Since then, Ticketmaster, which runs most US shows on Mr. Springsteen’s tour next year, has tried to wear the white hat, at least for some time. in Interview Michael Rapinoe, CEO of Live Nation Entertainment, Ticketmaster’s parent company, noted that many tickets to the best concerts and other events were of much higher value at the moment Ticketmaster sold them. Why shouldn’t an artist capture most of that surplus? Extremely low prices open the door for speculators to make more money – through the profit they make selling at the real market price – than the performers make themselves.
If artists want to film it, Ticketmaster is willing to help — and charge a fee to do so. And that’s what Mr. Springsteen appears to be doing here, using Ticketmaster’s “Official Platinum” system, where “seats are priced up and down dynamically based on demand”.
You already know what happened next: Platinum prices were very expensive. Anger ensued. Congressman from New Jersey shriek in the wind.
“This broke our spirits,” said Pete Maimon, a North Brunswick, NJ real estate agent who coordinates the face value-only ticket exchange for old fans. He told me he closed it now, while fighting back tears. “We no longer want to participate in this apparent scheme today to extract money from fans,” he said.
Over the weekend, in an effort to smooth things over, Mr. Springsteen’s camp gave Ticketmaster permission to release some numbers. Only 1.3 percent of Ticketmaster users paid more than $1,000 per ticket. Also, “88.2 percent of tickets were sold at set prices,” according to Ticketmaster, although the remaining 11.8 percent is likely to represent more than 11.8 percent of revenue per show, given its high face value.
Who sets these prices? “Promoters and artist representatives set pricing strategy and price range criteria on all tickets, including both dynamic and fixed price points,” a Ticketmaster spokeswoman said in an emailed statement. “When the number of people who want to attend an event is much greater than the number of tickets available, the prices go up.”
