Speaker 1: Welcome, conspiracy realist. We are talking about something that has
Speaker 1: become a bit of a hobby horse for us at
Speaker 1: this point. Not too long ago, Nol and Matt Ny
Speaker 1: were going to get tickets to go see a concert
Speaker 1: together and we ran into the fees. Oh god, the fees.
Speaker 2: The fees.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this isn't an aldly bit of goody.
Speaker 2: That is painfully relevant still to this day.
Speaker 1: I mean it's we're approaching an absolute monopoly with Live
Speaker 1: Nation and Ticketmasters.
Speaker 2: They are kind of like the people selling the tickets
Speaker 2: being the same people that on the venues. It's not great.
Speaker 2: Let's jump right in and see how much more expensive
Speaker 2: it's gotten since even May twenty nineteen.
Speaker 3: From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies, history is
Speaker 3: riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
Speaker 3: learn the stuff they don't want you to know.
Speaker 1: Production of iHeart Radios How Stuff Works.
Speaker 2: Greetings, Welcome back to the show.
Speaker 1: My name is Matt and our pal Noel is on
Speaker 1: some adventures, but we'll return in the future. They called
Speaker 1: me Ben. We are joined as always with our super
Speaker 1: producer Paul Mission Control decad. Most importantly, you are you.
Speaker 1: You are here that makes this stuff. They don't want
Speaker 1: you to know. Welcome to the show. You did not
Speaker 1: have to buy tickets.
Speaker 2: That's right. You did have to buy a phone or
Speaker 2: a computer or something that has a microphone and a
Speaker 2: processor and at least headphone outputs or some kind of speaker.
Speaker 1: Let's call those associated fees. Yeah, so the show is free.
Speaker 2: It takes some doing to get it in you.
Speaker 1: To get it in your ear, right, Yeah. All the
Speaker 1: other paraphernalia is not include. I mean, sure, this is
Speaker 1: a show. This is a recorded show, right, we do
Speaker 1: a call in line. We've taken the show on the
Speaker 1: road and probably will do again and then near to
Speaker 1: mid future. But nothing, nothing quite beats the experience right off.
Speaker 1: You're in your favorite music or your favorite performance whatever
Speaker 1: it is live right, Like, what are some of the
Speaker 1: memorable concerts you've been to?
Speaker 2: Man, I haven't really been to many, but Dave Matthews
Speaker 2: back in the day, oh boy, and some of that
Speaker 2: DMB baby, Oh it was the best. And you know
Speaker 2: what tickets were always like, Okay, they were not insane
Speaker 2: back in the early two thousands doing some old DMB though,
Speaker 2: you know, you get to you know, that's a fairly
Speaker 2: large act right. Then you get to newer shows nowadays,
Speaker 2: and you're going to a much smaller venue with a
Speaker 2: much smaller band, And I'm paying more now to see
Speaker 2: those bands than I did to pay a big ticket
Speaker 2: band when I was, you know, coming out of high
Speaker 2: school in college.
Speaker 1: So like you would go see Dave Matthews band in
Speaker 1: a stadium or something, yeah, something that large, and you
Speaker 1: would get maybe some reasonable tickets on the lawn or whatever.
Speaker 1: Thirty bucks okay, max thirty bucks with everything.
Speaker 2: Yeah, just to get into Lakewood Amphitheater, which not called
Speaker 2: that anymore, but who cares. And also, you know, inflation.
Speaker 2: Obviously everyone is saying inflation, matt but inflation, but that's
Speaker 2: not all.
Speaker 1: Let's call it feflation. Okay, maybe okay, asides from sounding
Speaker 1: very doctor Susian, that that is a word that could
Speaker 1: work for today's episode, because you know what bothers me
Speaker 1: about buying tickets probably the same thing that bothers everyone
Speaker 1: they buy tickets nowadays. When you buy its ticket for something,
Speaker 1: you're overwhelmingly going to do it online or else. You're
Speaker 1: going to show up at a show the day of,
Speaker 1: you know.
Speaker 2: And it's probably sold out if it's worth anything.
Speaker 1: Perhaps, Yeah, yeah, And it's really it's relatively rare for
Speaker 1: someone to be walking down the street see tickets for
Speaker 1: a show like next week or that weekend, and then
Speaker 1: say I'm going to walk in and buy those now
Speaker 1: in person. People don't do that near as often, so
Speaker 1: most of the time we buy tickets online. And here
Speaker 1: in the United States, there's been one game in town
Speaker 1: for quite a while, and this game continues in other
Speaker 1: countries as well. A master, if you will, of tickets. Oh,
Speaker 1: some sort of ticket master. Yes, Wowly, it took a
Speaker 1: while to get to that one, but it's true. Right,
Speaker 1: since about the late nineteen seventies, it's become increasingly difficult
Speaker 1: to get tickets to live events Broadway plays, Symphonies, the DMB.
