0:00

Welcome, conspiracy realist. We

0:02

are talking about something

0:05

that has become a bit of a hobby

0:07

horse for us at this

0:10

point. Not too long ago,

0:13

Nol and Matt Ny were going

0:15

to get tickets to go see a concert

0:17

together and we ran

0:20

into the fees. Oh god,

0:22

the fees.

0:23

The fees.

0:25

Yeah, this isn't an aldly bit of goody.

0:26

That is painfully relevant

0:29

still to this day.

0:30

I mean it's we're approaching an

0:32

absolute monopoly with Live Nation and Ticketmasters.

0:35

They are kind of like the people selling the tickets

0:37

being the same people that on the venues. It's not

0:40

great. Let's jump right in

0:42

and see how much more expensive it's gotten

0:44

since even May twenty nineteen.

0:48

From UFOs to psychic powers

0:50

and government conspiracies, history

0:52

is riddled with unexplained events. You

0:54

can turn back now or learn

0:57

the stuff they don't want you to know.

1:00

Production of iHeart Radios How

1:02

Stuff Works.

1:12

Greetings, Welcome back to the show.

1:13

My name is Matt and our pal Noel

1:16

is on some adventures, but we'll return

1:18

in the future. They called me Ben.

1:20

We are joined as always with our super producer

1:22

Paul Mission Control decad. Most importantly,

1:25

you are you. You are here that

1:27

makes this stuff. They don't want

1:29

you to know. Welcome to the show. You

1:31

did not have to buy tickets.

1:33

That's right. You did have to

1:35

buy a phone or a computer or

1:37

something that has a microphone

1:39

and a processor and at least

1:42

headphone outputs or some

1:44

kind of speaker.

1:45

Let's call those associated fees. Yeah,

1:48

so the show is free.

1:50

It takes some doing

1:53

to get it in you.

1:55

To get it in your ear, right, Yeah.

1:57

All the other paraphernalia is not include.

2:00

I mean, sure, this

2:02

is a show. This is a recorded show,

2:05

right, we do a call in line.

2:07

We've taken the show on the road and probably will

2:09

do again and then near to mid

2:11

future. But nothing,

2:15

nothing quite beats the experience right off.

2:17

You're in your favorite music or your favorite

2:20

performance whatever it is live right,

2:22

Like, what are some of the memorable

2:25

concerts you've been to?

2:26

Man, I

2:28

haven't really been to many, but

2:31

Dave Matthews back

2:33

in the day, oh boy,

2:37

and some of that DMB baby,

2:39

Oh it was the best.

2:41

And you know what tickets were always like, Okay,

2:45

they were not insane back in the

2:48

early two thousands doing

2:50

some old DMB though, you

2:53

know, you get to you know, that's a fairly large act

2:55

right. Then you get to newer

2:58

shows nowadays, and

3:00

you're going to a much smaller venue with a much

3:02

smaller band, And I'm paying more now

3:05

to see those bands than I did to pay a big

3:07

ticket band when I was, you know, coming

3:10

out of high school in college.

3:12

So like you would go see Dave Matthews

3:14

band in a stadium or something,

3:16

yeah, something that

3:19

large, and you would get

3:21

maybe some reasonable tickets

3:23

on the lawn or whatever. Thirty bucks okay,

3:26

max thirty bucks with everything.

3:28

Yeah, just to get into Lakewood

3:30

Amphitheater, which not called that anymore, but who

3:32

cares. And also, you know, inflation.

3:35

Obviously everyone is saying inflation, matt

3:37

but inflation, but that's

3:40

not all.

3:41

Let's call it feflation. Okay,

3:43

maybe okay, asides from

3:45

sounding very doctor Susian, that

3:47

that is a word that could work for today's

3:50

episode, because you know

3:52

what bothers me about buying tickets

3:54

probably the same thing that bothers everyone

3:56

they buy tickets nowadays. When

3:59

you buy its ticket for something, you're overwhelmingly

4:02

going to do it online or

4:05

else. You're going to show up at a show the day of,

4:07

you know.

4:08

And it's probably sold out if it's worth anything.

4:11

Perhaps, Yeah, yeah, And it's really

4:14

it's relatively rare for

4:17

someone to be walking down the street see

4:20

tickets for a show like

4:23

next week or that weekend, and then

4:25

say I'm going to walk in and buy those now

4:27

in person. People don't do that near

4:29

as often, so most of the time we buy

4:32

tickets online. And here in the United

4:34

States, there's been one

4:37

game in town for quite a while, and this

4:39

game continues in other countries

4:41

as well. A master, if

4:44

you will, of tickets. Oh,

4:46

some sort of ticket

4:49

master. Yes, Wowly,

4:52

it took a while to get to that one, but it's true.

4:54

Right, since about the late nineteen seventies, it's

4:56

become increasingly difficult to get tickets

4:58

to live events Broadway plays,

5:02

Symphonies, the DMB.

5:07

It's difficult to get these tickets without

5:09

running somehow into ticket Master,

5:11

even if you don't know that you're running into

5:14

Ticketmaster. So what exactly

5:16

is this thing? It's been here for

5:20

the three of us, for you, mission control of myself,

5:22

for our entire lives.

5:24

Yeah, and beyond and before. Yeah.

