The summer concert season is well underway around New York City. There’s nothing like hearing music on a warm night with the grass at your feet. If you purchased your tickets from Ticketmaster, you might be standing in the park trying to figure out exactly where the money goes for the company’s convenience fees.
When buying tickets from Ticketmaster online, the user’s only option is to pay surcharges, which can increase prices up to 25 percent. The cost usually averages $10 per ticket and can climb much higher.
For years, consumers have complained about the big jump in the cost of tickets purchased from Ticketmaster, either during the two-minute online transaction or via telephone. Given the lock the ticketing giant has on venues, most concertgoers don’t really have a choice–they have to buy from Ticketmaster or not at all. There usually isn’t an alternate method for purchasing tickets from larger venues.
An examination of Ticketmaster’s service charges reveals that the ticketing company adds convenience fees ranging from 17 to 29 percent to the advertised ticket prices for Live Nation shows. In 2003, Rolling Stone reported that the convenience fee is divided with 30 to 40 percent for the venue, 25 percent for the ticket. During Pearl Jam’s battle against Ticketmaster, the 1994 memo to the Justice Department charged that service charges are usually kicked back by Ticketmaster to promoters and venues.
Split from Live Nation?
The big news for frustrated consumers is that a major change could be in the works: the concert industry has been buzzing for months that Live Nation, which runs events in New York at the Fillmore NY at Irving Plaza, Gramercy Theater, Hammerstein Ballroom and Roseland Ballroom, may begin selling tickets for all of its concerts itself.
Live Nation is currently Ticketmaster’s single largest client, but that contract expires next year. Live Nation also owns a stake in two major independent companies, Next Ticketing and MusicToday, which both rival Ticketmaster’s capabilities for selling tickets online.
If Live Nation cuts Ticketmaster out of the transaction and sells tickets directly to concertgoers, industry experts say that it will be able to keep more of the ticketing revenue for itself—and hopefully reduce service fees for concertgoers.
Box Office Pick-Up
Although SummerStage tickets were previously sold through Ticketmaster, this season’s tickets can also be purchased from Ticketweb or the Mercury Lounge box office.
If you are going to any of the Bowery Presents shows at Mercury Lounge, Bowery Ballroom or Webster Hall, you also have the option of purchasing tickets from Ticketweb or picking them up from the Mercury Lounge box office, located at 217 East Houston Street. It is open from Monday-Saturday, noon to 7 p.m. The box office only accepts cash but your fee is merely the transportation cost to Mercury Lounge. It doesn’t add any service charges to the ticket price and you walk away with a hard ticket.
Ticketweb’s online service fee varies according to the price of the ticket, along with the number of tickets. The fee for two tickets to a $15 show is approximately $9.11 while the fee for one ticket to the same show is approximately $5.31. The fee for two tickets to a $25 show is approximately $11.75 while the fee for one ticket to the same show is approximately $6.63.
You can also save yourself Ticketmaster’s fees for summer shows at Prospect Park by picking them up from the Town Hall box office, located at 123 West 43rd Street (between Broadway and Sixth Avenue). However, tickets for events at Williamsburg’s McCarren Pool are only available from Ticketmaster.
Text-for-Tickets
The Knitting Factory recently introduced the text-for-tickets system that allows fans to buy concert tickets via their cell phones. ShopText Inc. operates the new ticketing-by-text service as a secure technology which allows consumers to buy products by using their cell phones and text messaging a specific code to ShopText.
Before purchasing tickets, you are required to register with ShopText. If you opt to register via your cell phone, you will get an automated call from the ticketing system. You must provide your credit card information and verify your identity. Once this process is complete, you will get a pin number to complete all of your future transactions.
You might have to go online to get the even keyword for the specific even (the code is also listed on flyers and in newspapers) but you won’t have to sit in front of your computer at the exact moment when tickets go on sale. You can also save up to $1.50 by texting for tickets. The savings may seem minimal for a single event but they will add up if you are an avid concertgoer.
Carley said:
The funny thing about all this is that Ticketmaster OWNS Ticketweb, so while there’s the illusion that Ticketweb is a Ticketmaster “alternative” and their fees are slightly lower, the money is all going to the same place and supporting the same corporate glutton.
I think that concertgoers need to educate themselves about the ticketing industry, because there are tons of smaller ticket companies out there that charge much lower service fees. Ticketmaster doesn’t NEED to charge such exorbitant fees to stay in business, it just has a monopoly over all of the large venues, so it can get away with it.
Companies like Brown Paper Tickets (they charge the lowest service charge in the ticketing industry, PERIOD) manage to stay in business just fine, and they even donate a percentage of their incredibly small fees to charity.
If we as consumers can start making conscious choices about where our money is going, it WILL make a difference.