- The main story is about the high cost of concert tickets and the role of Ticketmaster in the ticket market.
- Ticketmaster is known for its high fees, which can sometimes amount to a significant percentage of the ticket price.
- Ticket fees are determined in collaboration with the venues, promoters, and sometimes even the artists themselves.
- Ticketmaster's fees are often criticized, but they are not solely responsible for them.
- Ticketmaster is the largest player in the ticket market and has a monopoly on many major music venues.
- Pearl Jam tried to tour without Ticketmaster in the 90s but found it difficult due to exclusive contracts.
- Another issue is that tickets for major concerts often sell out very quickly, with a limited number of tickets actually being available to the general public.
- Many tickets are held back and sold through credit card offers, fan clubs, or other channels, making it difficult for average fans to access them.

- Ticket brokers buy up large numbers of tickets before fans have a chance to purchase them, often using bots to quickly secure tickets.
- Resale sites like SeatGeek, StubHub, and Ticketmaster facilitate the resale of tickets, but professional brokers make up the majority of ticket sales on these platforms.
- Brokers mark up ticket prices by an estimated 49% on average, sometimes even by 1,000% or more.
- Ticket selling sites cater to brokers and allow them to bypass ticket purchase limits by using multiple accounts.
- The secondary market for tickets lacks transparency, as buyers cannot know the identity of the seller.
- Artists could make tickets non-transferable to restrict resale, but few have implemented this practice.
- Congress could pass laws requiring transparency in ticket resale, but the power to change the system largely lies with artists and regulators.

John Oliver explains why concert tickets are so expensive, who’s making money off of them, and which One Direction is his favorite.

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Our main story tonight concerns live entertainment.

It's 1 of the things that people missed the most during the pandemic, and everyone was very excited to see it start to come back.

It's been more than a year without them, but now the Hampton Coliseum is bringing back concerts?

I've been locked up for a year and 10 months, and I'm gonna let loose and destroy this place.

Everyone missed their comforts during the pandemic.

For instance, I can guarantee that the sentence, I've been locked up for a year and 10 months and now I'm here to destroy this place, was also said several times at the reopening of an Ann Taylor loft.

Live entertainment undeniably offers unique experiences, from Taylor Swift unveiling her squad, to a hologram two-pack performing at Coachella, to this unsurpassed moment from a Justin Bieber concert.

-♪ Come on, baby, let's go ♪ -♪ Come on, baby, let's go -♪ Come on, baby, let's go Good!

And while it is amazing to watch that together now, just imagine being there to see it live in person.

But if you've bought or even tried to buy tickets recently, you know those experiences come at a cost.

I just spent the last hour and 15 minutes trying to get pink tickets.

If you don't want to be behind the stage, you're looking at $500 per ticket.

For the amount that I'm paying to see any random band that's going on tour.

Why are bad bunny tickets so damn expensive?

You're making me want to sell my husband's feet on OnlyFans.

We created a whole story in just 5 words.

Now, if you think tickets have been getting ridiculously expensive?

The average price for popular content has more than tripled since the mid-'90s, vastly outpacing inflation, and that is before they hit the resale market.

And with huge artists starting to put tickets on sale for summer shows, that irritation is only likely to increase.

So tonight, we thought we'd try and explain exactly why bat-bunny tickets are so expensive, who is making money off them, and what you might be able to do about it that does not involve selling your husband's feet.

And let's start with the company that you're probably immediately thinking of, Ticketmaster.

They are the biggest player in the ticket market by far, and claim they strive to put fans first, and that the people we care most about are the fans.

And yet, as anyone who has ever bought a ticket from them knows, that's generally not the feeling you get when dealing with them.

If there was anything that I had as a wish for any big artist or band that comes through, whether it's K-pop, whether it's a Western artist, I don't give a shit if you're a magician.

Any big ticket person that ever comes through and does a concert, never use Ticketmaster.

Okay, first, excellent shade thrown at magicians there.

It was noted and it was appreciated, But they're absolutely right.

Ticketmaster is 1 of the most hated companies on Earth, which is really impressive, because remember, this is a planet in which AT&T also exists.

Hey, guys, we've still got a few weeks until the merger goes through, and I've got to say, it's going to be a bumpy ride until then.

And look, it is no secret Ticketmaster is horrible, but exactly how it is horrible is genuinely interesting.

