Going out on a limb here with a conspiracy theory. Are we victims of a price fixing scam?

The lack of tickets via TM, even in the seconds following ticket release, coupled with the immediate availability in the reseller market has got me thinking.

Is it possible that a large chunk of tickets have been taken out of the primary system and dropped straight in the secondary market? This would give a higher revenue yield, with fees and commissions recouped via the secondary market.

Example: a $600 ticket via ticketmaster instead sells for at least that value plus 20% charges. Therefore, the promoter receives a higher up-front cut from ticket "sales". There is clearly a lot of profit in the secondary market if you can sell at those prices. Or, put another way, there is much more money to share out between the parties from resell prices rather than the official prices. And we are expected to pay for it because it's the Stones and we are so desperate to see them again.

Of course, these tickets don't seem to be shifting in the resale market. So have we been victim to an arbitrage scam that is going badly wrong? Don't TM operate part of this reseller market through "Getmein"?

The most unsettling thing for me is that this couldn't work without collusion. Why not just set the ticket prices higher in the first place? Not if you are the band and want to keep the prices somewhat in check and avoid the negative publicity and backlash. So, you tolerate a controlled level of market manipulation in order to safeguard your $25m cut. The manipulation instead looks like a hugely successful ticket sale, massive demand for tickets, and maybe even claims that prices were underpriced. But it is all an illusion.

I'm just a hobbo who doesn't know about these things, but in my opinion there are dark forces at work. Come on, who really believes that these shows sold out in seconds? Add up all the other add-ons bonanza from box sets at ridiculous prices ($880 was it?), and deluxe, super-deluxe nonsense and we have clear evidence that somebody is trying hard to shaft us ticket buyers any way possible.

I think we are seeing the extreme edge of market manipulation. The whole thing stinks so badly

There's a good story in The Guardian (UK) newspaper suggesting there should be an inquiry into this whole debacle.

[www.guardian.co.uk]


You can still buy tickets for this month's Rolling Stones 50th anniversary gigs in London, according to breezy radio adverts from a company called StubHub. So I logged on to have a look, and found that two tickets with a face value of £375 each will cost me a gobsmacking £23,500 for the pair. For that price I'd expect Mick Jagger to perform in my front lounge.

StubHub, it turns out, is another of those "secondary ticketing" companies that have sprung up in recent years; others include Seatwave and Viagogo.

But StubHub's £23,500 isn't even the highest amount being asked for two Stones tickets. Over at Viagogo, I found a pair of prime seats at the O2 Arena going for a staggering £37,808. That figure includes a £4,800 booking fee, which rather puts the £5-£8 charged by the likes of Ticketmaster in the shade.

Yet on the back of most concert tickets are words to the effect of "this is non-transferable". The small print on the website of See Tickets (like Ticketmaster, one of the big "primary agents") is pretty typical: "The tickets are for the personal use of you and your party only, and will not be resold or transferred. Any resale or attempt to resell the tickets at a price higher than purchased will result in your orders being cancelled..."

Yet everyone – the individuals selling their tickets, the secondary websites, eBay, Gumtree etc – simply ignores it. And it appears no one is prepared to step in and enforce the rules.

Most people wearily accept the existence of touts, and some defend their "market clearing" function. But cast your mind back a few months, when the O2 Arena hosted Olympic events. There was none of this rip-off reselling of tickets. It was illegal to resell Olympic tickets on the open market without permission; eBay had to remove any listings where people tried to do this, and the police were quick to swoop on any touts who turned up at venues.

If it can be done for Olympic events, why can't this sort of clampdown be extended to gigs and other sporting events?

Of course we are. Seemingly overnight, ticket prices went from ten dollars to 700 dollars?

a scam suggest its underhanded...this is unabashedly blatant.
They know what they're up to

it seems obvious there is a massive scam here.

and it appears quite blatant, not as if its just a resale thats been connected to a hotel room at an inflated price, which although immoral is probably legal.

whats happening here is tickets are resold quickly at vastly inflated prices and ticketmaster and the companies that have bought and reselling these tickets should be investigated.

The main questiosn I want to ask are these:
1.is it possible that TM are dumping tickets straight to their own reseller market in order to create a false market?
2.are they doing this with the tacit approval of the promoter, if not the band themselves?
3.is this sort of thing normal in the industry?
4. is it now so obvious that the ticket market has been rigged for this tour due to the very high advance that needs to be recouped, and which is pushing an extreme amount of manipulation?