Speaker 1: It's difficult to get these tickets without running somehow into
Speaker 1: ticket Master, even if you don't know that you're running
Speaker 1: into Ticketmaster. So what exactly is this thing? It's been
Speaker 1: here for the three of us, for you, mission control
Speaker 1: of myself, for our entire lives.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and beyond and before. Yeah. So let's go back
Speaker 2: to Phoenix, Arizona, nineteen seventy six. A couple of gentlemen
Speaker 2: we got Albert Leffler, Peter Godwa, and another man, a
Speaker 2: businessman named Gordon Gunn. What a great name. Yeah, seriously,
Speaker 2: Gordon Gunn. So Leffler. He comes up with this name,
Speaker 2: this idea for a thing, and he calls it ticket Master,
Speaker 2: And it's this new company that's just going to control
Speaker 2: tickets and for these guys when they founded in nineteen
Speaker 2: seventy six, really all they're trying to do in the
Speaker 2: beginning is sells tickets to an Electric Light Orchestra concert
Speaker 2: at the University of New Mexico. That's the first big thing.
Speaker 2: And electric Light Orchestra is something that my dad told
Speaker 2: me about, actually that he really enjoyed. Look it up,
Speaker 2: Google it. If you don't know it, Spotify it. I'm
Speaker 2: sure you can find it.
Speaker 1: Mister Blue Sky is a great song.
Speaker 2: It really is. It really is. But anyway, so this
Speaker 2: one little thing in Albuquerque, New Mexico.
Speaker 1: I'm so sorry to interrupt that to say, yeah, Turned
Speaker 1: to Stone is also a great song. Oh, in my mind,
Speaker 1: it's one that I've had stuck in my head. Awesome
Speaker 1: a Blue Sky Turned to Stone. It's the seventies, it's Albuquerque.
Speaker 2: Out of college. Awesome, good times rolling right, let the
Speaker 2: good times roll. And so then they figure out, hey,
Speaker 2: this is working. We're just you know, control a hub.
Speaker 2: We're controlling the tickets to one thing. We're good at this,
Speaker 2: Let's keep doing it. So they keep doing it for
Speaker 2: a few years. Then by nineteen seventy eight they have
Speaker 2: their first international clients coming in from Norway, Oslo, Norway,
Speaker 2: and that same year they signed their first major venue,
Speaker 2: this place called the Louisiana super Dome, along with their
Speaker 2: first Major League team, the New Orleans Jazz, which is
Speaker 2: now the Utah Jazz, but in the city of New
Speaker 2: Orleans it was the Jazz. So they actually have the
Speaker 2: NBA as one of their major clients, one team on
Speaker 2: the NBA. But still, that's huge for just a couple
Speaker 2: of guys starting with a startup, right.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And it happens so quickly. It's just a few years.
Speaker 1: When Leffler and Godwa originally thought of the company, they
Speaker 1: were going to be licensing software for tickets, really, and
Speaker 1: they've gone from that to being the ticket provider for stadiums,
Speaker 1: which sounds kind of like maybe a boring business, right,
Speaker 1: it's not, as you know, endlessly fascinating as being a
Speaker 1: professional skydiver or maybe a podcast or something like that,
Speaker 1: you know, an underwater tattoo artist. But still, what we
Speaker 1: have to realize is they get a cut of every
Speaker 1: ticket sold, and when you get to something as large
Speaker 1: as a superdome, that's a lot of money in like
Speaker 1: in one night, yeap. Other people knew about the game.
Speaker 1: There were other things that existed at this time before
Speaker 1: ticket Master. There was a business called ticket Tron, like
Speaker 1: ticket and then the movie Tron.
Speaker 2: And that's nineteen sixties. So it's difficult to It's hard
Speaker 2: for me to imagine computerized ticket sales being organized enough
Speaker 2: with software, with computers that are powerful enough to like
Speaker 2: do it in any large scale. But it was happening.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, it wasn't. It wasn't necessarily happening on the
Speaker 1: customer end, but you would make a phone call to
Speaker 1: ticket Tron and they would have this database.
Speaker 2: Right, So can I selly fun fact about ticket Tron? Yeah?
Speaker 2: They were purchased by a thing called the Lovecraft Investment
Speaker 2: Group in nineteen ninety.
Speaker 1: What's the Lovecraft Investment Group?
Speaker 2: Man? All I know is is Lovecraft. There's a Lovecraft involved,
Speaker 2: That's all I know.
Speaker 1: Oh boy, let's see it's true.
Speaker 2: The Hewlett Packard Lovecraft.
Speaker 1: I don't know what the I don't know what the
Speaker 1: Lovecraft investment. This may be fodder for another podcast. Here's
Speaker 1: the thing. As you said, there were other there were
Speaker 1: other similar creatures around in this market, right, other places
Speaker 1: that wanted to be the ticket provider, in the middleman
Speaker 1: for that. But like a hungry invading species, Ticketmaster consumed
Speaker 1: and digested the these competitors. In nineteen eighty one, it
Speaker 1: opened its first overseas operation. In nineteen eighty two, they
Speaker 1: got a new CEO, a guy named Fred Rosen. Rosen
Speaker 1: told the La Times back in eighty five that his
Speaker 1: competitors were asleep at the switch. He said, he was
Speaker 1: an aggressive businessman. I'm proud of it, got this American
Speaker 1: psycho vibe going on, right. He was so good at
Speaker 1: dominating the ticket industry that it became the only game
Speaker 1: in town. And other people, other artists, primarily not just
Speaker 1: wound up consumers. Other artists started to take issue with it.
