Everyone who purchases tickets to live events over the internet have encountered it- the stress of buying through a ticket purchasing platform. Whether it's concert tickets, convention tickets or more, having to compete against so many other fans on one website is never easy and smooth. The question arises, is it us, the fans, or the ticket-purchasing platform?
I recently had the absolute joy of trying to purchase tickets to see American rock band, Paramore for one of the two nights they are playing at Madison Square Garden in New York City in May 2023.
For those unaware, Paramore tickets are notoriously difficult to purchase. They tend to be around the same difficulty level as getting Harry Styles or BTS tickets.
Buying these tickets from a ticket purchasing platform, in this case, Ticketmaster, was nothing short of a nightmare. Before even getting to the day of ticket presale, fans had to first register in a "lottery" of sorts to see if they even get accepted for the option to purchase tickets. The day before the presale, fans found out if they qualified for a presale, either the American Express cardmember presale or the general on-sale presale. Even if you qualify for the presale, you are not guaranteed a ticket. This means that if you get the presale link, you still have to sit in a waiting room and queue to get seats.
In my experience with Paramore tickets, this queue consisted of over 2000 people. This presale was already very limited, yet the number of people allowed in exceeded the number of tickets released for sale. This meant that unless you were lucky enough to get in the queue first, you may not get a ticket, pass or an optimal seat.
Of course, it is understandable that these ticket websites must be fair to everyone. Even if you get a second general presale or no presale, you should still have the option to get tickets. However, many of these ticket-purchasing websites are not equipped with the technology to handle the volume of fans that are trying to get tickets, and none of them have good enough measures to combat resellers.
Resellers. This is what truly, in my opinion, has made the ticket-buying experience so terrible. While ticket websites may have a contribution, resellers are what makes the process so complicated in the first place. By trying to make a quick buck at the expense of fans, resellers have made the ticket-buying experience stressful and upsetting for everyone else involved.
So can this be fixed? How can this be fixed? I feel the answer is in the hands of both the websites and the fans to combat this.
For the websites, better measures should be in place to prevent bots from getting in before fans. Whether through different verification measures, certain ways that tickets are sold, etc., websites need to fix the issue. My recommendation would be for websites to set a cap on the price tickets can be resold. For example, if a ticket is normally $130, only allow people to resell it for what they would have paid, including fees, such as $150.
For the fans, the best thing to do is not buy inflated ticket prices from resellers. If you know a ticket was originally sold for $75, do not buy it from someone else for $200. By feeding into the reseller system, you are continuing a cycle that has been going on for too long. By refusing to pay such increased prices, resellers will be forced to lower their prices and will not make much profit.
Evidence of this can be seen in ticket prices from resellers the day before a concert. In my experience, I have seen this with tickets for the South Korean boy band, BTS. If you try to buy tickets a few months to a few weeks before a BTS concert from a reseller, tickets will undoubtedly be very high above the base price. However, if you look at the same tickets about 24 hours before the show, they usually drop to being close to, if not at, the base price. Following this, which has also occurred for many other shows in my experience, the option for normal-priced reseller tickers is there, you just need to be patient.
Of course, there are always exceptions to this, such as the situation for tickets for American rock band Blink-182's upcoming tour. For those unaware, this situation was where base price tickets were exponentially higher than any average concert ticket, even for bigger names than Blink-182. However, this is a particular case and does not typically happen often.
At the end of the day, the artists and shows you love will be shown support by sold-out tickets. By spending over the base price for a seat or pass, none of your extra money goes to your favorite and only goes to a scammer. Fans should be smart about their money and who they support when buying tickets, but in return, websites should also do more to protect their users from being unfairly treated. Resellers are the main issue for a lot of ticket-buying stress, but with a combined effort, I believe this can be solved to create a better experience for everyone.
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