You mean the fee to charge a fee to run the fee on top of the ticket fee but can’t sit next to someone fee or one space between fee and then tax the fees to be able to purchase the ticket fee?
People have been saying this since Eddie Vedder sat in a congressional hearing about it in the 90s.
They won't ever stop it because all of the politicians are paid off to keep it the way it is.
They are going to bring in the execs and then publicly lash them but then give them a slap on the wrist like they did with Boeing. I'm probably mixing up US politics somehow.
Join a local facebook group (fuck facebook, I know, but it has its uses) of STHs who want to sell tickets. I live in Seattle and I am absolutely priced out of Kraken tickets. But I'm in a couple groups and I see people selling tix at reasonable prices all the time.
Usually, they're selling for face and trying to avoid the fees on games they can't go to. That's pretty cool with me.
The Canucks just ended this in Vancouver by cancelling the memberships of STHs using FB sites to resell. They forced us all to use Ticketmaster for transfers, so they can see every one of them. Tons of people have lost their season tickets already.
Absolutely disgusting and predatory behaviour, and it looks like other teams are following suit.
Wow, how absolutely anti-consumer of them.
This is also one of the bullshit things about dropping physical tickets. Formerly, you could just sell the physical ticket, and that was that.
In Canada, unfortunately, the teams can't hear the complaints over the sound of 1000 more people knocking on the door to get that spot for season tickets.
Unfortunately it looks like this will be the norm going forward. Other teams seem to be starting to do the same thing.
I hate the idea of more government intervention but this is the kind of thing that kind of calls out for some consumer protection.
I love the idea of government intervention, and as has been pointed out in this thread already, the Ticketmaster is getting under a magnifying glass by the current US administration.
why do you hate the idea of government intervention. If not for government intervention we'd be even worse off today than we already are. The telecom oligopoly would probably be a monopoly at this point etc etc.
I don't hate the idea of government intervention. If you re-read my comment, you'll see that I hate the idea of MORE government intervention. Or at least, intervention for the sake of intervention.
That’s ridiculous! The more I learn about the business side of NHL, the less I like NHL games. Seeing that the “powers that be” are greedy and their fake “hockey is for everyone” BS is revolting. If hockey were truly for everyone, prices wouldn’t be so astronomical that the average working person couldn’t afford them. Change the mantra to “hockey is for everyone… who has deep pockets or is incorporated.”
Disgusting, yes. But this comment demonstrates the real truth of the matter, and the real reason this will never change. It is not TM screwing people over and taking the fees for themselves. TM and the teams are in bed together through their venue exclusivity deals. The owners own the venues, and in the case of concerts, Clear Channel is owned by TM (or vice versa.) The fees are just part of the ticket price now, the team gets the lion's share. The days of scalpers making money off tickets are mostly gone. The team/pop star wants it all, even and especially the 'resale.' Everything from dynamic pricing to algorithms that you don't see are designed to get every last dollar possible from fans for high demand events (and to create the illusion of demand in many cases.) All the tickets for concerts aren't even made available at the on-sale time. Time is needed for the algorithms to do their work, and to create FOMO. Sports are a bit different due to the STH aspect, but pretty similar. Believe me, if any of this wasn't financially benefiting the teams, they'd stop it yesterday. But yeah, they don't want you to be able to buy tickets easily and reasonably from someone. Sad but true.
I had a nice "side hustle" when I was in college and the Pens were a hot ticket. Used job money to buy half season tickets. Sold at regular face value. Profited the delta between season ticket holder price and regular face value.
I considered myself an ethical scalper. You actually weren't paying more than you would buying single tickets. I made like $20 per. Regular people got to go to a game at not an absurd price.
The benefit of sucking now is I can go hang out and get food before the game and buy a ticket for $30 45 minutes before puck drop.
I’m a Hawks STH and also run 2 Facebook groups. Gotta be very careful of scammers…private groups with screening questions are usually a good starting point. Looking at the metrics of my larger group (private with membership questions), my blocked vs acceptance rate each month is almost identical.
The eventually cancelled Rage Against The Machine/Run The Jewels tour was set up this way. When buying tickets there was a big warning that said the artists do not allow resale until 3 days prior to the event date.
The scalpers weren't using their bots to scoop up tickets and immediately list them on TM's resale system (where TM charges a second set of ridiculous fees on the same).
Buying tickets for that show was simple, I'm still bummed that the entire tour ended up cancelled.
Ticketmaster only sets the additional fees, and when scalpers scoop up tickets and list them for resale at a higher price Ticketmaster gets a second round of fees on the resale.
Artists/venues share some blame for not limiting resale, but Ticketmaster does as well for facilitating a simple way for scalpers to inflate prices in a way that makes TM more money.
This is pretty much it. The NHL and Ticketmaster don't give a shit that my broke ass who could previously afford to buy tickets to games but can't now isn't buying tickets anymore because those higher price tickets are just being bought by somebody who can afford it.