Speaker 1: Pearl Jam launched a campaign in nineteen ninety four that
Speaker 1: they called a strong language for some people ticket bastard,
Speaker 1: because you see, 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 want to
Speaker 1: make a living, but we want our fans to see
Speaker 1: our music. We don't want to milk them for every
Speaker 1: penny they're worth, Like what are we kiss? You know
Speaker 1: what I mean. They don't want to do that. They
Speaker 1: want to be human, they want to stay human. So
Speaker 1: they wanted to offer summer tour tickets to fans for
Speaker 1: under twenty bucks. And they asked ticket Master, you know, hey, guys,
Speaker 1: can you just not charge another twenty bucks and fees?
Speaker 1: Can you actually like keep the fees around two dollars
Speaker 1: or whatever that your cost of doing businesses? And they
Speaker 1: said no, no, you're Pearl.
Speaker 2: Jam and we are ticket Master. Yeah. So yeah, but
Speaker 2: it's crazy to think about because they really did say no,
Speaker 2: and Pearl Jam just in nineteen ninety four decided, well
Speaker 2: it's not worth it. We're not even going to go
Speaker 2: on tour. We're canceling everything. We're not gonna like go
Speaker 2: and play a bunch of empty stadiums where nobody can
Speaker 2: show up for these exorbitant prices. They ended up going
Speaker 2: to Congress and guess what, Pearl Jam one and everything
Speaker 2: was okay and everyone was happy, and ticket sales went
Speaker 2: 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.
Speaker 2: Oh wait, nope, nope, that's not what happened. What happened
Speaker 2: Ticketmaster won.
Speaker 1: Right, And there's one more sordid detail for this story.
Speaker 1: The band. The members of the band Pearl Jam maintained
Speaker 1: and say to this day. You can ask them today
Speaker 1: and they'll confirm this. That private investigators were sent to
Speaker 1: snoop around in their lives, sent by Ticketmaster and having
Speaker 1: a PI sicked on you by a company very common occurrence. Unfortunately,
Speaker 1: what they were probably trying to do. What the allegation
Speaker 1: implies is that Ticketmaster was attempted to find something discrediting
Speaker 1: to members of Pearl Jam, not something that had anything
Speaker 1: to do with their crusade to get better ticket prices.
Speaker 1: They wanted to be able to say, well, this person
Speaker 1: is doing heroin and we'll put it in the news
Speaker 1: if you guys don't straighten up intil the corporate line,
Speaker 1: but you know again, that's a terrible example, because this
Speaker 1: is the nineties in Seattle grunge, right, So doing Heroin
Speaker 1: may unfortunately not have been the huge scandal that they
Speaker 1: would want, but they wanted something to hold over their heads,
Speaker 1: and eventually, probably more so, through just the sheer, ungodly
Speaker 1: amount of money Ticketmaster has, they were able to. They
Speaker 1: were able to, as you say, prevail. So that brings
Speaker 1: us to the modern day. Nineteen ninety seven, a company
Speaker 1: called Interactive Corp, oddly enough, not a video game company,
Speaker 1: perch is the majority stake and Ticketmaster, and then it
Speaker 1: bought the rest of the company. In nineteen ninety eight,
Speaker 1: the name changed to Ticketmaster Online. Dash City search doesn't
Speaker 1: exactly roll off the tongue, right, No, So they didn't
Speaker 1: care 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 unfortunately, did not go in the direction
Speaker 1: 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 Ticketmaster
Speaker 1: controls an estimated eighty percent of the little more than
Speaker 1: eighty percent of the ticketing market in North America. So
Speaker 1: they're doing something right. But let's get back to the critics.
Speaker 1: What are these critics saying.
Speaker 2: Well, they're saying that we need to take a quick
Speaker 2: break to hear from our sponsor and then we'll find
Speaker 2: out what Ticketmaster may or may not have been getting into.
Speaker 3: Here's where it gets crazy.
Speaker 1: So it turns out that in addition to be massively successful,
Speaker 1: Ticketmaster has been accused of numerous abuses, breaches of law,
Speaker 1: and shady business practices. There's genuine stuff they don't want
Speaker 1: you to know here. It's probably not gonna stop, no
Speaker 1: compellingnimpotus to stop it. And yes, Ticketmaster has been sued
Speaker 1: for conspiracy.
Speaker 2: Oh snap, the big c All right, let's take another
Speaker 2: time traveling trip here to two thousand and nine. Bruce Springsteen.
Speaker 2: Oh everybody knows Old Bruce the boss. Yeah, he is
Speaker 2: the boss. He's your boss and my boss. He publicly
Speaker 2: calls out ticket Master in two thousand and nine for
Speaker 2: a little let's say misdirection, redirection if you will, from
Speaker 2: a website. So as fans were going and trying to
Speaker 2: buy tickets through Ticketmaster to the Springsteen concert. They were
Speaker 2: getting sent to this other place called ticket now dot com,
Speaker 2: completely separate site. It looks very different. There's no you know,
Speaker 2: when you're on that site, you don't understand what's happening.