5:27

So let's go back to Phoenix, Arizona, nineteen

5:30

seventy six. A couple of

5:32

gentlemen we got Albert Leffler, Peter

5:34

Godwa, and another man, a businessman

5:37

named Gordon Gunn. What a great

5:39

name. Yeah, seriously, Gordon Gunn. So

5:42

Leffler. He comes up with this name,

5:45

this idea for a thing, and

5:48

he calls it ticket Master, And it's this

5:50

new company that's just going to control tickets

5:53

and for these guys when they founded in nineteen

5:55

seventy six, really all

5:57

they're trying to do in the beginning is sells

6:00

tickets to an Electric Light Orchestra

6:02

concert at the University of New

6:04

Mexico. That's the first big thing. And

6:07

electric Light Orchestra is something that my dad

6:09

told me about, actually that he really enjoyed.

6:12

Look it up, Google it. If you don't know

6:15

it, Spotify it. I'm sure you can find it.

6:17

Mister Blue Sky is a great song.

6:19

It really is. It really is.

6:22

But anyway, so this one

6:24

little thing in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

6:26

I'm so sorry to interrupt that to say, yeah, Turned

6:28

to Stone is also a great

6:30

song. Oh, in my mind,

6:33

it's one that I've had stuck in my head. Awesome

6:36

a Blue Sky Turned to Stone. It's

6:38

the seventies, it's Albuquerque.

6:41

Out of college. Awesome,

6:43

good times rolling right, let the good

6:45

times roll. And so

6:48

then they figure

6:50

out, hey, this is working. We're just you know, control

6:53

a hub. We're controlling the tickets to one thing.

6:56

We're good at this, Let's keep doing

6:58

it. So they keep doing it for a few years.

7:00

Then by nineteen seventy eight they have their first international

7:03

clients coming in from Norway,

7:05

Oslo, Norway, and

7:08

that same year they signed their first major venue,

7:10

this place called the Louisiana super Dome,

7:13

along with their first Major League team,

7:15

the New Orleans Jazz, which is

7:18

now the Utah Jazz, but in the city of New

7:20

Orleans it was the Jazz. So they actually

7:22

have the NBA as

7:25

one of their major clients, one

7:27

team on the NBA. But still, that's

7:29

huge for just a couple of guys starting

7:32

with a startup, right.

7:33

Yeah, And it happens so quickly. It's just

7:35

a few years. When Leffler

7:38

and Godwa originally thought

7:41

of the company, they were going to be licensing

7:44

software for tickets,

7:46

really, and they've gone from that to

7:50

being the ticket provider for stadiums,

7:53

which sounds kind of like maybe

7:56

a boring business, right, it's

7:58

not, as you

8:00

know, endlessly fascinating as

8:03

being a professional

8:07

skydiver or maybe a podcast

8:09

or something like that, you know, an underwater

8:11

tattoo artist.

8:13

But still,

8:15

what we have to realize is they get a

8:17

cut of every ticket sold, and

8:19

when you get to something as large as

8:21

a superdome, that's a lot of money

8:24

in like in one night,

8:26

yeap. Other people

8:29

knew about the game. There were other things that

8:31

existed at this time before ticket

8:33

Master. There was a

8:35

business called ticket Tron, like

8:38

ticket and then the movie Tron.

8:40

And that's nineteen sixties. So it's difficult

8:42

to It's hard for me to imagine

8:45

computerized ticket sales being organized

8:48

enough with software, with computers

8:50

that are powerful enough to like do it in any large

8:53

scale. But it was happening.

8:55

Yeah, yeah, it wasn't. It wasn't necessarily

8:58

happening on the customer end, but

9:00

you would make a phone call to ticket Tron and they

9:02

would have this database.

9:03

Right, So can I selly

9:05

fun fact about ticket Tron? Yeah?

9:07

They were purchased by a

9:10

thing called the Lovecraft Investment

9:13

Group in nineteen ninety.

9:19

What's the Lovecraft Investment Group?

9:20

Man? All I know is is Lovecraft. There's

9:22

a Lovecraft involved, That's all I know.

9:25

Oh boy, let's see it's

9:27

true.

9:28

The Hewlett Packard Lovecraft.

9:31

I don't know what the

9:34

I don't know what the Lovecraft investment. This

9:37

may be fodder for another podcast.

9:40

Here's the thing. As you said, there were other there

9:42

were other similar

9:45

creatures around in this

9:47

market, right, other places that wanted

9:50

to be the ticket

9:52

provider, in the middleman for that. But

9:54

like a hungry invading species, Ticketmaster

9:57

consumed and digested the

10:00

these competitors. In nineteen

10:02

eighty one, it opened its first overseas

10:04

operation. In nineteen eighty two, they

10:06

got a new CEO, a guy named

10:08

Fred Rosen. Rosen

10:10

told the La Times back in eighty

10:13

five that his competitors were asleep

10:15

at the switch. He said, he was an

10:17

aggressive businessman. I'm proud

10:19

of it, got this American

10:21

psycho vibe going on, right. He

10:24

was so good at dominating the

10:26

ticket industry that it became

10:28

the only game in town. And other

10:30

people, other artists, primarily not

10:33

just wound up consumers.

10:36

Other artists started to take issue with it.

10:38

Pearl Jam launched a campaign

10:41

in nineteen ninety four that they called

10:44

a strong language for some people ticket

10:46

bastard, because you see, pearl

10:48

Jam was hearing from their fans that

10:50

they literally couldn't afford tickets to a

10:52

show, or that they were getting saddled

10:55

with these egregious hidden

10:58

fees, and so they said, well,

11:00

look man, we want to make a living, but

11:02

we want our fans

11:05

to see our music. We don't want to

11:07

milk them for every penny they're

11:09

worth, Like what are we kiss? You know

11:12

what I mean. They don't want to do that. They want to be human,

11:14

they want to stay human. So they wanted

11:16

to offer summer tour tickets to fans

11:19

for under twenty bucks. And they asked

11:21

ticket Master, you know, hey, guys,

11:24

can you just not charge another

11:27

twenty bucks and fees? Can you actually like keep

11:29

the fees around two dollars or whatever

11:31

that your cost of doing businesses? And

11:33

they said no,

11:37

no, you're Pearl.