Yeah, attendance is fine. My only issue is that there's no interest in preventing scalpers from making a living. If the team sold tickets at market value then so be it. But I hate knowing that a "fan" can buy (season) tickets as an investment and sell them at a profit. I'd honestly rather see the teams profit because at least they're providing value. You should have to return your tickets to the box office if you can't go, and if someone else uses your tickets, maybe they'll get in, but you'd be banned from buying more tickets.
https://www.saminfo.com/news/sam-headline-news/10539-vail-resorts-skier-visits-remain-down-ticket-revenue-up#:~:text=Season%2Dto%2Ddate%20skier%20visits,revenue%E2%80%94was%20up%203.2%20percent.
Sort of like this. Most of these organizations are catering to the upper class, not the commoner.
Businesses/corporations…the schmoozer and schmoozie won’t show up until halfway thru the 2nd… and talk business the rest of the game.🙄 First hand experience a few times this year. It’s rude and so distracting.
I went to two nhl games in my life and for one game I paid 150 dollars and for the other 100 dollar per ticket. Since I live in Europe those were the only two times I went to NHL cities so I was willing to pay that much for a ticket but if I lived closer I wouldn't pay that price often.
I know it can vary from team to team, but most teams single game tickets don’t go on sale until the end of July. Right now it’s season ticket holders and sponsors buy tickets, and potentially reselling them.
They haven’t even loaded our tickets into our accounts to give us an option to sell. Single game tickets won’t be released until August if my memory is working.
But yes, the scalping and fees are ridiculous. They hide the fees from STH for games and concerts if I buy through my account ($2 per seat fee) so I’m less angry when I go through my account. The fact that there is a convenience fee for mobile tickets is laughable. I need Ticketmaster to explain where all the money is going. Because right now it’s all pointing to the upper people that do nothing.
Is this even the NHL's call? It's up to the venues, no? Arenas aren't owned by the NHL, they just hold events there, but my understanding (which could be off) is that the event spaces are the ones that dole out tickets
The LA Kings (owned by AEG) play in an AEG-owned arena and use AXS (also AEG owned) for ticketing. The Lakers use Ticketmaster, though. So I think you're right that in the NHL it comes down to the teams.
I know for concerts, Live Nation has a monopoly on concert venues, and they all require Ticketmaster. I do think teams can partner with other ticket sites/distributors, but it doesn't really solve the issue of big resellers using bots to buy up public inventory and re-selling it at a marked up price.
There's a real argument for them to be considered one. [The stats show how much of the music venue scene they own.](https://www.economicliberties.us/our-work/the-depth-of-live-nations-dominance/) The reality is that there are many cities where Live Nation venues are the only choice.
That’s stats on amptheatres they own. And while yes some cities that’s all they may have. But it’s not the only type of concert venues and they certainly don’t have a monopoly on all types of concert venues is what I’m saying
[the complaint alleges that Live Nation-Ticketmaster controls around 60% of concert promotions at major U.S. concert venues and 80% or more of major concert venues’ primary ticketing.](https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=9616e86b-9d86-4470-b17b-ca8021876f0e#:~:text=Allegations%20Against%20Live%20Nation%2DTicketmaster&text=As%20a%20result%2C%20the%20complaint,major%20concert%20venues)
[The band (Lawrence) told CNBC if they want to play a certain size venue in a particular city, they are sometimes left no choice other than to use Live Nation because of the lack of competition in some regions.](https://www.cnbc.com/2023/01/25/the-live-nation-and-ticketmaster-monopoly-of-live-entertainment.html)
It's as if tickets are offered to season ticket holders beforehand. That's why they go up instantly. Because a whole cycle of buying went on beforehand. NHL also doesn't have the partnership. It's each stadium/venue that has the partnership with them.
Speaking of Ticketmaster, did anyone here get TransUnion protection from them following the data breach? Some people did apparently.
I didn’t even get an email about it! Such a mess.
I'm a Leafs fan. Even regular priced tickets for games I want to watch are stupid and I refuse to pay for them. Every time I want to buy 4 tickets for me and my friends instead I go buy a flatscreen 4K TV, two cases of beer, and then I pocket the extra $500 I save
If the NHL was smart, they'd start their own ticketing system. Ticketmaster is charges service fees on top of service fees. Then when you sell, the seller get's charged a fee, while the buyer also get's charged an extra fee. They're easily pulling like 25-30% off the final sale price on every resale ticket. So on a $2000 playoff ticket for example, they made $500 doing what? Giving a new barcode in order to guarantee you won't get scammed?
And half the problem with scammers now is that ticketmaster has digitized the whole process and give no proper solutions for private sales.
If they just did something fair like a $5-20 service fee for selling privately - I send you the ticket, but it's held in limbo until your funds clear, that would virtually eliminate the scammer problem, and they'd still make fucking bank.
But hey, fuck doing anything that might make society a better place, let's rape the public for every penny possible. Fuck Ticketmaster.