Speaker 2: You feel like a pop up maybe has occurred, or
Speaker 2: you've gotten redirected through an ad maybe.
Speaker 1: Or this is your last chance to get some kind
Speaker 1: of ticket to see the Boss live.
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, there's a certain desperation that's happening when you
Speaker 2: are being redirected to this ticketnow dot com because guess what,
Speaker 2: the tickets are marked up by hundreds, sometimes thousands of
Speaker 2: dollars at ticket now versus Ticketmaster. So then all these
Speaker 2: fan complaints are coming through because of this weird steering
Speaker 2: to the place called tickets Now. A New Jersey congressman
Speaker 2: gets a call and basically this guy says, Hey, we
Speaker 2: need a federal anti trust investigation into whatever the heck
Speaker 2: is going on between Ticketmaster and ticket now. What is this?
Speaker 2: Let's figure this out.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so here's what they find. They find that ticket Now,
Speaker 1: in addition to having a very similar name to Ticketmaster,
Speaker 1: is owned by Ticketmaster, and when Bruce Springsteen's fans were
Speaker 1: 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: Matt sells tickets for much higher than their face value,
Speaker 1: and it prais on that desperation, right, that's psychological fear
Speaker 1: 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: gollie ged if I allow somebody else to get that ticket.
Speaker 3: You know what I mean.
Speaker 1: It's an artificial scarcity essentially. Bruce Springsteen found out about it,
Speaker 1: and he was righteously indignant. He wrote a public statement
Speaker 1: about this, because what you found out was that this
Speaker 1: sort of second chance or reselling site ticket now was
Speaker 1: something that Ticketmaster was sending the audience to when there
Speaker 1: were still regular tickets available. So they could have gotten
Speaker 1: that you know, thirty or forty whatever dollar ticket to
Speaker 1: sit on the lawn in the back, yeah, and have
Speaker 1: a great time. But instead they were going directly to
Speaker 1: this place where it was you know, this huge markup,
Speaker 1: and that markup goes to Ticketmaster man. So Ticketmaster gets
Speaker 1: a fifteen percent cut from tickets Now, which it owns.
Speaker 1: That's in addition to the fees that already gets as Ticketmaster,
Speaker 1: so that that money has already spent and baked into
Speaker 1: the price. So a lawsuit comes about, and essentially what
Speaker 1: they're doing is making money off the same ticket two times. Clever,
Speaker 1: you know, brilliant, very clever, evil, lawful evil, and so
Speaker 1: probably because Egenstein himself took such a strong stance against it,
Speaker 1: Ticketmaster issued an apology to the fans and said, we
Speaker 1: will refund you the price difference between the face value
Speaker 1: of the tickets and those you got from ticket Now,
Speaker 1: which is a lot of you know, it's a lot
Speaker 1: of scratch. But that's also that's also like being caught stealing,
Speaker 1: you know, being caught stealing a car and then saying, ah,
Speaker 1: I'm you know, I'm gonna drive it back to your house. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and then what like, I feel bad, you.
Speaker 2: Know, some gas money here just a little bit.
Speaker 1: No, they didn't, they didn't, but it's strange, right, And
Speaker 1: this is just one of the allegations against ticket Master.
Speaker 1: We've got that Pearl Jam example. But let's talk about
Speaker 1: those fees, because that's where a lot of this comes
Speaker 1: back in, right, Have you ever bought a twenty dollars
Speaker 1: ticket only to find that it becomes more than forty
Speaker 1: dollars by the time you get to the actual place
Speaker 1: your order?
Speaker 2: No? Never, oh never, This is never Tabernacle.
Speaker 1: That's a that's a local venue here at Atlanta Tabernacle.
Speaker 1: What kind of fees have you run.
Speaker 2: Into literally twice as much? I mean it, Yeah, I've
Speaker 2: seen I have seen tickets double when I buy them
Speaker 2: for just a local venue here because of ticket Master's
Speaker 2: weird fees to get me my ticket somehow that I
Speaker 2: can print out already.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there's like a two to five dollars fee for
Speaker 1: getting a PDF. Essentially you can.
Speaker 2: Print somebody I'm paying some salary who's just on a
Speaker 2: floor somewhere making calls like I need three Pearl Jam
Speaker 2: but like, no, no, I got four radio Head.
Speaker 1: No.
Speaker 2: It's like it has to be that to justify twenty
Speaker 2: or thirty dollars fees on top of everything else. Otherwise
Speaker 2: I do not understand.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you're absolutely right. There's a there's a service charge,
Speaker 1: and that will be ticket Masters charging you for the
Speaker 1: privilege of it giving you a ticket. Yeah, and then
Speaker 1: there's the facility charge, which is a charge added by
Speaker 1: the venue. So ticket Master takes its cut, and then
Speaker 1: the Tabernacle, for example, takes its cut. And then there
Speaker 1: are shipping, convenience and processing charges. So that's a charge
Speaker 1: for you know, using your visa American Express, that's a
Speaker 1: charge for having the tickets delivered to you via post
Speaker 1: wow or using your own printer.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but then who who pays Cardi B? Then is
Speaker 2: what I'm trying to figure out, Like who what's her cut?