11:39

Jam and we are

11:41

ticket Master. Yeah.

11:46

So yeah, but it's crazy to think about because

11:49

they really did say no, and Pearl Jam

11:51

just in nineteen ninety four decided, well it's

11:53

not worth it. We're not even going to go on tour.

11:55

We're canceling everything. We're not gonna

11:58

like go and play a bunch of empty stadiums

12:00

where nobody can show up for these

12:03

exorbitant prices. They ended up going

12:06

to Congress and guess what,

12:08

Pearl Jam one and everything was okay and everyone

12:11

was happy, and ticket sales went down to twenty

12:13

dollars for the rest of our lives.

12:14

Thanks so much for tuning in, folks, We hope you enjoyed

12:17

this episode.

12:18

Oh wait, nope, nope,

12:20

that's not what happened. What happened Ticketmaster

12:22

won.

12:23

Right, And there's one

12:25

more sordid detail for this story.

12:29

The band. The members of the band Pearl

12:31

Jam maintained and say

12:34

to this day. You can ask them today and they'll

12:36

confirm this. That private

12:38

investigators were sent to snoop around in their

12:40

lives, sent by Ticketmaster and

12:43

having a PI sicked on

12:45

you by a company very

12:48

common occurrence. Unfortunately,

12:52

what they were probably trying

12:54

to do. What the allegation

12:57

implies is that Ticketmaster

12:59

was attempted to find something discrediting

13:03

to members of Pearl

13:05

Jam, not something that had anything

13:07

to do with their crusade

13:10

to get better ticket prices. They wanted

13:12

to be able to say, well, this person is

13:15

doing heroin and we'll put it in the news

13:18

if you guys don't straighten up intil

13:20

the corporate line, but you know again,

13:23

that's a terrible example, because this is the

13:26

nineties in Seattle grunge,

13:28

right, So doing Heroin

13:30

may unfortunately not have been the huge

13:33

scandal that they would want, but

13:35

they wanted something to hold over their

13:37

heads, and eventually,

13:41

probably more so, through just the

13:43

sheer, ungodly amount

13:45

of money Ticketmaster has, they

13:47

were able to. They were able

13:49

to, as you say, prevail. So

13:52

that brings us to the modern day. Nineteen

13:54

ninety seven, a company called Interactive

13:56

Corp, oddly enough, not a video

13:58

game company, perch is the majority

14:00

stake and Ticketmaster, and then it bought

14:02

the rest of the company. In nineteen ninety

14:05

eight, the name changed to Ticketmaster

14:08

Online. Dash City search doesn't

14:10

exactly roll off the tongue, right, No,

14:13

So they didn't

14:15

care that it didn't roll off the tongue. The

14:18

company expanded, diversified, it

14:20

kept evolving its business model, increasingly,

14:23

going from phones to online sales,

14:26

and this constant evolution, the

14:28

way of many businesses right unfortunately,

14:32

did not go in the direction that critics

14:34

wanted it to. They didn't see cheaper

14:37

tickets, they didn't feel like

14:39

things were more transparent. These

14:41

moves did not quell all of the critics.

14:44

And today Ticketmaster controls

14:46

an estimated eighty percent

14:50

of the little more than eighty percent of the

14:52

ticketing market in

14:54

North America. So

14:57

they're doing something right. But let's get

14:59

back to the critics. What are

15:01

these critics saying.

15:03

Well, they're saying that we need to take a quick break

15:05

to hear from our sponsor and then we'll find

15:07

out what Ticketmaster may or

15:09

may not have been getting into.

15:17

Here's where it gets crazy.

15:19

So it turns out that in addition

15:21

to be massively successful, Ticketmaster

15:24

has been accused of numerous abuses,

15:26

breaches of law, and shady

15:29

business practices. There's genuine

15:31

stuff they don't want you to know here. It's

15:34

probably not gonna stop, no

15:37

compellingnimpotus to stop it. And yes,

15:40

Ticketmaster has been sued for

15:42

conspiracy.

15:43

Oh snap, the big c All

15:46

right, let's take another time traveling trip

15:48

here to two thousand and nine.

15:52

Bruce Springsteen. Oh

15:54

everybody knows Old Bruce the boss.

15:57

Yeah, he is the boss. He's your boss and my boss.

15:59

He publicly calls out ticket Master in

16:01

two thousand and nine for a little

16:04

let's say misdirection, redirection if

16:06

you will, from a

16:08

website. So as

16:12

fans were going and trying to buy

16:14

tickets through Ticketmaster to the Springsteen

16:16

concert. They were getting sent

16:18

to this other place called ticket now

16:21

dot com, completely separate site.

16:23

It looks very different. There's no you

16:26

know, when you're on that site, you don't understand

16:28

what's happening. You feel like a pop up maybe has occurred,

16:30

or you've gotten redirected through

16:33

an ad maybe.

16:34

Or this is your last chance to get some

16:36

kind of ticket to see the Boss

16:38

live.