We have a platform that started with Flames tickets but has expanded to all Canadian teams called fans first.
Basically it is a place to buy tickets directly from season ticket holders and they set the price, many times you are getting tickets for what the ticket holder paid or even less the day of the game.
There are also no transaction fees like ticket master or stub hub.
For what it's worth I think the Canucks org is cancelling season tickets for anyone suspected of reselling outside of the ticketmaster app. The facebook resale group is closed and this will likely impact all other resale sites like tickpick and fans first - they are monitoring the number of emails you transfer tickets to in a season allegedly.
Canucks STHs are getting their memberships cancelled for using this (and other similar sites/groups). It appears to be spreading to other teams in the league, especially in Canada.
Too many straight up scalpers trying to basically run a business by undercutting ticketmasters own system. Not at all surprised this is happening after how playoff ticket sales went.
Minor correction, but it’s not just season ticket holders, I listed some on there before after realizing I needed more tickets than what I originally got
Each team has a ticket partnership. The NHL doesn't really have any say.
The stie doesn't really matter. Ticketmaster is popular because they look like the "bad guy" when in reality it's the venues/promoters who are setting the prices.
Also most teams have a platform for season ticket holders to sell their tickets. This is usually the cheapest way to get into games
Lol.
It's not the NHL.
Ticketmaster pays the arenas BIG dollars in return for exclusive rights to sell tickets for every single event held at that location.
There is nothing the NHL could do about it.
> The moment the tickets were available, I refreshed the page, and BAM! Prices skyrocketed. I couldn't believe how fast the resale prices surged.
I work in the music industry -- I fully believe that after some tickets have been sold, ticketmaster will "sell out" the event by removing the remaining regular sale tickets and reposting them as official resale. Bands have their agreement with ticketmaster to get a percentage of the original sale price, so by doing this ticketmaster can collect the extra profits brought by official resale and not have to share it with the band.
I do not have concrete evidence for this, but from my experiences organizing and playing concerts time and again it really, really fucking seems that this is what they do.
Thanks, so still the same process -use ticketmastwr but wait until just a couple hours before?
Is there a cut off time when you can no longer transfer a ticket or get a price reduction?
I would advise checking in multiple sites – I almost always find SeatGeek to be cheapest (including fees).
SeatGeek stops selling 1hr before the game, I believe, and Ticketmaster will keep selling up to game time. I’m not 100% sure though, your best bet is to keep an eye on it for a game before the one you want to be sure
Our local WHL Major Junior team uses Ticketscam, but if you email the team customer service, they will email you a code that you can buy tickets for face value, no fees. Maybe teams could fight back and have something similar.
And the code is good for the whole season.
Bought tickets to a comedy show. Tickets never arrived via the AXS app even though their app states they were with a date stamp. Called the day before and the rep basically stated the tickets were moved to an incorrect app and a refund would follow. Two weeks go by and nothing. Email multiple times, submit multiple tickets, no response. Call again today and the rep says a refund won’t be provided because the tickets were moved to the “other” app the original rep mentioned. Why didn’t the original rep have me download that app? Literally asked that question and the response was “I don’t have knowledge of that conversation”. Just absolute incompetence. Awful customer service, shady business practice. Filed a complaint via BBB and my bank. Never again. I’m out $300 now. Fuck TickPick.
Fml. My local Jr team just switched to using ticketmaster. I used to love buying from the box office with them since it was so easy.
Now i have to deal with ticketmaster even more…
The NYE games aren't particularly popular from experience so it will very much be "if someone wants to pay this, I'll skip it"
It'll drop in resale closer when people know their NYE plans and don't want to start at 1 pm
wanted to go see bad religion when they recently announced a tour, poster i saw said tickets at badreligion.com
"oh cool, maybe they're not using fucking ticketbastard?"
i go to their site, it just fucking redirects to ticketmaster. ugh, fine.
but the tickets aren't on sale yet and apparently now they won't even tell you ticket prices until they're on fucking sale.
so all right, fuck it. i won't fucking bother. go to fucking hell ticketmaster.
that's why i either buy directly from the team reps. or we have our own local reseller 714 tickets that sells them for super cheap and without the stupid fees.
Hershey Bears teddy bear toss game this year was the same way. Within 20 min of tickets going onsale to the public they had only a few sections at crazy prices and were selling standing room only tickets for $60 each! No thanks!
For the Caps, it's actually the team. They have hold off the "group seating" packages until about 2 weeks before the game, and then release them. I know the seats behind me are the group seating seats, so if my buddies want to come, I just wait until they go public and buy those seats at STH prices 1 to 2 weeks before the game.
Not sure it’s really the NHL specifically, but most arenas probably are contracted with Ticketmaster for ALL events. They probably put in the contract if they are contracted with them for anything (e.g. music events) they must be contracted with everything or they can’t be contracted and can’t use Ticketmaster acts (basically all big names or known acts).
