For those of you who have never experienced it, the entire concert-going experience is a magical one. The “Christmas-came-early” feeling when you hear your favorite band is finally coming to your city, anxiously planning which piece of merchandise you’re going to buy from the table, the gradual loss of focus as the weeks turns to days leading up to the show and all in all, it’s a lot of good stuff.
So naturally the obvious extension is this: how can somebody make a gross profit off of this?
Enter Ticketmaster:
Already the primary dispenser of tickets to most medium sized to arena venues, the merger with Livenation in 2009 solidified their monopoly on the industry meaning only one thing; random service charges. Case in point, my recent purchase of tickets for a relatively cheap ticket for 28$ quickly included a 9.35$ “convenience” charge and a 5.65$ for order processing. For those of who specialize in hyperbolic math, Ticketmaster literally charges like a million dollars of fees.
Unfortunately for me, the excuse of being able to sing obnoxiously in the presence of a stranger is worth paying the obscene charges, but for those who are blissfully ignorant to the joys and pains of the process of concert-going, keep moving; there is nothing fishy going on here.
LINK: Some Metal-head pulled out her calculator and calculated how roughly she was getting screwed.