16:39

Well, yeah, there's a certain desperation

16:42

that's happening when you are being redirected

16:44

to this ticketnow dot com because

16:46

guess what, the tickets are marked up by

16:49

hundreds, sometimes thousands

16:51

of dollars at ticket now versus

16:53

Ticketmaster. So

16:55

then all these fan complaints are coming through because

16:58

of this weird steering to the place called

17:00

tickets Now. A

17:03

New Jersey congressman gets a

17:05

call and basically

17:07

this guy says, Hey, we need a federal anti

17:09

trust investigation into whatever the heck is

17:12

going on between Ticketmaster and

17:14

ticket now. What is this? Let's figure

17:16

this out.

17:17

Yeah, so here's what they find.

17:21

They find that ticket Now,

17:23

in addition to having a very similar name

17:26

to Ticketmaster, is owned by Ticketmaster,

17:29

and when Bruce

17:32

Springsteen's fans were going to

17:34

a website to buy tickets to his

17:36

show, they were automatically redirected

17:39

to ticket now, which, as he said, Matt

17:41

sells tickets for much higher than their face value,

17:45

and it prais on that desperation, right,

17:47

that's psychological fear that someone

17:49

else will get the thing I want. So,

17:52

you know, I may not necessarily

17:55

think this is a good financial decision, but

17:57

I will be gosh darned and

18:00

gollie ged if I allow somebody

18:02

else to get that ticket.

18:03

You know what I mean.

18:04

It's an artificial scarcity essentially.

18:07

Bruce Springsteen found out about it, and

18:10

he was righteously

18:13

indignant. He wrote a public

18:16

statement about this, because what you

18:18

found out was that this

18:21

sort of second chance or reselling site

18:24

ticket now was

18:26

something that Ticketmaster was sending the

18:28

audience to when there were still

18:30

regular tickets available. So

18:33

they could have gotten that you know, thirty

18:36

or forty whatever dollar ticket

18:38

to sit on the lawn in the back, yeah,

18:40

and have a great time. But instead they were going

18:43

directly to this place where it was you know, this

18:45

huge markup, and that

18:48

markup goes to Ticketmaster man.

18:51

So Ticketmaster

18:53

gets a fifteen percent cut from

18:56

tickets Now, which it owns.

19:00

That's in addition to the fees that already

19:02

gets as Ticketmaster,

19:05

so that that money has already spent and

19:07

baked into the price. So a

19:10

lawsuit comes about, and essentially what

19:13

they're doing is making

19:16

money off the same ticket two times.

19:20

Clever, you know, brilliant, very

19:23

clever, evil, lawful evil, and

19:26

so probably because

19:28

Egenstein himself took such a strong stance

19:31

against it, Ticketmaster issued an apology

19:34

to the fans and said, we will

19:36

refund you the price difference between the

19:38

face value of the tickets and those you

19:40

got from ticket Now, which is a lot of

19:42

you know, it's a lot of scratch. But that's

19:44

also that's also like being caught stealing,

19:48

you know, being caught stealing a car and

19:50

then saying, ah, I'm you know, I'm

19:53

gonna drive it back to your house. Yeah,

19:55

and then what like, I feel bad, you.

19:57

Know, some

20:01

gas money here just a little bit.

20:04

No, they didn't, they didn't, but

20:08

it's strange, right, And this is just one of the

20:10

allegations against ticket Master. We've

20:12

got that Pearl Jam example. But

20:15

let's talk about those fees, because

20:17

that's where a lot of this comes back in, right, Have

20:19

you ever bought a twenty dollars ticket only

20:22

to find that it becomes

20:24

more than forty dollars by the time you get

20:26

to the actual place your order?

20:28

No? Never, oh never,

20:31

This is never Tabernacle.

20:33

That's a that's a local venue here at Atlanta

20:36

Tabernacle. What kind of fees have you run.

20:38

Into literally twice as much? I mean

20:40

it, Yeah, I've seen I

20:42

have seen tickets double when

20:45

I buy them for just a local venue here

20:47

because of ticket Master's weird fees

20:50

to get me my ticket somehow that I can print out

20:52

already.

20:53

Yeah, there's like a two to five dollars fee

20:55

for getting a PDF. Essentially

20:57

you can.

20:57

Print somebody I'm paying some

21:00

salary who's just on a floor somewhere

21:03

making calls like I need three Pearl

21:05

Jam but like, no, no, I got four radio Head.

21:07

No.

21:08

It's like it has to be that to

21:10

justify twenty or thirty

21:12

dollars fees on

21:14

top of everything else. Otherwise I do not understand.

21:17

Yeah, you're absolutely right. There's a there's

21:20

a service charge, and that will be ticket

21:22

Masters charging you for

21:25

the privilege of it giving you a ticket.

21:27

Yeah, and then there's the facility charge,

21:30

which is a charge added by the venue.

21:32

So ticket Master takes its cut,

21:34

and then the Tabernacle, for example,

21:36

takes its cut. And then there are shipping,

21:39

convenience and processing charges.

21:41

So that's a charge

21:44

for you know, using your visa American

21:46

Express, that's a charge for having

21:48

the tickets delivered to you via post

21:51

wow or using

21:53

your own printer.

21:54

Yeah, but then who who

21:57

pays Cardi B? Then is what I'm trying to figure

21:59

out, Like who what's her cut? Everybody

22:01

else has taken their cut. Who's where's Cardib's

22:04

money?

22:04

Unless you're a huge name artist, which

22:06

I guess Cardi B is. Now, the

22:09

amount of money you get per

22:12

ticket can be surprisingly alarmingly

22:15

small because the label will

22:17

take some money, you know what I mean, your road crew

22:19

will take some money, and all this other

22:21

stuff. Craft services eat

22:23

that cheese because it's coming out of your

22:26

cut. Other profits. Right, But

22:29

all this adds up to an

22:31

unpleasant experience for people

22:34

when we're buying these tickets. The

22:36

problem is there's not really any transparency

22:39

with this. Fees between events

22:42

vary even at the same venue,

22:45

and preferences of the artist as

22:48

well. Some people will try

22:50

to buck like Radiohead or Pearl Jam.