Let's start with 1 of the things that infuriates people the most about them, and that's the fees.

They can come as a nasty surprise at the very end of a transaction and can range from the annoying to the completely bat shit.

We found a ticket to a 2019 Kids Bop concert with fees that amounted to 75% of face value.

For 1 ticket to a Tyler, the Creator show next week, the fees add an extra 78%.

And the fees on a $15 ticket to a monster truck rally in Houston was $16.41.

That's more than the cost of the ticket itself!

Which is clearly ridiculous, although I will say, in the case of that Kids Bop tour, it may actually have been worth it because they could have played this.

I just took a DNA test, turns out I'm 100% that kid ♪ ♪ Even when I'm crying crazy, yeah, I got some problems

That's a human in me, bling, bling, then I saw them

That's a goddess in me, you could have had a good friend ♪ ♪ Not the middle, Help you with your career, just a little...

I have so many issues with what you just saw there, the least of which is what they did to the lyrics.

Because if you are saying, took a DNA test, turns out I'm 100% that kid.

You were either A, settling a paternity dispute on Maury, or B, returning to your hometown after having been kidnapped 30 years ago.

And while it is both easy and fun to shit on Ticketmaster for their fees, as they point out, they're not solely responsible for them.

Instead, they say, ticket fees are determined in collaboration with our clients who share in a portion of the fees we collect, which is true.

Ticketmaster enters into contracts that set and share fees with the venues where concerts are held, the promoters who book, market, and organize the shows, and sometimes even the artists themselves.

You could say Ticketmaster's business model is to stand in as the bad guy and let all those other players hide behind them, or you could not say that and just let Ticketmaster's former CEO basically admit it directly to Congress.

When people hear what Ticketmaster's service charge is, you know, Ticketmaster was set up as a system where they took the heat for everybody.

In that service charge are the credit card fees, the rebates to the buildings, rebates sometimes to artists, sometimes rebates to promoters.

Ticketmaster is very much like the IRS in that it's an opaque bureaucracy, takes more out of your paycheck than you think it should, and is represented by men so catastrophically uncharismatic, they look like they're putting themselves to sleep.

Although, it is worth knowing that while Ticketmaster does share fees with other parties, some of those other parties may also be Ticketmaster.

Because just 1 year after that hearing, they completed a gigantic merger with Live Nation, which owns or operates many of the country's top music venues and call themselves the largest producer of live music concerts in the world.

And since then, they've had something of a chokehold on live entertainment.

In fact, the DOJ recently alleged that the company had repeatedly strong-armed venues into using Ticketmaster and retaliated against or threatened venues that did not use its services.

There is no denying just how much power it has.

Even before that merger, Pearl Jam, at the height of their fame, tried to do a tour without Ticketmaster or their affiliated venues.

But their manager admitted, at the time, they were gonna have to play at weird places like a ski resort in Lake Tahoe and a fairground in San Diego.

And if Pearl Jam, in the 90s, doesn't have the power to walk away from Ticketmaster, nobody does.

So when you wonder, understandably, why can't my favorite artist or magician...

-...the truth is, if they want to perform at a venue that has an exclusive contract with Ticketmaster, they actually can't do that.

But fees are obviously not the only complaint that people have for the ticket buying process.

Another is tickets disappearing before we have a chance to buy them.

Concerts for major artists can sell out so fast, sometimes they even make the news.

You know you're hot when you can sell out Madison Square Garden.

We're talking about 2 shows at the garden, which seats around 20,000 people, selling out in less time than it takes me to apply my lip gloss.

Not just Bieber selling out 20,000 seats in 30 seconds, though, but also that she puts lip gloss on for over 30 seconds.

I didn't break a sweat, and I look fucking great.

Selling 20,000 seats in 30 seconds would be crazy if that's what Bieber did, but he didn't.

Because a report from the New York AG later revealed fewer than 2,000 tickets were actually put on sale that day, and that's by no means a one-off.

For many top shows, less than 25% of tickets are initially released to the general public.

And in an audit of the Blaisdell Center in Honolulu, they found that when Janet Jackson played there in 2015, only 8% of all tickets went to the general public.

And when Mariah Carey played there, the next year, it was just 7 percent.

That was presumably for her famed Mariah good fucking luck getting in to see this tour.