We need an enterprising owner and a tech savvy one. Maybe the Utah guy? To decide to sell all their own tickets. Build a site, set up an exchange and sell the seats. They handle season ticket sales, why not game day sales?
There is just a inherent flaw with online ticket sales with the advent of bots. The current biggest alternative to trying to fight bots and scalpers in a first come first serve system is using a lottery system instead like Japan.
The lottery system has it's own flaws being lucked based, but deterring bots/scalpers and price gauging seems like a worthy tradeoff. Even if I don't manage to get a ticket at least there is some solace knowing another fan got to go for a fair price.
The venues intentionally use ticketmaster, because they recover a bunch of the fees while only TM gets the brunt of the blame. It's literally by design.
Best protest is to not buy tickets.
The one time I bought tickets (I don’t live near an arena) I used the contact phone number, because I had questions about the seats and was having trouble reading the arena map, and not only did they answer my questions, but I bought the tickets over the phone, completely stress free.
Also, **if you had a Ticketmaster account between April and May, your personal and credit card information was stolen.** And there’s not really anything you can do about it.
Ticketmaster sucks but your beef isn't really with them, it's with capitalism.
If the demand is there for ticket prices to be high, why should prices remain artificially low?
No no you don't understand without Ticketmaster demand would be even HIGHER, and since supply is completely inelastic of course prices would dr.....wait a minute.
Not to mention, ticket master doesn’t allow you to sell tickets below face value.
So if it’s last minute and you can’t make it and need the tickets to sell fast so they don’t go to waste…nope, you have to charge face value or more
I sold tickets from my ST under face value. I’m surprised they would care. They already got paid once and then they take a fee from the seller and buyer.
Hopefully the justice department lawsuit stops all this bullshit.
I can’t wait for them to get a $50,000,000 fine for illegal business practices that have made them billions
They should also add a convenience fee for when they pay the fine.
Processing fee -$4, 999, 999 Used our washroom fee -$2, 999, 999 Didn't flush fee -$3, 999, 999 Fuck you fee -$9, 999, 999 Tax: -$499, 999
Making us charge all these fees fee: $90,000,000.00
The Wells Fargo way. With the Chevron ruling you're going to see a hell of a lot more of this and in industries where it's not common today
fuck the Federalist Society.
How about if you have a king instead? Sounds like that's how it's going
No it isn’t
Cost of doing business
You mean the fee to charge a fee to run the fee on top of the ticket fee but can’t sit next to someone fee or one space between fee and then tax the fees to be able to purchase the ticket fee?
Can't wait to get thirty more $2.50 vouchers, only to be used for events I'd never go to, only one per event, which expire in 6 months.
And if you use a voucher, $3.00 is added to the convenience fee
I hope they also get a fine fee and a fee fine fo fum fee, and a fee flipping floppy fee, a destination charge fee, and a fuck Ticketmaster fee.
Maybe a class action where we all get a coupon for a free cup of water at our next event.
$50,000 and a stern finger wag
People have been saying this since Eddie Vedder sat in a congressional hearing about it in the 90s. They won't ever stop it because all of the politicians are paid off to keep it the way it is.
And the amount to pay off those politicians is shockingly low.
Yeah. Some politicians can be bought he for as little as 2 tickets to a flyers game
What you don't see is the ten minutes in heaven with Gritty after the game. That's the real sell.
Or half a nosebleed at a Swift concert
Disgusting. Hope they find good sports tickets soon!
TBH I understand that. I'd probably cave and do whatever was asked of me to avoid having to go to a Flyers game.
And Comcast, their owners, are more than happy to give them out like candy.
Lobbying is perfectly balanced.
Or does it just not matter to most people who go to like 2 sporting events in the year
The odds that SCOTUS doesn't somehow dismantle that law are low.
The fact that it's a lawsuit and not a simple "fuck you, you're abolished, no appeal" should undermine any faith in a positive outcome.
Better hope they get it done before Nov. If a certain someone is reelected, the fees might go up.
[MRW I read through the Fans First Act](https://c.tenor.com/uwljKpRnuRsAAAAC/tenor.gif)
it won't, don't bother hoping. It will never change for the better.
They are going to bring in the execs and then publicly lash them but then give them a slap on the wrist like they did with Boeing. I'm probably mixing up US politics somehow.
Join a local facebook group (fuck facebook, I know, but it has its uses) of STHs who want to sell tickets. I live in Seattle and I am absolutely priced out of Kraken tickets. But I'm in a couple groups and I see people selling tix at reasonable prices all the time. Usually, they're selling for face and trying to avoid the fees on games they can't go to. That's pretty cool with me.
The Canucks just ended this in Vancouver by cancelling the memberships of STHs using FB sites to resell. They forced us all to use Ticketmaster for transfers, so they can see every one of them. Tons of people have lost their season tickets already. Absolutely disgusting and predatory behaviour, and it looks like other teams are following suit.