Speaker 2: Everybody else has taken their cut. Who's where's Cardib's money?
Speaker 1: Unless you're a huge name artist, which I guess Cardi
Speaker 1: B is. Now, the amount of money you get per
Speaker 1: ticket can be surprisingly alarmingly small because the label will
Speaker 1: take some money, you know what I mean, your road
Speaker 1: crew will take some money, and all this other stuff.
Speaker 1: Craft services eat that cheese because it's coming out of
Speaker 1: your cut. Other profits. Right, But all this adds up
Speaker 1: to an unpleasant experience for people when we're buying these tickets.
Speaker 1: The problem is there's not really any transparency with this.
Speaker 1: Fees between events vary even at the same venue, and
Speaker 1: preferences of the artist as well. Some people will try
Speaker 1: to buck like Radiohead or Pearl Jam. And the problem
Speaker 1: with it is that none of this, none of this
Speaker 1: ultimately goes into a situation where in ticket prices are lower.
Speaker 1: None of this is meant to nor will it.
Speaker 2: Ever create It cannot.
Speaker 1: Yes, yes, none of this is meant to create a
Speaker 1: situation where artists get paid more and the audience pays less.
Speaker 2: No, absolutely not.
Speaker 1: If anything, It's kind of like, you know, nobody talks
Speaker 1: about this, but it's pretty weird that you you know,
Speaker 1: historically can't buy a car directly from the people who
Speaker 1: make cars.
Speaker 2: That is weird.
Speaker 1: It's weird. It's a weird thing. It's normalized. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: you know, I'm not choosing sides on it, but that
Speaker 1: that is something we think about. You know, you can
Speaker 1: buy almost you can buy so many other things directly
Speaker 1: from the people who make them direct sales.
Speaker 2: Vertical integration is scary though, and it can be It
Speaker 2: can be highly it can be highly problematic.
Speaker 1: Yeah, 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 entire operation is exceedingly opaque. We're going
Speaker 1: to take a break for a brief word from our sponsor,
Speaker 1: and then we'll come back with an investigation in Canada
Speaker 1: that makes this even weirder.
Speaker 2: All right, here's where it gets crazier. This is hard
Speaker 2: for me to understand that this is real. Okay, what
Speaker 2: we're going to talk about from now, mostly through the
Speaker 2: rest of this episode, we got from a CBC News
Speaker 2: investigation that was carried out and specifically there's a journalist
Speaker 2: named Dave Seglins who actually physically went undercover as a
Speaker 2: scalper at a ticket industry convention out there in Las Vegas.
Speaker 2: And you can watch a video of this online right now.
Speaker 2: If you want to take a break, you can you
Speaker 2: can search us up CBC ticket Master.
Speaker 1: New Yes segment l I N S.
Speaker 2: 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.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, sure.
Speaker 1: Okay, So so imagine your ticketmaster. You make money selling tickets. Okay,
Speaker 1: you want people to buy tickets from you, definitely.
Speaker 2: Sure doesn't matter who that person is buying a ticket
Speaker 2: from you, as long as somebody's buying a ticket from you, right.
Speaker 1: Right, as long as the transaction occurs. But you want
Speaker 1: to be on the side of the people and the artists,
Speaker 1: and you probably say hey, at least in public, you
Speaker 1: say hey, I think scalpers are the worst and they
Speaker 1: take advantage of people.
Speaker 2: Yeah, because we want you to have low prices and
Speaker 2: see all the stuff you want to see. Don't be
Speaker 2: mad at us.
Speaker 1: Right, So it's established then in the public mind, the
Speaker 1: axiom is that ticket distributors, or these middle segments between
Speaker 1: the artists and the event and the customer, that they
Speaker 1: should not be down with scalpers Like you guys are
Speaker 1: making it weird. You're making it worse. I don't want
Speaker 1: to be in a situation where, for instance, there are oh,
Speaker 1: what's a great what's a great event that people would
Speaker 1: go to today, like a band or a perform it's
Speaker 1: alien con sure, alien con. They're only yeah, it's a
Speaker 1: one night only four hundred four hundred seat event and
Speaker 1: it's called Alien con who knows what it is. Maybe
Speaker 1: it's a mariachi band, and they Ticketmaster, one would assume,
Speaker 1: does not care for a situation when one person goes
Speaker 1: in and buys all four hundred or whatever of those
Speaker 1: tickets in one block and then turns around and sells
Speaker 1: them for fifty percent more on you know eBay.
Speaker 2: Yeah. We basically Ticketmaster is not down with opt right
Speaker 2: other people's tickets. They don't. They're like, look, these these
Speaker 2: are the people's tickets.
Speaker 1: Right, right, right, So what that's what we assumed, right, yeah,
Speaker 1: And it turns say right, and it turns out that
Speaker 1: we were very wrong, no, like cartoonishly.