And if you're wondering where on Earth the rest of the tickets go, well, they are deliberately held back to be sold in other ways.

And often, a big chunk goes to credit card companies, as you might know from ads like this.

Use any CitiCard to get the benefits of Private Pass.

More concerts, more events, more experiences.

Would a boring guy use our breakup as an excuse to sign up for a credit card so that I could quietly stand backstage during an Alicia Keys concert, an on-paper sensible decision.

I submit that a boring guy would not do that, Lauren, and I await your confirmation.

And it's not just tickets being siloed away for credit card offers.

They can also wind up being put on sale by the promoter, or a radio station, or through an artist's fan club, which sounds fine, but a lot of average fans can't afford special credit cards, or don't have time to jump through hoops in a fan club.

But 1 group very much has that time and the resources, and that is professional ticket brokers.

These are the individuals or companies that buy up tons of tickets before you can get them, sometimes with the help of bots that snap them up incredibly quickly, because as you, I'm sure, assumed, all of those stupid, are you a robot tests have very much not kept them all out.

Because every time ticket sites come up with a new technology, bots find a way around it.

And once brokers have those tickets, they will flip them on the secondary market at a huge markup.

And at this point, we should probably talk about the secondary market.

It's sites like SeatGeek, StubHub, and surprise, surprise, Ticketmaster again.

These sites badly want you to think of them as fan-to-fan marketplaces.

Ticketmaster even describes its resale marketplace like this.

Our objective is if that secondary market exists, we wanna create a safe environment and platform for you to be able to exchange those tickets.

You've bought tickets to go see someone you love.

At the 11th hour, your babysitter can't make it.

You should have the right to recoup your costs on that ticket.

Right, because the last thing that you want is resentment toward your baby to start festering because of a missed concert.

Every time you look at their chubby cheeks, you'll just think, if you weren't born, I'd have seen the red hot chili peppers live, and I'd have been happier.

But the truth is, resale sites are not just fan to fan at all.

In fact, a government report found that professional brokers represent either the majority or the overwhelming majority of ticket sales on these sites.

The New York AG's office found brokers mark up the price of tickets by an estimated 49% on average.

That was for a 1 Direction concert, by the way.

And let me just say, I don't actually regret it.

I don't even know who the other ones are, and I get mad when they sing over the top of him.

And ticket selling sites go out of their way to cater to their broker clients because they bring them in a lot of money.

For instance, while they limit the number of tickets that any 1 account can buy to an event, there is an obvious way for brokers to get around that, and that's simply to have more than 1 account.

This is a practice Ticketmaster has long been aware of.

There is a ticket broker conference in Vegas each year, and just watch what happened when reporters went undercover there and talked to someone at Ticketmaster's booth.

Ticketmaster was busy, surrounded by scalpers.

I want to know the straight goods on whether Ticketmaster is gonna be policing us using our multiple accounts.

I have a gentleman who's got over 200 Ticketmaster.com accounts.

How many brokers are using multiple accounts?

I'd say pretty damn near every 1 of them.

Yeah, of course they were, because you weren't stopping them.

Although I will say, I'm in absolute awe of anyone who can remember usernames and passwords for over 200 accounts.

I just use 1 password for all my accounts, and it's, Nile Horan is the best 1 direction!

Don't tell anyone about my perfect password.

Now, I have to tell you, Ticketmaster insists that it spends millions on technology to weed out bad behavior, and that that employee's comments were not reflective of its policies.

But even taking them at their word, which I am not inclined to do, their whole system is designed to be opaque, especially when it comes to brokers selling tickets, because all the resale sites, including Ticketmaster, actively choose to provide anonymity to them.

So when you buy a ticket on the secondary market, there is no way to know the identity of who you're buying from, whether it is a fan whose babysitter just canceled or a broker who might have 500 other tickets on sale for that same event, which when you think about it is a bit weird.

On most sites where people resell things, you can see who you are buying from.

If you saw this listing for a Mickey Mouse-shaped potato available for $50, you could look at the seller, see their username, know that they have a 100% favorable rating and feel confident in your purchase.

You're thinking, John, you bought that potato, didn't you?

-♪ ♪ -♪ BELL RINGS, CHEERING AND APPLAUSE AND WHISTLING ♪ Yes!

