Tickets for Beyonce’s 2023 UK Renaissance tour went on general sale via Ticketmaster’s website at 10am on Tuesday 7 February. Throughout the day, social media were full of messages from fans complaining about technical issues, long online queues and rising prices. This is not the first time this has happened. Similar complaints were made in 2022 when tickets went on sale for tours by Bruce Springsteen, Harry Styles and Taylor Swift.
With the general sale of tickets for Beyonce’s tour, many fans complained they were waiting in online queues of over 500 000 people. Others reported their frustration with continually receiving ‘403 error’ messages.
Market dominance
In November 2022, Ticketmaster’s website in the USA constantly crashed during the pre-sale of tickets for Taylor Swift’s tour. This led to the general sale of tickets being cancelled.
In response to the public anger that followed this decision, the Senate’s antitrust subcommittee organised a hearing with the title – ‘That’s The Ticket: Promoting Competition and Protecting Competition and Protecting Consumers in Live Entertainment.’
Senator Amy Klobuchar, the Chair of this committee, stated that
The issues within America’s ticketing industry were made painfully obvious when Ticketmaster’s website failed hundreds of thousands of fans hoping to purchase tickets for Taylor Swift’s new tour, but these problems are not new. For too long, consumers have faced long waits and website failures, and Ticketmaster’s dominant market position means the company faces inadequate pressure to innovate and improve.
Ticketmaster merged with Live Nation in 2010 to become the largest business in the primary ticket market for live music events. Some people have accused the firm of abusing its dominant market position by failing to invest enough money in its website, so leading to poor customer service.
Dynamic pricing
Fans have also been complaining about the system of dynamic pricing that Ticketmaster now uses for big live events. What exactly is dynamic pricing?
Firms with market power often adjust their prices in response to changing market conditions. For example, if a business experiences significant increases in demand for its products in one quarter/year it may respond by raising prices in the following quarter/year.
With dynamic pricing, these price changes take place over much shorter time periods: i.e. within minutes. For example, in one media report, a Harry Styles fan placed £155 tickets in their basket for a concert at Wembley stadium. When the same fan then tried to purchase the tickets, Ticketmaster’s website sent a message stating that they were no longer available. However, in reality they were still available but for £386 – the price had instantly jumped because of high demand. Continually monitoring market conditions and responding to changes so quickly requires the use of specialist software and sophisticated algorithms.
Arguments for dynamic pricing
With ticket sales taking place months/years in advance of most live events, it is difficult for artists/promotors to predict future levels of demand. Given this uncertainty and the importance for the artist of playing in front of a full venue, event organisers may err on the side of caution when pricing tickets.
If the demand for tickets proves to be much stronger than initially forecast, then resellers in the secondary market can take advantage of the situation and make significant amounts of money. Dynamic pricing enables sellers in the primary market, such as Ticketmaster, to adjust to market conditions and so limits the opportunities of resale for a profit.
Ticketmaster argues that without dynamic pricing, artists will miss out on large amounts of revenue that will go to re-sellers instead. A spokesperson for the company stated that
Over the past few years, artists have lost money to resellers who have no investment in the event going well. As such event organisers have looked to market-based pricing to recapture that lost revenue.
Critics have claimed that Ticketmaster’s use of dynamic pricing is simply an example of price gouging.
No doubt the controversy over the sale of tickets for live music events will continue in the future.
Articles
- Beyoncé tour: UK fans snap up tickets despite Ticketmaster glitches
BBC News, Ian Youngs (7/2/23)
- Beyoncé Fans Are Going to Extreme Lengths to Secure Renaissance Tour Tickets
Time, Mariah Espada (10/2/23)
- Live music: How buying concert tickets could be made better
BBC News, Mark Savage (26/1/23)
- Ticketmaster demand-based pricing system criticised
BBC News, Annabel Rackham (10/10/22)
- Did Ticketmaster’s Market Dominance Fuel the Chaos for Swifties?
Yale Insights, Florian Ederer (23/11/22)
Taylor Swift ticket sale problems spark widespread criticism of TicketmasterPBS NewsHour on YouTube, Diana Moss and John Yang (17/11/22)
- Springsteen tickets are going for a whopping $4,000 – what else are we paying dynamic prices for?
The Guardian, Arwa Mahdawi (27/7/22)
- Will the Taylor Swift-Ticketmaster Senate Hearing Actually Change Anything?
Variety, Dean Budnick (1/2/23)
- Beyonce fans scramble for Renaissance tickets as sellers warn availability is already ‘extremely limited’
Sky News, Bethany Minelle (3/2/23)
Questions
- Explain the difference between the primary and secondary market for ticket sales for live events.
- Draw a demand and supply diagram to illustrate the primary market for tickets. Using this diagram explain how below market clearing prices in the primary market enable re-sellers to make money in the secondary market.
- What are the limitations of using demand and supply diagrams to analyse the primary market for tickets?
- Who has the greater market power – Ticketmaster or artists such as Taylor Swift and Beyonce?
- Try to provide a precise definition of the term ‘price gouging’.
- What other sectors commonly use dynamic pricing?
If you want a ticket for an event, such as a match or a concert, but the tickets are sold out, what do you do? Many will go to an agency operating in the ‘secondary market’. A secondary market is where items originally purchased new, such as tickets, company shares, cars or antiques, are put up for sale at a price that the market will bear.