22:53

And the

22:55

problem with it is that none

22:58

of this, none of this ultimately goes into

23:00

a situation where in ticket prices are

23:02

lower. None of this is

23:05

meant to nor will it.

23:07

Ever create It cannot.

23:09

Yes, yes, none of this is meant to

23:11

create a situation where artists get paid more

23:14

and the audience pays less.

23:15

No, absolutely not.

23:17

If anything, It's kind of like, you know,

23:19

nobody talks about this, but it's pretty

23:21

weird that you

23:24

you know, historically can't buy a car directly

23:26

from the people who make cars.

23:28

That is weird.

23:29

It's weird. It's a weird thing. It's

23:32

normalized. Yeah, and you

23:34

know, I'm not choosing sides on it,

23:37

but that that is something we think about.

23:39

You know, you can buy almost

23:42

you can buy so many other things directly from

23:45

the people who make them direct sales.

23:47

Vertical integration is scary though, and

23:49

it can be It can be highly it

23:52

can be highly problematic.

23:54

Yeah, and it can also be dangerous for

23:57

the bottom line. Right. So, the

24:00

allegation here is that Ticketmaster

24:02

is sort of a rent seeker

24:06

and it's now a middle

24:08

It's maybe it needed to

24:10

be in the process before

24:12

everybody had a brilliant computer on

24:15

their phone. But now maybe it doesn't

24:17

have to be right. Maybe that kind

24:19

of software is easier

24:21

to handle. We don't really know. We

24:24

just know that they are the largest game in town,

24:27

and we know that the

24:30

entire operation is

24:33

exceedingly opaque.

24:35

We're going to take a break for

24:37

a brief word from our sponsor, and then we'll

24:39

come back with an investigation

24:42

in Canada that makes

24:45

this even weirder.

24:52

All right, here's where it gets crazier. This

24:57

is hard for me to understand

25:00

that this is real. Okay, what we're going to

25:02

talk about from now, mostly

25:05

through the rest of this episode, we

25:07

got from a CBC News

25:10

investigation that was

25:12

carried out and specifically there's a journalist

25:14

named Dave Seglins who

25:17

actually physically went undercover

25:20

as a scalper at a

25:22

ticket industry convention out there in Las

25:24

Vegas. And you

25:27

can watch a video of this online right now. If you want

25:29

to take a break, you can you can

25:31

search us up CBC ticket

25:34

Master.

25:36

New Yes segment l

25:38

I N S.

25:39

That's good, you'll find it. Check it out.

25:42

It's pretty crazy.

25:44

Could we set some just some axiomatic

25:46

beginnings here.

25:47

Oh yeah, sure.

25:48

Okay, So so imagine your

25:50

ticketmaster. You make money selling

25:52

tickets. Okay, you want

25:54

people to buy tickets from you, definitely.

25:57

Sure doesn't

26:00

matter who that person is buying a ticket from you, as

26:03

long as somebody's buying a ticket from you, right.

26:05

Right, as long as the transaction occurs.

26:07

But you want to be on the side of

26:09

the people and the artists, and you probably

26:11

say hey, at

26:14

least in public, you say hey, I

26:17

think scalpers are the worst and

26:19

they take advantage of people.

26:21

Yeah, because we want you to have low prices

26:23

and see all the stuff you want to see. Don't

26:26

be mad at us.

26:27

Right, So it's established

26:29

then in the public mind,

26:32

the axiom is that ticket

26:34

distributors, or these

26:37

middle segments between the

26:39

artists and the event and the customer, that

26:42

they should not be

26:44

down with scalpers Like you

26:46

guys are making it weird. You're making it worse.

26:48

I don't want to be in a situation where,

26:50

for instance, there are oh,

26:53

what's a great what's a great event

26:56

that people would go to today, like

26:58

a band or a perform it's alien

27:01

con sure, alien con.

27:03

They're only yeah, it's a one night

27:05

only four hundred four hundred

27:07

seat event and it's called Alien

27:10

con who knows what it is. Maybe it's a mariachi

27:12

band, and they

27:14

Ticketmaster, one would assume, does

27:17

not care for a situation when

27:19

one person goes in and buys all

27:21

four hundred or whatever of those tickets

27:24

in one block and then turns

27:26

around and sells them for fifty

27:28

percent more on you know eBay.

27:32

Yeah. We basically Ticketmaster

27:34

is not down with opt right

27:38

other people's tickets. They don't. They're like, look, these

27:40

these are the people's tickets.

27:42

Right, right, right, So what that's

27:44

what we assumed, right, yeah, And it

27:46

turns say right, and it turns out that we

27:48

were very wrong, no, like

27:51

cartoonishly.

27:52

So they're they're quite all right with anyone

27:55

buying their share of the tickets

27:58

as long as those tickets get sold,

28:00

and especially if Ticketmaster

28:03

can sell the tickets twice.

28:06

What what are we talking

28:08

about? Okay, let's go back to Las Vegas at

28:10

that convention. So

28:13

ticket Master, he's recording

28:15

Ticketmaster at least some representatives from

28:17

Ticketmaster. Maybe that's the best way to say it. Sure

28:21

are these representatives are pitching scalpers

28:24

on their Ticketmaster's

28:26

trademarked professional reseller

28:28

program that they have established.