Speaker 2: So they're they're quite all right with anyone buying their
Speaker 2: share of the tickets as long as those tickets get sold,
Speaker 2: and especially if Ticketmaster can sell the tickets twice. What
Speaker 2: what are we talking about? Okay, let's go back to
Speaker 2: Las Vegas at that convention. So ticket Master, he's recording
Speaker 2: Ticketmaster at least some representatives from Ticketmaster. Maybe that's the
Speaker 2: best way to say it. Sure are these representatives are
Speaker 2: pitching scalpers on their Ticketmaster's trademarked professional reseller program that
Speaker 2: they have established. Okay, Now, according to the investigation that
Speaker 2: you'll follow Dave Seglins through with the CBC News investigation,
Speaker 2: Ticketmaster was not only just deciding that if scalping is happening,
Speaker 2: we're just going to put blinders on and pretend that
Speaker 2: it's not happening. They're also literally recruiting people, professional people
Speaker 2: who've been scalping for a long time or maybe are
Speaker 2: very good at scalping to cheat the ticket master uster
Speaker 2: system itself, to expand their Ticketmaster's resale business and again
Speaker 2: to take more money from the people that are just
Speaker 2: trying to go out and see a concert or an
Speaker 2: event or something. So, just to recap, it's Ticketmaster teaching
Speaker 2: scalpers to scalp Ticketmaster for their own profit, for Ticketmaster's profit.
Speaker 1: Yes, yeah, so.
Speaker 3: They have.
Speaker 1: They've done more than turn a blind eye. They've they've
Speaker 1: gotten too a win win situation with scalpers and Ticketmaster. Right,
Speaker 1: So this is before the average concert goer. This is
Speaker 1: this is the part of the movie where the bad
Speaker 1: guys team up and one sales rep is on camera saying,
Speaker 1: I have brokers that have literally a couple of hundred
Speaker 1: accounts it's not something that we look at or report
Speaker 1: because they wanted these scalpers to feel that they were
Speaker 1: that they were safe in this Ticketmaster, for its part,
Speaker 1: denied the accusations. And once again, you can always go
Speaker 1: back to the idea that actions by a few people
Speaker 1: in an organization do not automatically mean the entire organization
Speaker 1: condone it right tale as old as time. That's what
Speaker 1: any intelligence agency will say when it's undeniably caught doing
Speaker 1: something terrible.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'll be like.
Speaker 1: Well, that guy decided to topple that country on his own,
Speaker 1: and we always knew that, We always knew that Jeremy
Speaker 1: was a little bit off.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and this is all compartmentalized anyway. Only a very few,
Speaker 2: small number of people knew anything about that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Like, I'm weirded out hearing about it today, Congresswoman.
Speaker 1: This was the first first I've heard of it, and
Speaker 1: I've got to tell you, frankly, I am outraged.
Speaker 2: Well you know what I am too, And I hope
Speaker 2: you get to the bottom of it. And congratulations on
Speaker 2: all your work.
Speaker 1: Thank you, thank you. I'll be speaking at Georgetown this
Speaker 1: coming Friday. It's one one night only you can oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: you can get tickets through a Ticketmaster or if those
Speaker 1: are sold out, go ahead to Yeah it is sold out, well,
Speaker 1: go to ticket now, Okay, tickets now, so and scene.
Speaker 1: So Ticketmaster 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.
Speaker 2: Called used Tickets pre Owned tickets.
Speaker 1: Called it Certified pre Owned, called Trade Desk. Trade Desk
Speaker 1: is a quote web based inventory management system for scalpers.
Speaker 1: The company calls it the most powerful ticket sales tool ever.
Speaker 1: So here's what it allows you to do. You can
Speaker 1: buy a block of tickets from Ticketmaster through one of
Speaker 1: its many faces, and then you can upload those tickets
Speaker 1: to this trade Desk thing, and then you can just
Speaker 1: list them again for resale. This means you can hike
Speaker 1: or drop prices on tons and tons of tickets based
Speaker 1: on what you think fans are looking for. So it
Speaker 1: turns it into almost a stock market kind of thing.
Speaker 1: Neither Trade Desk nor the professional reseller program are mentioned
Speaker 1: anywhere on Ticketmaster's website. You can go check we looked,
Speaker 1: it's not there. It's also not listed on any of
Speaker 1: its corporate reports. If you want to find the Trade
Speaker 1: Desk website, you first have to send in a registration request.
Speaker 2: So let's go ahead and take a look at what happens.
Speaker 2: If you do get through that registration process, you do
Speaker 2: have one of these things like an account there, and
Speaker 2: you are reselling things. Let's see what Ticketmaster actually gets
Speaker 2: out of this whole process. So, just as an example,
Speaker 2: let's say Ticketmaster is gonna sell a ticket for a
Speaker 2: little over two hundred dollars. Two hundred nine dollars and
Speaker 2: fifty cents. Okay, that's just the price of the ticket.
