Ticket Monopoly

Ticketing monopoly

Problems arise within Ticketmaster due to Taylor Swi ’s recent tour

Rosie Towler towleros000@hsestudents.org

According to Live Nation, a ticketing website owned by Ticketmaster, ticket pricing has gone up nearly 20% since 2019. is could stem from many reasons, such as in ation or the desire of many to attend more concerts this year since more artists are releasing tour dates. “Now everyone wants to be able to see their favorite artists,” senior Sarai Parks said. “At least that’s why I’ve gone to so many this year because I didn’t get to do that since COVID happened. So now I’m really trying to see everyone I love.” Ticket buying and attending concerts for shows has changed since 2019. Now, many artists are more conscious about sickness and safety. Ever since the pandemic, more artists have been wanting to hold concerts and more fans want to be at those concerts. “I do think COVID changed concert going in terms of health precautions,” senior Elizabeth Lasher said. “With higher fears of getting sick there’s been a drastic decrease in concert attendance.” At the beginning of the year when concerts started ramping up, many had requirements like needing to show a vaccination card or having a negative COVID-19 test ve days before the concert. Although now many of those restrictions and requirements have been li ed for most concerts, some fans attending the concerts still decide to wear masks to stay safe. “I went to a Sara Kays concert and you had to have a negative COVID test,” junior Piper Neal said. “I know when the vaccine was rst coming out it was a requirement for some concerts.” e increase in concert going has also caused an increase of tickets being bought from websites like SeatGeek and Vividseats which are websites that people use to resell their tickets. “Places like SeatGeek which are reselling websites that kind of rely on scalped tickets and have a pretty terrible track record for poor customer service and people not getting tickets or getting fraudulent tickets,” junior Juno Bryant said. Scalpers, de ned by Cambridge Dictionary as people who buy tickets at the usual price to then sell them at a higher price to make a quick pro t, are one of the reasons as to why ticket prices have gone up tremendously. ey use the desire of people to attend more concerts this year and next, to sell tickets at twice the original price. “ ey’re taking away tickets that actual fans want, to get a pro t [which is] the main problem for capitalism,” Parks said. Ticketmaster, a big ticketing site that sells tickets to thousands of shows, is known for the scalping issue on the site going constantly unchecked even before COVID-19. Ticketmaster recently has also been brought to life as a possible monopoly in the ticket-buying business. “I would say Ticketmaster is a monopoly because it has excessive control over the ticketselling market,” Lasher said. “I don’t know of any other ticket vendor besides Ticketmaster or one that is not owned by them.” On Nov. 18 Taylor Swi held a presale on Ticketmaster for her upcoming tour. Many became outraged during the sale when the site crashed for some and by the time the site had come back up many tickets were bought by scalpers and sold for over tens of thousands of dollars. “Ticketmaster should have more protection against ticket resellers,” junior Adalai Scranton said. “It should have been more prepared for way more people ordering tickets.” Although Ticketmaster is now being considered a monopoly, another ticket-selling company not under Ticketmaster, AXS, was under re a few months ago for the same scalping issue. K-pop group Ateez performed a show in Chicago for which tickets were sold through AXS. However, when people went to purchase tickets through the regular sale, scalpers had already upped the price. “I don’t understand why ticket prices will go for about like $60 and then you buy the ticket and then the additional costs are actually $300,” Bryant said. “So it’s like, ‘what are these additional costs? What am I paying for? And why is it that, why is it that expensive?’” Unfortunately, no ticketselling app is safe from scalping. Although, scalping is not the only reason why ticket sales are going up, in ation across the country is also contributing to the heavily increased pricing of tickets as well. “People are still going to buy [tickets],” Parks said. “So I see what they’re doing, but they shouldn’t be doing it. ey just have to have better morals.”