I’m not sure about elsewhere, but the venue where I work has the ticket prices dictated by the artist’s management, or by the “talent buyer”, being LiveNation (the talent buying staff do not work at our venue either). We ourselves who work at the venue aren’t throwing bat wings and frog eyes into a cauldron while we sit on our chairs made of orphan skin so we can plot how best to squeeze the most money out of people.
We recently became a Ticketmaster venue, and we aren’t excited about it all that much. We get higher profile acts now, yes, but we also lost a huge amount of on site/ night of show customer service capability after losing Ticketfly. We used to be able to reprint someone’s ticket as long as they could show us an ID and that they were the original purchaser.
Unrelated, but something I’m proud of, we would jump through a fuck load of hoops to reprint tickets that people lost that were purchased by stubhub and the like. This, by the way, is 1000% not our responsibility. It was brought through a third party. There is literally no button sequence we can punch into our computer that will get you a ticket that was purchased by someone else.
So, we would track down and call the person who sold it to them. We would get on the phone with “OFFICIALTIxforYOUsuperLEGITTIXXX.Cum” when the customer mistook that web address for “Tickefly.com” and found that, surprise surprise, they got scammed, or were dealing with a company that fucked around too long in emailing the customer their ticket. This was all during a concert, when we’re getting a few thousand people checked in and doing everything else necessary with putting on a show.
With Ticketmaster, however, we can’t do any of that shit. There is absolutely no way we can be as helpful with the software Ticketmaster has us use for ticketing. So now, yes, we do sell cheaper tickets at the venue (exact base price for cash, extra $2 per ticket with plastic), but that means the customer loses out on literally all of the “service” that would be considered in the oft-stupididly named “service fee”. Bought your ticket at the venue? Great you saved some money and you got to chat with some friendly employees and ask all the questions specific to our venue that you wanted. Reprint your tickets in the event you lose them though?Nope. Set them for will call? Nah dude can’t do it. You need to pay an extra $15 per ticket online with Ticketmaster if you want that service, for no fucking reason.
My heart goes out to all our regulars who get dicked around by Ticketmaster, but I guess the point of this tirade is that at least at our venue, ALL we want to do is show you a good time. Not one person who works here, from bartenders to backstage to box office to upper management staff (even the accountants), isn’t a huge fan of music.
Oh and the bad press part: Fear not, when it comes to eating shit, we live in the land of plenty. Our social media got ripped apart for months after we announced the change to Ticketmaster. Yes, the drunk dude who lost his ticket and is subject to these poor service policies may call Ticketmaster tomorrow and do jack shit, but on the night of the show, they’re screaming at us, and chipping at the reputation of what amounts to a small business on Yelp.
So yeah, Ticketmaster gets the bad press, but they can afford to. Our company with less than 20 full time employees and 60 part time employees and 30 volunteers definitely feels that heat a lot more.
I do realize that there’s “bigger picture” bad press that you’re referring to, but I’d encourage you to recognize that music venues come in a lot of shapes / sizes and business models. You do not need to be MSG or The Greek to sell tickets with Ticketmaster, you can be as small as a dive bar and still eat their shit.
Fuck Ticketmaster.