The equilibrium price in a secondary market is where supply equals demand and the actual price will approximate to this equilibrium. In the case of tickets, this equilibrium price can be much higher than the original price sold by the venue or its agents. The reason is that the original price is below the equilibrium.
This is illustrated in the figure (click here for a PowerPoint). Assume that the total supply of tickets is Qs. Assume also that the official box office price is Pbo
and that demand is given by the demand curve D. At the box office price demand exceeds supply by Qd – Qs. There is thus a shortage, with many fans unable to obtain a ticket at the official price. Many of you will be familiar with having to be as quick as possible to get hold of tickets where demand considerably outstrips supply. Events such as Glastonbury sell out within seconds of coming on sale.
If you buy a ticket and then find out you cannot go to the event, you can sell the ticket on the secondary market through an online site or agency. Such agencies could be seen as providing a useful service as it means that otherwise empty seats will be filled. But if the equilibrium price is well above the original ticket price, there is the potential for huge gain by the agencies, who may pay the seller considerably less than the agency then sells the ticket to someone else.
What is more, the difference between the original price and the equilibrium price in the secondary market makes ticket touting, or ticket ‘scalping’, highly profitable. This is where people buy tickets with no intention of using them themselves but in order to sell them at much higher prices on the secondary market. Such ticket touting has been illegal for football matches since 1994 and was illegal for the 2012 London Olympics, but it is legal for plays, concerts, festivals and other events.
Ticket touts are often highly organised in obtaining tickets at official prices by buying early and using multiple credit cards and multiple identities to avoid systems that restrict the number of tickets issued to a card. They often use internet bots to mass purchase tickets the moment they go on sale.
Those in favour of ticket touting argue that the high price in the secondary market is just a reflection of demand and supply (see the IEA article below). Ticket touting allows tickets to be directed to people who value them most and will get the greatest benefit from it. What is more, banning ticket touting, so the argument goes, would simply drive it underground.
Those against argue on grounds of equity. Ticket prices set below the equilibrium are designed to give greater equality of access to fans. Rationing on a first-come first-served system, either on the internet or by a queue, is seen to be fairer than one by ability/willingness to pay. A poor person may be just as keen to go to an event as a rich person and gain just as much enjoyment from it, but cannot afford the high equilibrium price. What is more, non of the profit from the higher prices reaches the event organisers or the artists or players. Yet the mark-up and hence profit made by ticket touts can be massive, as the first Observer article below shows.
Various measures are being tried to prevent ticket touting. One is the use of paperless tickets, with the number of tickets limited per person and with people having to show their ticket on their phones along with ID at the door or gate. If a person cannot attend, then the solution is a system where they can give the ticket back to the box office (perhaps electronically) which will re-sell it for them at the official price.
A government-backed investigation, the Waterson review reported in May 2016 and recommended that touts should be licensed and that there should be harsher penalties for firms that flout consumer rights law as applying to ticket sales. Whether this would be sufficient to bring secondary market prices down significantly, remains to be seen. In the meantime, organisers do seem to be trying to find ways of beating the touts through smarter means of selling.
Articles
MP Nigel Adams calls for secondary ticket marketing to be reformed Music Week, James Hanley (14/9/16)
Iron Maiden go to war with ticket touts BBC News, Mark Savage (22/9/16)
The new age of the ticket tout BBC World Tonight, Andrew Hosken (25/5/16)
Government urged to help music industry tackle ticket touts The Guardian, Rob Davies (13/9/16)
Ticket touts face licensing threat The Guardian, Rupert Jones (26/5/16)
How the ticket touts get away with bleeding fans dry The Observer, Rob Davies and Rupert Jones (15/5/16)
What sorcery is this? A £140 ticket for new Harry Potter play now costs £8,327 The Observer, Rob Davies and Laurie Chen (14/8/16)
Ticket touts made $3m from the last Mumford & Sons tour. $0 went back to the music industry. Music Business Woldwide, Adam Tudhope (6/9/16)
This is tout of order – join the Daily Mirror campaign to beat rip-off ticket resales Daily Mirror, Nada Farhoud (19/9/16)
Ticket touts: A muggle’s game The Economist (20/8/16)
Can We Fight Back Against The Robot Touts Ruining Live Music? Huffington Post, Andy Webb (6/9/16)
In defence of ticket touts Institute of Economic Affairs, Steve Davies (25/2/15)
Report
Consumer protection measures applying to ticket resale: Waterson review Department for Business, Innovation & Skills and Department for Culture, Media & Sport 26/5/16)
Guide
#Toutsout MMF & FanFair Alliance September 2016
Questions
- Why can ticket touts sell tickets above the equilibrium price shown in the diagram?
- In what ways could ticket touts be said to be distorting the market?
- How do ticket touts reduce consumer surplus? Could they reduce it to zero?
- Why may allowing ticket touting to take place result in empty seats at concerts or other events?
- Would it be a good idea for event organisers to charge higher prices for popular events than they do at present, but still below the equilibrium
- How does the price elasticity of demand influence the mark-up that ticket touts can make? Illustrate this on a diagram similar to the one above.
- Is it in ticket touts’ interests to adjust prices as an event draws closer, just as budget airlines adjust seat prices as the plane fills up? Could organisers sell tickets in the primary market in this way with prices rising as the event fills up?
- Discuss the various ways in which the secondary ticket market could be reformed? To what extent do these involve reforms in the primary ticket market?