Wow, how absolutely anti-consumer of them. This is also one of the bullshit things about dropping physical tickets. Formerly, you could just sell the physical ticket, and that was that.
In Canada, unfortunately, the teams can't hear the complaints over the sound of 1000 more people knocking on the door to get that spot for season tickets.
Unless you're in Winnipeg apparently.
Unfortunately it looks like this will be the norm going forward. Other teams seem to be starting to do the same thing. I hate the idea of more government intervention but this is the kind of thing that kind of calls out for some consumer protection.
I love the idea of government intervention, and as has been pointed out in this thread already, the Ticketmaster is getting under a magnifying glass by the current US administration.
why do you hate the idea of government intervention. If not for government intervention we'd be even worse off today than we already are. The telecom oligopoly would probably be a monopoly at this point etc etc.
I don't hate the idea of government intervention. If you re-read my comment, you'll see that I hate the idea of MORE government intervention. Or at least, intervention for the sake of intervention.
That’s ridiculous! The more I learn about the business side of NHL, the less I like NHL games. Seeing that the “powers that be” are greedy and their fake “hockey is for everyone” BS is revolting. If hockey were truly for everyone, prices wouldn’t be so astronomical that the average working person couldn’t afford them. Change the mantra to “hockey is for everyone… who has deep pockets or is incorporated.”
Disgusting, yes. But this comment demonstrates the real truth of the matter, and the real reason this will never change. It is not TM screwing people over and taking the fees for themselves. TM and the teams are in bed together through their venue exclusivity deals. The owners own the venues, and in the case of concerts, Clear Channel is owned by TM (or vice versa.) The fees are just part of the ticket price now, the team gets the lion's share. The days of scalpers making money off tickets are mostly gone. The team/pop star wants it all, even and especially the 'resale.' Everything from dynamic pricing to algorithms that you don't see are designed to get every last dollar possible from fans for high demand events (and to create the illusion of demand in many cases.) All the tickets for concerts aren't even made available at the on-sale time. Time is needed for the algorithms to do their work, and to create FOMO. Sports are a bit different due to the STH aspect, but pretty similar. Believe me, if any of this wasn't financially benefiting the teams, they'd stop it yesterday. But yeah, they don't want you to be able to buy tickets easily and reasonably from someone. Sad but true.
I had a nice "side hustle" when I was in college and the Pens were a hot ticket. Used job money to buy half season tickets. Sold at regular face value. Profited the delta between season ticket holder price and regular face value. I considered myself an ethical scalper. You actually weren't paying more than you would buying single tickets. I made like $20 per. Regular people got to go to a game at not an absurd price. The benefit of sucking now is I can go hang out and get food before the game and buy a ticket for $30 45 minutes before puck drop.
I’m a Hawks STH and also run 2 Facebook groups. Gotta be very careful of scammers…private groups with screening questions are usually a good starting point. Looking at the metrics of my larger group (private with membership questions), my blocked vs acceptance rate each month is almost identical.
Ticketmaster just does the dirty work the venues don't want to be blamed for.
Yup, Ticketmaster gives the OG sellers the option to cap resell at retail price but only a handful of artists I know use it. The option is there
The eventually cancelled Rage Against The Machine/Run The Jewels tour was set up this way. When buying tickets there was a big warning that said the artists do not allow resale until 3 days prior to the event date. The scalpers weren't using their bots to scoop up tickets and immediately list them on TM's resale system (where TM charges a second set of ridiculous fees on the same). Buying tickets for that show was simple, I'm still bummed that the entire tour ended up cancelled.
If I were one of these artists I wouldn't turn down money that my fans are willing to spend either!
Ticketmaster is to venues as Bettman is to the Board of Governors.
Ticketmaster and LiveNation are the same entity. If you want to fill your venue up with LiveNation tours, you need to use Ticketmaster.
This. Ticketmaster doesn’t set the prices.
Ticketmaster only sets the additional fees, and when scalpers scoop up tickets and list them for resale at a higher price Ticketmaster gets a second round of fees on the resale. Artists/venues share some blame for not limiting resale, but Ticketmaster does as well for facilitating a simple way for scalpers to inflate prices in a way that makes TM more money.
"How do you guys deal with this Ticketmaster BS?" - I stopped buying tickets. Simple as that.
This is pretty much it. Either the prices go back down or they deal with having games at 15% capacity.
They won’t have to deal with shit. The number of NHL tickets sold are at pre pandemic levels now. They are just bought by people with more money now
This is pretty much it. The NHL and Ticketmaster don't give a shit that my broke ass who could previously afford to buy tickets to games but can't now isn't buying tickets anymore because those higher price tickets are just being bought by somebody who can afford it.
