There has been a new Ticketmaster pricing system introduced which did not go well with the fans. The system received criticism from both industry experts and fans.
The system which is also known as dynamic pricing, started being used recently by Harry Styles, Coldplay, and Blackpink. This is done in order to have more sales in their concerts.
The US follows this system but there the business of reselling tickets is bigger. Hence, there is more touting.
However, with the help of the Ticketmaster pricing system, the agenda is to reduce touting which, in turn, will be helpful for the artists as they will get more money.
On visiting the Ticketmaster page, a notice will be there which will display that the price of the tickets changes according to the demand of the fans. That is just the way it goes for airline tickets and hotel bookings.
This means there will be no fixed price for the tickets, as it will keep on changing based on how much demand is for the show.
Adam Webb who is the campaign manager for the FanFair Alliance spoke to BBC that there are a lot of problems related to ticket touting that need to be solved.
Before the Ticketmaster system, there was a price that was fixed for the ticket as directed by the artist/artists performing or their manager. Then the ticket is resold at a market price that is considerably higher than the original market price.
This is very prevalent in the UK; therefore the Ticketmaster system was released in order to deal with ticket touting.
There are some secondary sites like Viagogo and StubHub that resell the tickets at a higher price. With the Ticketmaster-based pricing system, similar sites like these will not be able to charge a higher price. This means that the artists will be able to earn more profits which they deserve.
This also helps the fans as they will be able to buy tickets from authorized sites and hence avoid fraudulent ones. Some of the resale ticket pages are fraud and cheat people.
However, fans criticize the Ticketmaster-based pricing system as they believe that they are charged double or more than that than the actual ticket price.
For the Harry Styles concert in 2023, fans said that the price on the Ticketmaster page was double the original price of the concert.
Reacting to the same, Ticketmaster mentioned that the system of dynamic pricing is necessary so that the artists get what they deserve. This also maintains the creativity and spark of the live concerts.
However, there are some artists who did not accept the system of dynamic pricing. They want the ticket prices to be as low as possible so that more fans can afford it.
The critics said that ticket touting could be prevented without introducing the Ticketmaster system. This can be done by artists, one great example are the measures taken in Ed Sheeran’s concerts.
IDs of the tickets are checked at the doors, and any tickets which were bought from the resale sites are canceled.
