Live Nation has the venues locked up. So no, you can't do it without them.
This is a great book on how we got here if this topic interests you.
> These way overpriced tickets ABSOLUTELY get sold.
Nobody is paying 10k for a ticket. Ever. Even corporations ... who often have a legit source of tickets and don't need to pay the street price.
I am very aware of the practices of TM. If you want to learn more, buy this book. Its pretty good.
https://www.amazon.ca/Ticket-Masters-Concert-Industry-Scalped/dp/0452298083
> ABSOLUTELY make her tickets non-transferable
Like Pearl Jams fan club tickets. If you want to sell them, you can only sell them to other fan club members at face value. TM even handles the transaction.
If any of you already haven't, PLEASE check out the book:
Ticket Masters: The Rise of the Concert Industry and How the Public Got Scalped by Josh Baron (Author)....just a GRATE read about how tickets for concerts are REALLY distributed, and what goes on behind the scenes. You will NEVER buy another concert ticket from TicketMaster again.
>whatever they’re spouting is probably some PR stunt Ticketmaster put out.
My source for the comment above is this book, which didn't seem like PR put out my TM when I was reading it.
>If you buy the tickets directly from the artist before Ticketmaster does, they’re much cheaper. If you buy them at the box office, again, much cheaper. If what they’re saying above was the actual situation 1) they would be the same price at the box office/straight from the artist
I go to a lot of concerts. In my personal experience, there are very few artists that do their own direct sales. For most artists, they still run their presales through TM. One major exception to this is some big jam bands like Grateful Dead, Phish, and DMB which offer tickets by mail through the artist. Pearl Jam does too following their big show down with TM years ago. This was a thing the Dead had to fight venues and promoters on, and those artists are allotted only a specific percent of tickets through their own sales. The rest has to be through TM so the venue and promoters can get their cut. Everyone is worried about the top line number of their revenue, not whether some outlets offer a cheaper price than other outlets. Big artists are aware of every revenue stream at their concerts, including concessions and sponsors.
>2)I would think that they would give the tickets straight to Ticketmaster, as opposed to Ticketmaster needing bots to literally buy up all the tickets immediately to Jack up the price.
TM does have all the tickets, or at least the ones they're allocated to sell. The don't need bots to buy back their own tickets. If different tickets hit the market at different times or in different ways (e.g. Platinum tickets), that's something that been agreed to with the artists, promoter, etc.
Tons of articles.
This is a good book about TM.
https://www.amazon.ca/Ticket-Masters-Concert-Industry-Scalped/dp/0452298083
The source of my comment above is this book. The author certainly didn't come across as a shill or a PR guy for Ticketmaster. Just a journalist that interviewed a variety of smaller industry insiders (e.g. guys who set up the very earliest online ticket companies, promoters, etc.).
https://www.amazon.com/Ticket-Masters-Concert-Industry-Scalped/dp/0452298083
Read this and what you will find is that the fees are actually there for the act and ticketmaster just takes the PR hit instead of the band/team
Read this book about ticketmaster if you're interested in the details
Exactly...they're the bad guy and know it. If you're up for a pretty dry read on the subject, check out 'Ticket Masters'. http://www.amazon.com/Ticket-Masters-Concert-Industry-Scalped/dp/0452298083