Speaker 2: Ticket Master itself is gonna collect twenty five dollars and
Speaker 2: seventy five cents just on that initial sale. Now when
Speaker 2: the owner, now if because we're saying this is through
Speaker 2: Trade Desk, the owner who's just purchased it through Trade Desk,
Speaker 2: then puts it back up for resale for roughly twice
Speaker 2: as much as it's the original cost, let's say four
Speaker 2: hundred dollars the company. Then ticket Master stands to collect
Speaker 2: an additional seventy six dollars on that same ticket. So
Speaker 2: so again you're looking at over one hundred dollars that
Speaker 2: you're gonna make out of six hundred dollars in total
Speaker 2: of sales.
Speaker 1: And at this point that's legal too. Yeah, it's not
Speaker 1: against the law.
Speaker 2: Yeah. And it's just a way to make sure that
Speaker 2: tickets get sold at least if you're looking at from
Speaker 2: the company's perspective trade desk, basically that every ticket is
Speaker 2: going to get sold in some way from that initial sale.
Speaker 1: The idea being that, you know, if you want that,
Speaker 1: the idea being that the lever moves us and down
Speaker 1: so you could lower prices. Maybe day of ticket sales
Speaker 1: aren't where you want them to be. So someone says,
Speaker 1: all right, now this is no longer two hundred dollars.
Speaker 1: It's one hundred and fifty dollars.
Speaker 2: Let's see what happens, right, Yeah, And there are strategies
Speaker 2: that kind of line up with that. At the like
Speaker 2: towards the end of a concert or something, or towards
Speaker 2: the end of a big game, people there will still
Speaker 2: be scalpers outside of a well, okay, there will be
Speaker 2: resellers outside of a venue selling tickets for you know,
Speaker 2: pennies on the dollar if this show is almost over
Speaker 2: or something to get people in just to finally make
Speaker 2: a tiny bit of money on that thing and that
Speaker 2: that exists throughout these markets.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Absolutely, we do want to say that while while
Speaker 1: we did mention that ticket Master denied the allegations brought
Speaker 1: by this investigative report, maybe it'll be helpful for us
Speaker 1: to give the actual language that they used in denying
Speaker 1: this allegation. What do you think?
Speaker 2: 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's 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 represent from Ticketmaster is on camera completely completely doing
Speaker 1: what they say, what they're denying.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the biggest, the biggest thing that Ticketmaster had a
Speaker 2: problem with was that that representative acknowledged of acknowledged the
Speaker 2: knowledge that one person essentially would have two hundred accounts, right,
Speaker 2: or if one entity or one group would have two
Speaker 2: hundred trade desk accounts. That's that's where the big problem
Speaker 2: comes in.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so it is a situation where the money got
Speaker 1: too good. Is a situation where where finally maybe as
Speaker 1: the public or the uninitiated scene into a previously murky.
Speaker 2: World, that's very possible. I would go ahead and just
Speaker 2: say it makes me think of something we discussed at
Speaker 2: the very beginning of a competitive marketplace, essentially and having
Speaker 2: to always evolve, like consistently evolving to make sure that
Speaker 2: you are making more profit so that you can increase
Speaker 2: your margins year every year, or you know, you increase
Speaker 2: your percentage overall of gross income year every year, like
Speaker 2: having to find new creative ways as a giant company
Speaker 2: like Ticketmaster and it's you know, parent companies and all that.
Speaker 2: These kinds of reselling, it's another way to increase those
Speaker 2: margins that isn't necessarily illegal if you take out the
Speaker 2: some of the things from this, you know, some of
Speaker 2: the things were illegal, but not many. Right, The reselling market,
Speaker 2: as terrible as it sounds, and as bad as it
Speaker 2: is for consumers such as us, it's just another one
Speaker 2: of those ways to grab more money.
Speaker 1: Allegedly illegal, well, definitely illegal, but that the allegedly did.
Speaker 2: Yes, yes, apologies because.
Speaker 1: It hasn't been an I don't think it's necessary. This
Speaker 1: is just we're just being as fair as we can. Yes, yes,
Speaker 1: so as you can tell by the use of the
Speaker 1: phrase allegedly and the fact that we're being fairly careful
Speaker 1: about how we discussed this. Ticketmaster has been in and
Speaker 1: out of court. In twenty eighteen, they suffered a data breach,
Speaker 1: and in twenty nineteen a British law firm launched legal
Speaker 1: action against them for affecting up to forty thousand UK customers.
Speaker 1: And also in twenty eighteen, the US Department of Justice
Speaker 1: launched an investigation following complaints that Live Nation, an event promoter,
Speaker 1: had engaged in anti competitive practices following their merger with Ticketmaster.
Speaker 1: There's an organization called Enschutz Entertainment Group, and they said
Speaker 1: Live Nation pressured them into using Ticketmaster as a vendor,
Speaker 1: and had they refused, they would have lost out on business.
Speaker 1: The allegations of anti trust violations resulted in a re
Speaker 1: examination of the merger between Ticketmaster and Live Nation. However,
Speaker 1: this case is probably going into well many of these
Speaker 1: cases are going into arbitration, private settlements. No need to
Speaker 1: have a shameful day in court. And at this point
Speaker 1: Ticketmaster is very little in the way of real competition.