As you can see, it definitely kind of looks a bit like Mickey Mouse.

The point is, brokers with their identities concealed can snap up large numbers of tickets and resell them at a massive markup.

And meanwhile, the secondary market sites are themselves making money by charging a percentage on those ludicrous ticket prices.

We found a ticket for Adele selling on SeatGeek for $1,690 plus $538 in fees.

And look, here is where we need to deal with an uncomfortable fact, which is the question of what that ticket is actually worth.

Because an economist will tell you, it is worth whatever people will pay.

So if someone is willing to spend over $2,000, including fees, for an Adele ticket, that is what it's worth, as gross as that sounds.

But if Adele doesn't want to charge that, there is going to be a gap between the face value of the ticket and what someone can get for it.

And the whole industry is gonna scramble in to exploit it.

And unfortunately, life events are uniquely vulnerable to this because they are inherently rare.

Bad Bunny, for instance, is probably only coming to your town once a year at most, and a lot more people want to see him than there are seats.

And while Bad Bunny could charge the going rate for every ticket that he sells, he probably doesn't want to do that because he'd look like an arsehole, which he very much isn't.

He is not a bad bunny at all, despite the name.

If he's anything, he's a very good bunny.

And as long as artists with all good intentions price their tickets below the market, exploitation is going to happen, and that woman's husband is gonna have to show feet.

Although, it is worth noting, some artists have tried to sneakily get the scalper price for their tickets without anyone really noticing.

Remember how Justin Bieber was supposedly selling out venues in seconds while tons of tickets were held back?

At another stop on that same tour, reporters looked into some of the tickets on resale sites and found something surprising.

Section 205, row G, 14 tickets listed for $246 each.

And get this, ticketing documents showed that entire G-Roe went to Bieber's own tour.

I think there is no question when 1 looks at the document that Bieber is scalping his own tickets.

A group of tickets held for Bieber's tour ended up being released not to the box office, but straight to the secondary market.

And on 1 hand, I do get the impulse of, if someone is gonna make $246 off that ticket, shouldn't it be the person who is doing the performing?

But it still doesn't feel great, does it?

And it's also not gonna stop me from showing you that clip of him falling down a hole again.

I mean, it gets better every time you see it.

And look, Bieber's not unique in doing this.

A few years back, he emerged that Life Nation has helped Metallica place tickets directly onto the resale market, admitting about a dozen other artists had asked them to do this in recent years.

And before you worry, no, I am not 1 of the artists putting tickets to this show straight onto the resale market.

We do it the right way, distributing tickets at random to anyone who happens to be walking past the studio at the time.

Half of these idiots think I'm the warm-up act for Drew Barrymore.

So when you take all of this together, the reason tickets are so hard to get when they're on sale is that they're often not on sale, and the reason they cost so much on the secondary market is that you're paying exorbitant fees to the platform and might be buying from a broker or in rare cases, even from the artists themselves.

And this whole ecosystem enriches a lot of people who do not contribute anything to the actual show that you're paying to see.

And at the center of all of this is Ticketmaster.

Because it turbocharged many of the shitty practices that have now become industry standard.

Well, Congress could inject transparency into this process by passing laws that require sites to disclose their fees up front, along with the identity of the seller on resale sites.

But the truth is, much of the power here is actually in the hands of the artists.

Because the biggest ones could do things to tamp down the secondary market, like making their tickets non-transferable, meaning resale is restricted.

Bands like Pearl Jam have experimented with this.

And before their 2020 tour was postponed, they even worked with Ticketmaster to create an online marketplace where fans could sell tickets that they didn't need, but with no additional fees and not for a profit.

That seems like the model that everyone should be using here.

But if regulators don't act and artists don't have the clout or the inclination to require companies to put those guardrails in place, I'm afraid you as a fan are going to remain vulnerable to the worst parts of this system, 1 driven by 1 of the most widely loathed companies on the planet that became even bigger due to a merger that probably shouldn't even have been allowed.

And I know that all of this may feel a little unsatisfying, but if it's any consolation to you, I personally promise to continue to offer the only accurately priced entertainment on the market.

I'm talking about 1 in which tickets for this show remain available for free, and you can come watch a decaying man shout numbers, apply lip gloss shoddily, and shamelessly earn back your goodwill by showing your potato that, you

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