Ticketmaster Troubles

By Sienna Wiitasalo Pop Culture & Entertainment

Concert tickets used to be easy to obtain, but over the past few years, getting a ticket to see a popular artist has become not just expensive, but almost impossible. The well-known ticket-selling platform Ticketmaster holds part of the blame for this issue. Between the service charges, ticket bots, and resale prices, acquiring tickets on the site has become a colossal undertaking.

A prime example of this chaos was when the Taylor Swift Eras Tour tickets went on sale in November. Swift gave Toronto six 2024 dates at the Rogers Centre, which holds about 50,000 people. The day the tickets went on sale, millions of people got on Ticketmaster just to see them gone in minutes, making resellers the only way to get them.

Resellers often have bots on platforms like Ticketmaster that act as competition for those trying to purchase tickets. Of course, bots can click on and pay for tickets faster than we can, which is why they usually win. According to Variety, these resale tickets are marked up at an average of 50% but can go up to 7000%! Despite this mind-blowing markup, desperate fans are willing to pay, and resellers continue to get away with it.

Additionally, Ticketmaster often saves over half of the tickets for other vendors such as radio stations and credit card companies. This means when fans are on the Ticketmaster website trying to grab tickets for a show, there are even fewer available than one might think. Artists such as Pearl Jam have become upset with Ticketmaster for these reserved tickets and have tried to get rid of them for their shows, but have not succeeded. Ticketmaster has exclusive contracts with many arenas, so their superiority makes concert-going impossible without them.

Even those lucky enough to score a ticket straight from the Ticketmaster website will still face the large service fees. According to Last Week Tonight, ticket prices have tripled over the past 30 years due to higher quality set designs and productions, causing Ticketmaster fees on top of the ticket price to skyrocket. These fees, which go to the venue, promoters, and Ticketmaster itself, can be up to nearly 80% of your ticket price!

Tickets to see lesser-known artists performing at smaller venues are usually still easy to get. However, if they become popular, you might have to kiss the chance of seeing them again goodbye. At this point, getting a reasonably-priced ticket on Ticketmaster is like trying to find a pot of gold at the end of a rainbow; it probably doesn’t exist.