The other day I was talking about secondary ticketing and my despising of the general dishonesty of it all.
Well now Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails has explained the situation from a band’s side of things. He doesn’t like secondary ticketers, or “re-sellers” as they’re known. Like me, he considers them touts, or scalpers in US-speak.
It sounds like NIN are doing their level best to avoid it, but the forces of exclusive agreements and venues means that they’re limited in what they can do. In their instance, they get 10% of tickets for a fan pre-sale with per-customer limits and printed names on tickets which will need to match ID at the venue. Fans will use their own entrance for this check.
Live Nation and Ticketmaster are merging and he foresees an auction system taking place or market-based system a la airlines.
He says upfront that the demand for some gigs outstrips supply and therefore in a market system, ticket face values are under-priced. There are always fans who’ll pay top dollar to get the best seats.
But of course the artist might not actually want the very wealthy getting all the best seats. Bruce Springsteen doesn’t and raised merry hell recently when Ticketmaster sent fans through to their secondary ticketing outlet in the US Ticket Now. Madonna hilariously complained in her film In Bed With Madonna about the dull fans at the front. Then she does a deal with a secondary outlet for her next tour (or Live Nation) does meaning that only the very wealthiest of fans will be at the front. Of course, she’s 50+ these days, so probably wouldn’t get quite as many screaming fans up the front. But she can’t moan if they don’t want to get up and dance. They’ve spent a lot of money – and it’s like sitting in a box at the theatre.
Over at Techcrunch, Michael Arrington disagrees. And of course in a purely capitalist system – he’s right. If there’s a market, then so be it if the best tickets command the very highest prices.
But if bands want to pursue that route, then some of their fans might voice their displeasure.
U2 tickets go on sale this Friday for their latest UK tour. They’ve promised a set number of “cheaper” £30 tickets for each gig. But their top price tickets are some in the high £160s! Really. And I quite expect those tickets to immediately get sold for even higher prices when they reach the Seatwaves and Viagogos of this world. Will U2 themselves profit? I don’t know. At the moment I’ve only seen Live Nation and Ticketmaster as promoted sites. It’s a fascinating subject, and one I still have strong feelings about.