How about a getting The Guardian or other newspaper to interview Sir Richard Branson on the subject? He's very involved with the Stones gigs.

Go to Viagogo and you will see some 500-100 tickets for sale for each show. No wonder Keith and Mick are advertising for tickets sales, nobody wants to buy it.

Other bands could sell some 40 shows in O2, Stones not even selling 2 shows.

Are we the victims of a pricing scam ?

Posted by: Room1009 ()

Date: November 19, 2012 18:35

A monosyllabic answer will more than suffice ....... YES !!

[ I want to shout, but I can hardly speak ]

Wuth all these tickets still up for grabs, aren't there going to be an awfully lot of empty seats at these gigs!?

There's no mug like a Stones mug.

There won't be empty seats. If the resale shops are working with Ticketmaster and/or the Stones, the unsold seats will be transferred back to Ticketmaster for last minute drops at face via TM.

Quote
bam
There won't be empty seats. If the resale shops are working with Ticketmaster and/or the Stones, the unsold seats will be transferred back to Ticketmaster for last minute drops at face via TM.

Or distributes outside for free or being delivered free when buying a Stones CD in Virgin.

That would be 2 Stones shows in London not sold out. That used to be the Greatest Rock 'n Roll band in the world. Now, they can't even sell tickets or better they are not able to price their own tickets. Just wonder what Jagger learned at LSE, probably not too much of pricing policy and marketing.

I popsted this eelsewhere aeady but this morning i was in TM at 10AM reloading the page waiting for the sale to start...i must have reloaded 5-7x times between 10Am and 10:02AM and each time it showed that the tickets were not on sale yet (same thing happened for Newark shows). After about 2 1/2 minutes, the tickets finally showed up for purchase, but i never was able to get one. I wonder of TM some how delays the sale to the public by a couple of minutes but allows the tix to be bought by the scalpers in that time period.

at LSE he learnt how to rob the fans who made stones rich in the 1st place,now go for bankers who are rich and using public money give to bail them out

Quote
mtaylor

Quote
bam
There won't be empty seats. If the resale shops are working with Ticketmaster and/or the Stones, the unsold seats will be transferred back to Ticketmaster for last minute drops at face via TM.

Or distributes outside for free or being delivered free when buying a Stones CD in Virgin.

That would be 2 Stones shows in London not sold out. That used to be the Greatest Rock 'n Roll band in the world. Now, they can't even sell tickets or better they are not able to price their own tickets. Just wonder what Jagger learned at LSE, probably not too much of pricing policy and marketing.

he's done all right. They got their money. Its up to the promoter to price the tickets. They did that too, as they managed to get awful seats sold at horrifically inflated prices.

the tickets were sold OK - it just happens that thousands of them were sold to people who about ten minutes after spending £400 on each ticket suddenly realised that they're washing their hair on the night of the show.

Once they were snapped up the onus on filling the venues passed from the band and promoter to the shysters who were trying to re-sell them. Whilst its evident there are a lot of very stupid people out there, there's maybe not as many as these people thought there would be.

the amount of tarps on the last tour suggest that the band dont care about empty seats. They still get their guarantee.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2012-11-19 20:45 by Gazza.

I dont think they have ever tarped over seats which were worth sitting in. Those crappy seats "up there" should NOT even exist for a concert.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2012-11-19 20:58 by Max'sKansasCity.

They're selling those 'crappy seats' for about $750 this time!

30,000 at Soldier Field and about 35,000 at Sun Devil Stadium would suggest serious tarpage as well as bringing the stage considerably forward.

Sure we are.
I've been fooled for sure.
I've got a nosebleed for 430 pounds.
But hey, Mick Taylor and Bill Wyman will be there apparently. So I'm thinking to buy a nosebleed for the 25th...

ummm....hmmmmm...er...uh...yup.

They're selling those 'crappy seats' for about $750 this time!

Not to me they arent, but I suppose if "some people" are happy
to sit "up there", then good for them. Have fun "up there" ya'll.

PS
I wonder, do oxygen tanks ( thin air "up there" ) cost extra?

So, are we to assume that by waiting until a few days before the shows we can get a seat at the LOW, LOW FACE VALUE??
I'm guessing we ARE being scammed, big time but we ARE NOT if we DON'T BUY!
Any rumors on 2013 shows?

