data breach,
Speaker 1: and in twenty nineteen a British law firm launched legal
Speaker 1: action against them for effecting up to forty thousand UK customers,
Speaker 1: and also in the U s Department of Justice launched
Speaker 1: investigation following complaints that Live Nation, an event promoter, had
Speaker 1: engaged in anti competitive practices following their merger with Ticketmaster.
Speaker 1: There's a organization called End Shouts Entertainment Group, and they
Speaker 1: said Live Nation pressured them and choosing Ticketmasters a vendor,
Speaker 1: and had they refused, they would have lost out on business.
Speaker 1: The allegations of antitrust violations resulted in a reexamination of
Speaker 1: the merger between ticket Master and Live Nation. However, this
Speaker 1: case is probably going into well, many of these cases
Speaker 1: are going into arbitration, private settlements. No need to have
Speaker 1: a shameful day in court. And at this point Ticketmasters
Speaker 1: very little in the way of real competition. There are
Speaker 1: other things in the market, sure, but there they're gnats
Speaker 1: two Ticketmasters, Behemoth, right. And the question then is I mean,
Speaker 1: clearly there's some stuff they don't want you to know
Speaker 1: that's inarguable it's not necessarily criminal. Like for instance, okay,
Speaker 1: think of airline tickets depending on which way you go
Speaker 1: through an airline, or think of privatized insurance. People don't
Speaker 1: want you to know the lowest price you can get.
Speaker 1: They want you to get confused and bored and desperate
Speaker 1: enough to just take the easiest thing. Yeah, that's that's
Speaker 1: that is a very clear and unfortunately disturbing explanation of
Speaker 1: how all three of those industries work. Most industries, I guess,
Speaker 1: everyone just trying to get you to take the easiest
Speaker 1: option for you, and it depends on where you are
Speaker 1: in life times ticking. But here's the easiest one for
Speaker 1: your social strata. Right. You're not looking for Mr. Wright Price,
Speaker 1: You're looking for Mr Right now Price right. Start applying
Speaker 1: that to social interactions. And now it's just so we've
Speaker 1: gone down a rabbit hole. I should have it, should
Speaker 1: have quit while we were ahead with the with the
Speaker 1: insurance airplane ticket thing. But yeah, it's It's true, and
Speaker 1: there's probably not going to be any anything that really
Speaker 1: stops this practice. There will be things that degate it.
Speaker 1: The problem is that the established system has caught up
Speaker 1: to technological breakthroughs only in the ways that can improve
Speaker 1: its profit while maintaining its position. The technology that we
Speaker 1: have now to organize, distribute, and track these sorts of
Speaker 1: things is amazing. If you if you were from the
Speaker 1: nineteen seventies and you've looked at it, you would think
Speaker 1: was mind blowing, you know what I mean, unless you
Speaker 1: already worked for DARKA or something. It would be like,
Speaker 1: how did that get out here? But uh, but but
Speaker 1: the problem is that even though we're we have the
Speaker 1: potential to democratize the access to these tickets in a
Speaker 1: way that would benefit the creators and benefit the customers,
Speaker 1: we're not. We're not seeing that. When will that happen?
Speaker 1: When will there be some sort of market disruption? I
Speaker 1: don't know. And at this point, as Ticketmaster, anything thoroughly illegal. No,
Speaker 1: they haven't been convicted. None of the CEOs have ever
Speaker 1: gone to jail. The creator has certainly never got in trouble. Yeah,
Speaker 1: in two thousand nine, that whole conspiracy suit was out there,
Speaker 1: didn't really go anywhere, right, right. So the question then
Speaker 1: goes to us, fellow conspiracy realist, is this just how
Speaker 1: this business should be run? And what what are other
Speaker 1: businesses that you have seen that your that your fellow
Speaker 1: listeners may not be aware of, Like we've we've seen
Speaker 1: some We've seen some strange things going on in the
Speaker 1: funeral service industry. We've seen some strange things going on
Speaker 1: here in the event and ticketing industry. But where else,
Speaker 1: I wonder, where else is everything just crazy crooked appearing
Speaker 1: to be crooked? I have to say so that we
Speaker 1: don't get suited to that end to that, and I wanna,
Speaker 1: I wanna pick your brain bin about the mechanic big
Speaker 1: mechanic industry with some of these bigger companies out there
Speaker 1: that that offer repairs to vehicles and automobiles, assuming like, um,
Speaker 1: not just straight up garages, but box automotive stores that
Speaker 1: are also garages or service centers. Okay, yeah, the big
Speaker 1: ones that are nationwide. I'd like to talk about some
Speaker 1: of those, see if there are any conspiracies out there.