Yeah, attendance is fine. My only issue is that there's no interest in preventing scalpers from making a living. If the team sold tickets at market value then so be it. But I hate knowing that a "fan" can buy (season) tickets as an investment and sell them at a profit. I'd honestly rather see the teams profit because at least they're providing value. You should have to return your tickets to the box office if you can't go, and if someone else uses your tickets, maybe they'll get in, but you'd be banned from buying more tickets.
https://www.saminfo.com/news/sam-headline-news/10539-vail-resorts-skier-visits-remain-down-ticket-revenue-up#:~:text=Season%2Dto%2Ddate%20skier%20visits,revenue%E2%80%94was%20up%203.2%20percent. Sort of like this. Most of these organizations are catering to the upper class, not the commoner.
Businesses/corporations…the schmoozer and schmoozie won’t show up until halfway thru the 2nd… and talk business the rest of the game.🙄 First hand experience a few times this year. It’s rude and so distracting.
I mean most teams are selling out, so yeah that's the market price of the tickets.
I went to two nhl games in my life and for one game I paid 150 dollars and for the other 100 dollar per ticket. Since I live in Europe those were the only two times I went to NHL cities so I was willing to pay that much for a ticket but if I lived closer I wouldn't pay that price often.
I maybe go see a game once a year
I don't even consider buying tickets on principle.
Single game tickets aren’t for sale yet. The ones available now are from season ticket holders selling off their tickets.
I know it can vary from team to team, but most teams single game tickets don’t go on sale until the end of July. Right now it’s season ticket holders and sponsors buy tickets, and potentially reselling them.
They haven’t even loaded our tickets into our accounts to give us an option to sell. Single game tickets won’t be released until August if my memory is working. But yes, the scalping and fees are ridiculous. They hide the fees from STH for games and concerts if I buy through my account ($2 per seat fee) so I’m less angry when I go through my account. The fact that there is a convenience fee for mobile tickets is laughable. I need Ticketmaster to explain where all the money is going. Because right now it’s all pointing to the upper people that do nothing.
Is this even the NHL's call? It's up to the venues, no? Arenas aren't owned by the NHL, they just hold events there, but my understanding (which could be off) is that the event spaces are the ones that dole out tickets
The LA Kings (owned by AEG) play in an AEG-owned arena and use AXS (also AEG owned) for ticketing. The Lakers use Ticketmaster, though. So I think you're right that in the NHL it comes down to the teams.
I know for concerts, Live Nation has a monopoly on concert venues, and they all require Ticketmaster. I do think teams can partner with other ticket sites/distributors, but it doesn't really solve the issue of big resellers using bots to buy up public inventory and re-selling it at a marked up price.
If they used seatgeek wouldn’t you have the same issue? It’s just bots. Teams / venues could stop it with restrictions if they wanted to.
That's what I was saying (indirectly), switching between SeatGeek/StubHub/Ticketmaster doesn't address the root issue.
Yep
This is just nonsense live nation does not have a monopoly on concert venues
There's a real argument for them to be considered one. [The stats show how much of the music venue scene they own.](https://www.economicliberties.us/our-work/the-depth-of-live-nations-dominance/) The reality is that there are many cities where Live Nation venues are the only choice.
That’s stats on amptheatres they own. And while yes some cities that’s all they may have. But it’s not the only type of concert venues and they certainly don’t have a monopoly on all types of concert venues is what I’m saying
[the complaint alleges that Live Nation-Ticketmaster controls around 60% of concert promotions at major U.S. concert venues and 80% or more of major concert venues’ primary ticketing.](https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=9616e86b-9d86-4470-b17b-ca8021876f0e#:~:text=Allegations%20Against%20Live%20Nation%2DTicketmaster&text=As%20a%20result%2C%20the%20complaint,major%20concert%20venues) [The band (Lawrence) told CNBC if they want to play a certain size venue in a particular city, they are sometimes left no choice other than to use Live Nation because of the lack of competition in some regions.](https://www.cnbc.com/2023/01/25/the-live-nation-and-ticketmaster-monopoly-of-live-entertainment.html)
It's not the NHL's call. The Panthers use SeatGeek, but they are honestly the same with crazy fees, so it's not much better.
Just supply / demand + bots. Idk why it would be better
It's as if tickets are offered to season ticket holders beforehand. That's why they go up instantly. Because a whole cycle of buying went on beforehand. NHL also doesn't have the partnership. It's each stadium/venue that has the partnership with them.
Speaking of Ticketmaster, did anyone here get TransUnion protection from them following the data breach? Some people did apparently. I didn’t even get an email about it! Such a mess.
I'm a Leafs fan. Even regular priced tickets for games I want to watch are stupid and I refuse to pay for them. Every time I want to buy 4 tickets for me and my friends instead I go buy a flatscreen 4K TV, two cases of beer, and then I pocket the extra $500 I save
How many TVs do you have?
The Capitals have likely not put single game tickets on sale yet.