There were probably about 20 tickets available at the lowest prices.

There should be a tour in 2013. Less excuse for panic buying then.

Quote
Room1009
Going out on a limb here with a conspiracy theory. Are we victims of a price fixing scam?

The lack of tickets via TM, even in the seconds following ticket release, coupled with the immediate availability in the reseller market has got me thinking.

Is it possible that a large chunk of tickets have been taken out of the primary system and dropped straight in the secondary market? This would give a higher revenue yield, with fees and commissions recouped via the secondary market.

Example: a $600 ticket via ticketmaster instead sells for at least that value plus 20% charges. Therefore, the promoter receives a higher up-front cut from ticket "sales". There is clearly a lot of profit in the secondary market if you can sell at those prices. Or, put another way, there is much more money to share out between the parties from resell prices rather than the official prices. And we are expected to pay for it because it's the Stones and we are so desperate to see them again.

Of course, these tickets don't seem to be shifting in the resale market. So have we been victim to an arbitrage scam that is going badly wrong? Don't TM operate part of this reseller market through "Getmein"?

The most unsettling thing for me is that this couldn't work without collusion. Why not just set the ticket prices higher in the first place? Not if you are the band and want to keep the prices somewhat in check and avoid the negative publicity and backlash. So, you tolerate a controlled level of market manipulation in order to safeguard your $25m cut. The manipulation instead looks like a hugely successful ticket sale, massive demand for tickets, and maybe even claims that prices were underpriced. But it is all an illusion.

I'm just a hobbo who doesn't know about these things, but in my opinion there are dark forces at work. Come on, who really believes that these shows sold out in seconds? Add up all the other add-ons bonanza from box sets at ridiculous prices ($880 was it?), and deluxe, super-deluxe nonsense and we have clear evidence that somebody is trying hard to shaft us ticket buyers any way possible.

I think we are seeing the extreme edge of market manipulation. The whole thing stinks so badly

Lunatics, driven by a lust for greed. Pure evil.

Quote
Gazza
There were probably about 20 tickets available at the lowest prices.

There should be a tour in 2013. Less excuse for panic buying then.

What do you know about a tour in 2013?

Quote
JumpinJackOLantern

Quote
Gazza
There were probably about 20 tickets available at the lowest prices.

There should be a tour in 2013. Less excuse for panic buying then.

What do you know about a tour in 2013?

You don't really think he's gonna answer that this soon do you?

Quote
Munichhilton

Quote
JumpinJackOLantern

Quote
Gazza
There were probably about 20 tickets available at the lowest prices.

There should be a tour in 2013. Less excuse for panic buying then.

What do you know about a tour in 2013?

You don't really think he's gonna answer that this soon do you?

Why, is he part of the Stones PR machine?

Quote
JumpinJackOLantern

Quote
Munichhilton

Quote
JumpinJackOLantern

Quote
Gazza
There were probably about 20 tickets available at the lowest prices.

There should be a tour in 2013. Less excuse for panic buying then.

What do you know about a tour in 2013?

You don't really think he's gonna answer that this soon do you?

Why, is he part of the Stones PR machine?

Yup

Quote
Munichhilton

Quote
JumpinJackOLantern

Quote
Munichhilton

Quote
JumpinJackOLantern

Quote
Gazza
There were probably about 20 tickets available at the lowest prices.

There should be a tour in 2013. Less excuse for panic buying then.

What do you know about a tour in 2013?

You don't really think he's gonna answer that this soon do you?

Why, is he part of the Stones PR machine?

Yup

I doubt it. If he is he should have been fired a long time ago. Shows very little enthusiasm for the band. To be honest I find him kind of a downer.

Quote
JumpinJackOLantern

Quote
Munichhilton

Quote
JumpinJackOLantern

Quote
Munichhilton

Quote
JumpinJackOLantern

Quote
Gazza
There were probably about 20 tickets available at the lowest prices.

There should be a tour in 2013. Less excuse for panic buying then.

What do you know about a tour in 2013?

You don't really think he's gonna answer that this soon do you?

Why, is he part of the Stones PR machine?

Yup

I doubt it. If he is he should have been fired a long time ago. Shows very little enthusiasm for the band. To be honest I find him kind of a downer.

Yikes JJOL, that will draw some criticism from the peanut crowd for sure. Gazza is okay, just a little ornery from time to time. Rest assured there are far worse "downers" on this site.