Speaker 1: So maybe maybe if you're listening and you know, if
Speaker 1: you heard of anything, let us know what you've heard.
Speaker 1: I will that's that's great, I will say on that.
Speaker 1: On that note, there is one thing that sounds a
Speaker 1: bit curmudgeently for me to say, but I think it's
Speaker 1: a good point. It's one thing that bugs me about
Speaker 1: modern car repairs. Over the past few years, cars have
Speaker 1: increasingly become something that the person who owns it cannot
Speaker 1: work on. Have you noticed that there are more and
Speaker 1: more black boxes proliferating under the hood. Sure? Perhaps really
Speaker 1: and just lack of experience, lack of knowledge. I just
Speaker 1: feel like, call me old fashioned, but I feel like
Speaker 1: if you if you buy a car, it should be
Speaker 1: something that you own that it shouldn't have to be
Speaker 1: a service. You know what I mean. We're moving increasingly
Speaker 1: into a service economy. It is going to scare your
Speaker 1: children listening now when when you say, yeah, people used
Speaker 1: to like buy things and then have them, I'm like,
Speaker 1: what for how much a month? Yeah? No, no, like
Speaker 1: you would just you would just buy one sandwich and
Speaker 1: you would eat it. Yeah. Well it goes back to
Speaker 1: that superpower thing of money and time. And I don't
Speaker 1: have time to work on this vehicle. I'll give it
Speaker 1: to you and you fix it. Here's some of my superpower.
Speaker 1: Or signing an agreement for instance, it says you are
Speaker 1: not allowed to have anybody else work on a thing,
Speaker 1: right like Apple has done this very well. Anyhow, story
Speaker 1: for another day. Thank you so much. Between you and
Speaker 1: we want to hear also your most agree just concert
Speaker 1: ticket or event ticket fee story. Did you really go
Speaker 1: into some website thinking you were gonna pay eighteen bucks
Speaker 1: and then come out like thirty bucks later, bewildered and confused.
Speaker 1: Did you try and get into a food Fighters concert
Speaker 1: and then you realized, wait, it's four hundred dollars and
Speaker 1: then you just said bye, oh man. Yeah, tell us
Speaker 1: your stories and share them with your fellow listeners. You
Speaker 1: can find us on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter. We highly
Speaker 1: recommend Here's where it Gets Crazy on Facebook, which is
Speaker 1: our conspiracy group page. You can also follow us conspiracy
Speaker 1: Stuff show I believe. We are on Instagram and you
Speaker 1: can see some of my bizarre adventures on Instagram at
Speaker 1: Ben Bolin. Don't look me up on Instagram. I'm on there,
Speaker 1: but you will never find me, so ha. Take that.
Speaker 1: If you wanna send us, or if you want to
Speaker 1: call us, you could get your story on the air
Speaker 1: or whatever you want to talk about. Give us a call.
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Speaker 1: W y t K. You got three minutes. Tell us
Speaker 1: a story in three minutes. If you can't do that,
Speaker 1: just call back and leave another three minute one. It
Speaker 1: helps to write it down in advance for some people
Speaker 1: at least bullet points. For me. Definitely, Yeah, same. Actually
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