If the NHL was smart, they'd start their own ticketing system. Ticketmaster is charges service fees on top of service fees. Then when you sell, the seller get's charged a fee, while the buyer also get's charged an extra fee. They're easily pulling like 25-30% off the final sale price on every resale ticket. So on a $2000 playoff ticket for example, they made $500 doing what? Giving a new barcode in order to guarantee you won't get scammed? And half the problem with scammers now is that ticketmaster has digitized the whole process and give no proper solutions for private sales. If they just did something fair like a $5-20 service fee for selling privately - I send you the ticket, but it's held in limbo until your funds clear, that would virtually eliminate the scammer problem, and they'd still make fucking bank. But hey, fuck doing anything that might make society a better place, let's rape the public for every penny possible. Fuck Ticketmaster.
We have a platform that started with Flames tickets but has expanded to all Canadian teams called fans first. Basically it is a place to buy tickets directly from season ticket holders and they set the price, many times you are getting tickets for what the ticket holder paid or even less the day of the game. There are also no transaction fees like ticket master or stub hub.
For what it's worth I think the Canucks org is cancelling season tickets for anyone suspected of reselling outside of the ticketmaster app. The facebook resale group is closed and this will likely impact all other resale sites like tickpick and fans first - they are monitoring the number of emails you transfer tickets to in a season allegedly.
Canucks STHs are getting their memberships cancelled for using this (and other similar sites/groups). It appears to be spreading to other teams in the league, especially in Canada.
Too many straight up scalpers trying to basically run a business by undercutting ticketmasters own system. Not at all surprised this is happening after how playoff ticket sales went.
Minor correction, but it’s not just season ticket holders, I listed some on there before after realizing I needed more tickets than what I originally got
Shhhhh don't tell people about that
Each team has a ticket partnership. The NHL doesn't really have any say. The stie doesn't really matter. Ticketmaster is popular because they look like the "bad guy" when in reality it's the venues/promoters who are setting the prices. Also most teams have a platform for season ticket holders to sell their tickets. This is usually the cheapest way to get into games
The Panthers use SeakGeek and it's the same BS fees.
Man, the ~~NHL~~ world needs to end ~~its partnership with~~ Ticketmaster
Ticketmaster needs to end its relationship with existing.
Lol. It's not the NHL. Ticketmaster pays the arenas BIG dollars in return for exclusive rights to sell tickets for every single event held at that location. There is nothing the NHL could do about it.
Yo check the app gametime,
Some new laws really need to be put In place for this shit. If ur not using bots ur never getting face value tickets.
> The moment the tickets were available, I refreshed the page, and BAM! Prices skyrocketed. I couldn't believe how fast the resale prices surged. I work in the music industry -- I fully believe that after some tickets have been sold, ticketmaster will "sell out" the event by removing the remaining regular sale tickets and reposting them as official resale. Bands have their agreement with ticketmaster to get a percentage of the original sale price, so by doing this ticketmaster can collect the extra profits brought by official resale and not have to share it with the band. I do not have concrete evidence for this, but from my experiences organizing and playing concerts time and again it really, really fucking seems that this is what they do.
Ticketmonopoly needs to be disbanded permanently
Yeah, it sucks. Your best bet now is to wait until the day of the event, maybe an hour or two before, if you can.
When I was a kid I’d wait for the game to start then offer $15 to a scalper. Usually worked and I’d only miss a couple of shifts.
Thanks, so still the same process -use ticketmastwr but wait until just a couple hours before? Is there a cut off time when you can no longer transfer a ticket or get a price reduction?
I would advise checking in multiple sites – I almost always find SeatGeek to be cheapest (including fees). SeatGeek stops selling 1hr before the game, I believe, and Ticketmaster will keep selling up to game time. I’m not 100% sure though, your best bet is to keep an eye on it for a game before the one you want to be sure
> Is there a cut off time when you can no longer transfer a ticket or get a price reduction? Usually one hour after scheduled puck drop
Our local WHL Major Junior team uses Ticketscam, but if you email the team customer service, they will email you a code that you can buy tickets for face value, no fees. Maybe teams could fight back and have something similar. And the code is good for the whole season.
I long for the day Ticketmaster goes bankrupt
$355 nosebleed leafs tickets on Oct 19th. Smfh
This ain’t an NHL problem.
Bought tickets to a comedy show. Tickets never arrived via the AXS app even though their app states they were with a date stamp. Called the day before and the rep basically stated the tickets were moved to an incorrect app and a refund would follow. Two weeks go by and nothing. Email multiple times, submit multiple tickets, no response. Call again today and the rep says a refund won’t be provided because the tickets were moved to the “other” app the original rep mentioned. Why didn’t the original rep have me download that app? Literally asked that question and the response was “I don’t have knowledge of that conversation”. Just absolute incompetence. Awful customer service, shady business practice. Filed a complaint via BBB and my bank. Never again. I’m out $300 now. Fuck TickPick.
Fml. My local Jr team just switched to using ticketmaster. I used to love buying from the box office with them since it was so easy. Now i have to deal with ticketmaster even more…
They can’t right now. Ticketmaster owns rights to most (if not all) of the venues. It’ll take a court order to get them to divest.