Speaker 1: There are other things in the market, sure, but they're
Speaker 1: gnats to Ticketmaster's beheamoth right. And the question then is,
Speaker 1: I mean, clearly there's some stuff they don't want you
Speaker 1: to know 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. That's a that
Speaker 1: is a very clear, an unfortunately disturbing explanation of how
Speaker 1: all three of those industries.
Speaker 2: Work, and really most industries, everyone's just trying to get
Speaker 2: you to take the easiest option for you, and it
Speaker 2: depends on where you are in life times ticket but
Speaker 2: here's the easiest one for your social strata.
Speaker 1: Yeah, right, You're not looking for mister right price. You're
Speaker 1: looking for mister right now, price right.
Speaker 2: Start applying that to social interactions, and now it's just, oh,
Speaker 2: we've gone down a rabbit hole.
Speaker 1: I should have I should have quit while we were
Speaker 1: ahead with the with the insurance airplane ticket thing. But yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's true, and there's probably not going to be
Speaker 1: any anything that really stops this practice. There will be
Speaker 1: things that mitigate it. The problem is that the established
Speaker 1: system has caught up to technological breakthroughs only in the
Speaker 1: ways that can improve its profit while maintaining its position.
Speaker 1: The technology that we have now to organize, distribute, and
Speaker 1: track these sorts of things is amazing. If you were
Speaker 1: from the nineteen seventies and you've looked at it, you
Speaker 1: would think was mind blowing, you know what I mean,
Speaker 1: unless you already worked for DARPA or something, you would
Speaker 1: be like, how did that get out here? But the
Speaker 1: problem is that even though we're we have the potential
Speaker 1: to democratize the access to these tickets in a way
Speaker 1: that would benefit the creators and benefit the customers, we're
Speaker 1: not seeing that. When will that happen? When will there
Speaker 1: be some sort of market disruption?
Speaker 2: No?
Speaker 1: No, and at this point, has ticket Master done anything
Speaker 1: thoroughly illegal. No, they haven't been convicted. None of the
Speaker 1: CEOs have ever gone to jail. The creators certainly never
Speaker 1: got in trouble.
Speaker 2: Yeah, in two thousand and nine, that whole conspiracy suit
Speaker 2: was out there, didn't really go anywhere.
Speaker 1: Right, right. So the question then goes to us, fellow
Speaker 1: conspiracy realists, is this just how this business should be run?
Speaker 1: And what what are other businesses that you have seen
Speaker 1: that your that your fellow listeners may not be aware of,
Speaker 1: Like we've we've seen some We've seen some strange things
Speaker 1: going on in the funeral service industry. We've seen some
Speaker 1: strange things going on of course here in the event
Speaker 1: and ticketing industry. But where else, I wonder where else
Speaker 1: is everything just crazy, crooked appearing to be crooked. I
Speaker 1: have to say so that we don't get superbl to that.
Speaker 2: End, to that end, I want to I want to
Speaker 2: pick your brain, Ben about the mechanic big mechanic industry
Speaker 2: with some of these bigger companies out there that that
Speaker 2: offer repairs to vehicles and automobiles.
Speaker 1: Sou mean like not just straight up garages, but box
Speaker 1: automotive stores that are also garages or service centers.
Speaker 2: Okay, yeah, the big ones that are nationwide. I'd like
Speaker 2: to talk about some of those. See if there are
Speaker 2: any conspiracies out there. So maybe maybe if you're listening
Speaker 2: and you know, have you heard of anything, let us
Speaker 2: 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 curmudgelingally 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? Yeah, there are more
Speaker 1: and more black boxes proliferating under the hood.
Speaker 2: Sure, absolutely, and just lack of experience, lack of knowledge.
Speaker 1: I just feel like, call me old fashioned, but I
Speaker 1: feel like if you if you buy a car, it
Speaker 1: should be something that you own that it shouldn't have
Speaker 1: to be a service, you know what I mean. We're
Speaker 1: moving increasingly into a service economy. It is going to
Speaker 1: scare your children listening now, when when you say, yeah,
Speaker 1: people used to like buy things and then have them,
Speaker 1: I'm like, what for how much a month? Yeah, like no, no,
Speaker 1: like you would just you would just buy one sandwich
Speaker 1: and you would eat it.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Well it goes back to that superpower thing of
Speaker 2: money and time and I don't have time to work
Speaker 2: on this vehicle. I'll give it to you and you
Speaker 2: 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 kind of thing, right,
Speaker 1: like Apple has done this very well. Yeah, anyhow, story
Speaker 1: for another day. Thank you so much for you, and
Speaker 1: we want to hear also your most egregious concert ticket
Speaker 1: or event ticket fee story. Did you really go into
Speaker 1: some website thinking you were gonna pay eighteen bucks and
Speaker 1: then come out like thirty bucks later, bewildered and confused?
Speaker 2: Yeah, did you try get into a Foo fighter's concert
Speaker 2: and then you realized, wait, it's four hundred dollars and
Speaker 2: then you just said.
Speaker 1: Bye, oh man, Yeah, tell us your stories. Uh, And
Speaker 1: that's our classic episode for this evening. We can't wait
Speaker 1: to hear your thoughts. We try to be easy to
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