28:31

Okay, Now, according to the investigation that

28:33

you'll follow Dave Seglins through

28:36

with the CBC News investigation,

28:39

Ticketmaster was not

28:41

only just deciding that if

28:44

scalping is happening, we're just going to put blinders

28:46

on and pretend that it's not happening. They're

28:49

also literally recruiting

28:51

people, professional people who've been

28:54

scalping for a long time or maybe are very

28:56

good at scalping to cheat

28:59

the ticket master uster system itself,

29:02

to expand their Ticketmaster's

29:04

resale business and again

29:06

to take more money from the people that are

29:08

just trying to go out and see a concert

29:11

or an event or something. So,

29:13

just to recap, it's Ticketmaster teaching

29:16

scalpers to scalp Ticketmaster

29:19

for their own profit, for Ticketmaster's

29:22

profit.

29:23

Yes, yeah, so.

29:26

They have.

29:27

They've done more than turn a blind

29:30

eye. They've they've gotten

29:32

too a win win situation with scalpers

29:34

and Ticketmaster. Right, So

29:37

this is before the average concert goer.

29:39

This is this is the part

29:41

of the movie where the bad guys team up

29:44

and one sales rep

29:46

is on camera saying, I have brokers

29:49

that have literally a couple of hundred

29:51

accounts it's not something that we look at

29:54

or report because

29:56

they wanted these scalpers to feel

29:58

that they were that they were safe

30:01

in this Ticketmaster, for its part, denied

30:03

the accusations. And once again, you can always

30:05

go back to the idea that actions

30:09

by a few people in an organization do

30:11

not automatically mean the entire organization

30:13

condone it right tale as old as time.

30:16

That's what any intelligence agency will say

30:18

when it's undeniably caught

30:20

doing something terrible.

30:22

Yeah, I'll be like.

30:23

Well, that guy decided to topple that

30:25

country on his own, and we always

30:27

knew that, We always knew that Jeremy

30:30

was a little bit off.

30:31

Yeah, and this is all compartmentalized anyway.

30:33

Only a very few, small

30:36

number of people knew anything about that.

30:38

Yeah, Like, I'm weirded out hearing

30:40

about it today, Congresswoman. This was the first

30:43

first I've heard of it, and I've got to tell

30:45

you, frankly, I am outraged.

30:48

Well you know what I am too, And I hope you get to the bottom

30:50

of it. And congratulations on all your

30:52

work.

30:52

Thank you, thank you. I'll be speaking at

30:54

Georgetown this coming

30:57

Friday. It's one one

30:59

night only you can oh, yeah, you

31:01

can get tickets through a Ticketmaster

31:04

or if those are sold out, go ahead

31:06

to Yeah it is sold out, well,

31:09

go to ticket now, Okay, tickets

31:11

now, so

31:14

and scene. So Ticketmaster

31:18

developed a toolkit for

31:21

these scalpers. It is

31:23

a professional. They don't call them scalpers,

31:25

they call them resellers. A professional reseller

31:27

program that they launched.

31:30

Called used Tickets pre

31:32

Owned tickets.

31:34

Called it Certified pre Owned,

31:37

called Trade Desk. Trade Desk

31:39

is a quote web based inventory

31:42

management system for scalpers.

31:44

The company calls it the most powerful ticket

31:46

sales tool ever. So

31:49

here's what it allows you to do. You

31:51

can buy a block of tickets from

31:55

Ticketmaster through one

31:57

of its many faces, and

31:59

then you can upload those tickets

32:02

to this trade Desk thing,

32:05

and then you can just list them again for resale.

32:08

This means you can hike or drop prices

32:10

on tons and tons of tickets

32:13

based on what you think

32:15

fans are looking for. So

32:18

it turns it into almost a stock market kind

32:20

of thing. Neither Trade

32:22

Desk nor the professional reseller program

32:25

are mentioned anywhere on Ticketmaster's

32:27

website. You can go check we looked,

32:29

it's not there. It's also not listed on

32:32

any of its corporate reports. If

32:34

you want to find the Trade Desk website,

32:37

you first have to send in a registration

32:39

request.

32:40

So let's go ahead and take a look at what happens.

32:42

If you do get through that registration process,

32:45

you do have one of these things

32:48

like an account there,

32:50

and you are reselling things. Let's

32:52

see what Ticketmaster actually gets out of this

32:54

whole process. So, just

32:57

as an example, let's say Ticketmaster

33:00

is gonna sell a ticket for a little

33:02

over two hundred dollars. Two hundred nine dollars

33:04

and fifty cents. Okay, that's

33:07

just the price of the ticket. Ticket Master itself

33:10

is gonna collect twenty five dollars

33:12

and seventy five cents just on that

33:14

initial sale. Now when

33:16

the owner, now if because we're saying

33:18

this is through Trade Desk, the

33:21

owner who's just purchased it through Trade Desk,

33:23

then puts it back up for resale for

33:25

roughly twice as much as it's the

33:28

original cost, let's say four hundred dollars

33:30

the company. Then ticket Master stands

33:33

to collect an additional seventy six dollars

33:35

on that same ticket. So

33:38

so again you're looking at over one hundred

33:40

dollars that you're gonna make out

33:44

of six hundred dollars in total

33:46

of sales.

33:47

And at this point that's legal too. Yeah,

33:50

it's not against the law.

33:51

Yeah. And it's just a way to make sure that tickets

33:53

get sold at least if you're looking

33:56

at from the company's perspective trade

33:58

desk, basically that

34:01

every ticket is going to get sold in

34:03

some way from that initial sale.