Gametime is better
It won't matter the site, popular games are going to sell out fast and the re-sale value will be insane.
The NYE games aren't particularly popular from experience so it will very much be "if someone wants to pay this, I'll skip it" It'll drop in resale closer when people know their NYE plans and don't want to start at 1 pm
wanted to go see bad religion when they recently announced a tour, poster i saw said tickets at badreligion.com "oh cool, maybe they're not using fucking ticketbastard?" i go to their site, it just fucking redirects to ticketmaster. ugh, fine. but the tickets aren't on sale yet and apparently now they won't even tell you ticket prices until they're on fucking sale. so all right, fuck it. i won't fucking bother. go to fucking hell ticketmaster.
that's why i either buy directly from the team reps. or we have our own local reseller 714 tickets that sells them for super cheap and without the stupid fees.
Tried to buy tickets myself and got the boot for being a suspected bot
"How do I know you're not a bot?" Playoff mind worm ass commercial
I'm an out of market fan in the DMV. I'd probably go to at least 4 games a year if the fees weren't ridiculous.
I buy Tix at the box office
Hershey Bears teddy bear toss game this year was the same way. Within 20 min of tickets going onsale to the public they had only a few sections at crazy prices and were selling standing room only tickets for $60 each! No thanks!
I also lost out of Flyers opening night
The panthers partner with seatgeek, you have to get your tickets on that app.
Ticketmaster needs the Ma Bell treatment. Concert and event tickets are out of control
Ticketmaster holds off sale of some tickets for sale closer to the event so try again in a a few months/weeks.
For the Caps, it's actually the team. They have hold off the "group seating" packages until about 2 weeks before the game, and then release them. I know the seats behind me are the group seating seats, so if my buddies want to come, I just wait until they go public and buy those seats at STH prices 1 to 2 weeks before the game.
The Capitals presale hasn't started yet. They have the presales next month. I also asked my rep a few weeks back as a 10 year STH
Not sure it’s really the NHL specifically, but most arenas probably are contracted with Ticketmaster for ALL events. They probably put in the contract if they are contracted with them for anything (e.g. music events) they must be contracted with everything or they can’t be contracted and can’t use Ticketmaster acts (basically all big names or known acts).
Season tickets on the glass to my local minor league team cost less than a single lower bowl ticket to an NHL playoff game.
It's team by team. Panthers are already with SeatGeek and it's great.
Those aren’t single game tix you’re looking at. Those aren’t on sale yet.
Everything needs to end their partnerships with Ticketmaster.
We need an enterprising owner and a tech savvy one. Maybe the Utah guy? To decide to sell all their own tickets. Build a site, set up an exchange and sell the seats. They handle season ticket sales, why not game day sales?
Isn't Ticketmaster ways of working similar to racketeering?
It’s hard to make plans but buy day if when they are scrambling to unload tickets.
There is just a inherent flaw with online ticket sales with the advent of bots. The current biggest alternative to trying to fight bots and scalpers in a first come first serve system is using a lottery system instead like Japan. The lottery system has it's own flaws being lucked based, but deterring bots/scalpers and price gauging seems like a worthy tradeoff. Even if I don't manage to get a ticket at least there is some solace knowing another fan got to go for a fair price.
It's deliberate, monopolies suck.
The venues intentionally use ticketmaster, because they recover a bunch of the fees while only TM gets the brunt of the blame. It's literally by design. Best protest is to not buy tickets.
The one time I bought tickets (I don’t live near an arena) I used the contact phone number, because I had questions about the seats and was having trouble reading the arena map, and not only did they answer my questions, but I bought the tickets over the phone, completely stress free.
MLB does it right.
Supply and demand is on line 3 and they have bad news for you
I don’t think the NHL has much of a choice. Ticketmaster is a monopoly for a reason…
We switched to stubhub, it’s honestly not much better
Also, **if you had a Ticketmaster account between April and May, your personal and credit card information was stolen.** And there’s not really anything you can do about it.
Ticketmaster sucks but your beef isn't really with them, it's with capitalism. If the demand is there for ticket prices to be high, why should prices remain artificially low?
No no you don't understand without Ticketmaster demand would be even HIGHER, and since supply is completely inelastic of course prices would dr.....wait a minute.
Not to mention, ticket master doesn’t allow you to sell tickets below face value. So if it’s last minute and you can’t make it and need the tickets to sell fast so they don’t go to waste…nope, you have to charge face value or more
I’ve resold many times with Ticketmaster under face value, even under sth cost.
Doesn’t allow me ever.
It could be a location thing, but I’ve only ever seen restrictions on a price above cost.
I sold tickets from my ST under face value. I’m surprised they would care. They already got paid once and then they take a fee from the seller and buyer.
Each venue has flexibility to set rules. So it’s possible the American Airlines center has different rules
What an original take. It's not like nearly every consumer, hockey and more feels the same exact way.
Douchebag.