34:05

The idea being that, you

34:08

know, if you want that, the idea

34:10

being that the lever moves us

34:12

and down so you could lower prices.

34:14

Maybe day of ticket sales aren't where you want

34:16

them to be. So someone says, all right, now this is

34:19

no longer two hundred dollars. It's one hundred and fifty dollars.

34:21

Let's see what happens, right, Yeah, And there

34:24

are strategies that kind

34:26

of line up with that. At the like towards

34:29

the end of a concert or something, or towards the

34:31

end of a big game, people there

34:33

will still be scalpers outside

34:35

of a well, okay, there will be

34:38

resellers outside of a venue

34:40

selling tickets for you know,

34:43

pennies on the dollar if this show

34:45

is almost over or something to get people in just

34:47

to finally make a tiny bit of money on

34:49

that thing and that that exists throughout

34:52

these markets.

34:53

Yeah. Absolutely, we

34:56

do want to say that while

35:00

while we did mention that ticket Master denied

35:03

the allegations brought by

35:06

this investigative report, maybe

35:08

it'll be helpful for us to give the actual

35:10

language that they used in denying

35:12

this allegation. What do you think?

35:14

Absolutely?

35:15

All right, So, after

35:17

the story was published there in CBC News,

35:20

Ticketmaster issued a statement that

35:23

went out to CBC's News, but then also

35:25

went out to other places that are reported on the stories,

35:27

such as The Rolling Stone, saying

35:29

it was quote categorically untrue

35:31

the Ticketmaster has any program in place

35:33

to enable resellers to acquire large

35:36

volumes of tickets. It also said

35:38

it had already begun an internal review

35:40

of professional reseller accounts and employee

35:42

practices before the CBC News

35:44

story came out. So they said,

35:46

look, we've already

35:49

been investigating this internally

35:51

and we would never try

35:54

to game the system in

35:56

the way that you're describing. Again,

35:59

a represent from Ticketmaster is

36:01

on camera completely

36:04

completely doing what they say, what

36:06

they're denying.

36:07

Yeah, the biggest, the biggest thing that

36:09

Ticketmaster had a problem with was that that

36:12

representative acknowledged

36:14

of acknowledged the

36:16

knowledge that one

36:19

person essentially would have two hundred

36:21

accounts, right, or if one entity

36:23

or one group would have two hundred trade desk accounts.

36:26

That's that's where the big problem comes in.

36:30

Yeah, so it is

36:32

a situation where the money

36:34

got too good. Is a situation

36:37

where where finally maybe

36:39

as the public or the uninitiated scene

36:42

into a previously murky.

36:44

World, that's very

36:46

possible. I would go ahead

36:48

and just say it makes me think

36:51

of something we discussed at the very

36:53

beginning of a

36:55

competitive marketplace, essentially and

36:57

having to always evolve,

37:00

like consistently evolving to make sure

37:03

that you are making more profit so that you

37:05

can increase your margins year every year,

37:07

or you know, you increase your percentage

37:11

overall of gross income year every

37:13

year, like having to find new creative

37:15

ways as a giant company like

37:17

Ticketmaster and it's you know, parent companies

37:20

and all that. These kinds of reselling,

37:22

it's another way to increase

37:24

those margins that isn't

37:27

necessarily illegal if you

37:29

take out the some of the

37:31

things from this, you know, some of the

37:33

things were illegal, but not many. Right,

37:37

The reselling market, as terrible

37:40

as it sounds, and as bad as it

37:42

is for consumers such as us,

37:45

it's just another one of those ways to grab more

37:47

money.

37:48

Allegedly illegal, well,

37:51

definitely illegal, but that the allegedly

37:53

did.

37:54

Yes, yes, apologies because.

37:55

It hasn't been an I don't think it's

37:58

necessary. This is just we're just being

38:00

as fair as we can. Yes, yes, so

38:04

as you can tell by the use of the phrase allegedly

38:07

and the fact that we're being fairly

38:09

careful about how we discussed this. Ticketmaster

38:12

has been in and out of court. In twenty

38:15

eighteen, they suffered a data

38:17

breach, and in twenty nineteen a British

38:19

law firm launched legal action against

38:21

them for affecting up to forty thousand

38:24

UK customers. And also in

38:26

twenty eighteen, the US Department of Justice

38:29

launched an investigation following complaints

38:31

that Live Nation, an

38:33

event promoter, had engaged in anti

38:35

competitive practices following their merger

38:38

with Ticketmaster. There's an

38:40

organization called Enschutz Entertainment

38:43

Group, and they said Live Nation pressured

38:45

them into using Ticketmaster as a vendor, and

38:47

had they refused, they would have lost out on business.

38:50

The allegations of anti trust violations

38:52

resulted in a re examination of

38:54

the merger between Ticketmaster

38:57

and Live Nation. However,

39:00

this case is probably

39:02

going into well many of these

39:04

cases are going into arbitration, private

39:07

settlements. No need

39:09

to have a shameful day

39:12

in court. And at this point

39:16

Ticketmaster is very little in

39:18

the way of real competition. There

39:21

are other things in the market, sure,

39:23

but they're gnats

39:25

to Ticketmaster's beheamoth right.

39:28

And the question then

39:31

is, I mean, clearly there's

39:33

some stuff they don't want you to know that's

39:35

inarguable it's not necessarily criminal.

39:38

Like for instance, okay, think of airline tickets

39:41

depending on which way you go

39:43

through an airline, or think of privatized

39:45

insurance. People don't want you to

39:47

know the lowest price you can get. They

39:49

want you to get confused and bored and desperate

39:51

enough to just take the easiest thing. That's

39:56

a that

39:58

is a very clear, an unfortunately

40:00

disturbing explanation of how all three of

40:02

those industries.

40:03

Work, and really most

40:06

industries, everyone's

40:09

just trying to get you to take the easiest option

40:11

for you, and it depends

40:13

on where you are in life times ticket but

40:16

here's the easiest one for your social

40:18

strata.

40:18

Yeah, right, You're not looking for

40:21

mister right price. You're looking for mister right now,

40:23

price right.

40:25

Start applying that to social interactions,

40:28

and now it's just, oh, we've gone down

40:30

a rabbit hole.

40:31

I should have I should have quit while we were ahead

40:33

with the with the insurance airplane

40:36

ticket thing. But yeah, it's it's

40:38

true, and there's probably not going to be any

40:42

anything that really stops

40:44

this practice. There will be things that mitigate

40:46

it. The problem is that the established

40:49

system has

40:52

caught up to technological breakthroughs

40:55

only in the ways that

40:57

can improve its profit while

41:00

maintaining its position. The

41:03

technology that we have now to organize,

41:05

distribute, and track these sorts of things is

41:08

amazing. If you were from the nineteen

41:11

seventies and you've looked at it, you would think was mind blowing,

41:13

you know what I mean, unless you already worked

41:15

for DARPA or something, you would

41:17

be like, how did that get out here? But

41:22

the problem is that even though we're we

41:24

have the potential to democratize

41:27

the access to these tickets

41:29

in a way that would benefit the

41:31

creators and benefit the customers,

41:35

we're not seeing that. When

41:37

will that happen? When will there be some sort

41:39

of market disruption?

41:40

No?

41:41

No, and at this point,

41:44

has ticket Master done anything

41:46

thoroughly illegal. No,

41:49

they haven't been convicted. None of the CEOs

41:51

have ever gone to jail. The creators

41:54

certainly never got in trouble.

41:56

Yeah, in two thousand and nine, that whole conspiracy

41:58

suit was out there, didn't

42:01

really go anywhere.

42:02

Right, right. So the question

42:05

then goes to us, fellow conspiracy realists,

42:09

is this just how this business should

42:11

be run? And what

42:13

what are other businesses that you have

42:15

seen that your that

42:17

your fellow listeners may not be aware

42:20

of, Like we've we've seen some We've

42:22

seen some strange things going on in

42:25

the funeral service industry.

42:27

We've seen some strange things going on of

42:31

course here in the event and ticketing

42:33

industry. But where else, I

42:36

wonder where else is everything just crazy,

42:39

crooked appearing to be crooked. I have to say

42:41

so that we don't get superbl to

42:43

that.

42:44

End, to that end, I want to I want

42:46

to pick your brain, Ben about the

42:50

mechanic big mechanic industry

42:53

with some of these bigger companies out

42:55

there that that offer

42:57

repairs to vehicles and automobiles.

43:00

Sou mean like not just

43:02

straight up garages, but box

43:04

automotive stores that are also

43:07

garages or service centers.

43:08

Okay, yeah, the big ones that are nationwide.

43:11

I'd like to talk about some of those. See if there are

43:13

any conspiracies out there. So

43:15

maybe maybe if you're listening and you know, have you heard

43:17

of anything, let us know what you've heard.

43:21

I will that's that's great, I will say on that.

43:23

On that note, there is one thing

43:25

that sounds a bit curmudgelingally for

43:28

me to say, but I think it's a good point. It's one thing

43:30

that bugs me about modern car repairs.

43:33

Over the past few years, cars have increasingly

43:35

become something that the person who owns

43:37

it cannot work on. Have you noticed that?

43:40

Yeah, there are more and more black

43:42

boxes proliferating under the hood.

43:45

Sure, absolutely, and just lack

43:47

of experience, lack of knowledge.

43:50

I just feel like, call me old fashioned, but I feel

43:52

like if you if you buy a car, it

43:54

should be something that you own that

43:57

it shouldn't have to be a service, you know what I mean.

43:59

We're moving increasingly into a service economy.

44:02

It is going to scare your children

44:04

listening now, when when

44:07

you say, yeah, people used to like buy things

44:09

and then have them, I'm

44:11

like, what for how much a month? Yeah,

44:14

like no, no, like you would just you

44:16

would just buy one sandwich and you would eat

44:18

it.

44:19

Yeah. Well it goes back to that superpower

44:21

thing of money and time and I

44:24

don't have time to work on this vehicle. I'll give

44:26

it to you and you fix it. Here's some of

44:28

my superpower.

44:30

Or signing an agreement for instance,

44:32

it says you are not allowed

44:34

to have anybody else work kind of thing,

44:37

right, like Apple has done this

44:39

very well. Yeah, anyhow, story

44:41

for another day. Thank you so much for you, and

44:44

we want to hear also your most egregious

44:46

concert ticket or event ticket fee

44:48

story. Did you really go into

44:51

some website thinking you were gonna pay

44:53

eighteen bucks and then come out like thirty

44:57

bucks later, bewildered and confused?

44:59

Yeah, did you try get into a Foo fighter's concert

45:01

and then you realized, wait, it's four hundred

45:03

dollars and then you just said.

45:05

Bye, oh man,

45:07

Yeah, tell us your stories. Uh, And that's

45:11

our classic episode for this evening.

45:13

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45:15

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45:17

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45:21

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45:23

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45:25

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45:28

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45:29

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45:31

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45:33

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45:35

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45:37

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45:40

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