For a long time fans have doubted the legitimacy of Ticketmaster as a service provider. When Kendrick Lamar tickets sell out in literally the first second they go on sale, it’s quite clear what’s going on.
An undercover investigation into Ticketmaster’s Las Vegas Ticket Summit by Toronto Star and CBC reporters have confirmed those long-held suspicions.
At Ticketmaster’s Las Vegas Ticket Summit, representatives spoke openly about software built to reap in thousands of tickets for scalping.
Despite Ticketmaster’s purchasing limits, public condemnation of scalping, and decades of beating around the bush when direct questions were asked, the investigation revealed the company’s attempts to profit from the “secondary market”.
Watch hidden camera footage from the event below.
Read Ticketmaster’s full statement to CBC News below.
“Ticketmaster is a technology platform that helps artists and teams connect with their fans. We do not own the tickets sold on our platform nor do we have any control over ticket pricing – either in the initial sale or the resale. In both cases, prices are set by the seller. We also do not determine when tickets are available for purchase or how they are allocated – those decisions are communicated to us by our client, the venue, after consultation with the event presenter.”
“As long as there is an imbalance between supply and demand in live event tickets, there will inevitably be a secondary market. As the world’s leading ticketing platform, representing thousands of teams, artists and venues, we believe it is our job to offer a marketplace that provides a safe and fair place for fans to shop, buy and sell tickets in both the primary and secondary markets. That is why we operate our marketplace more transparently and securely than any other. We clearly delineate between standard tickets sold by the venue and tickets sold by third parties, with clear disclosure that resale prices may exceed (or be lower than) face value. In addition to our work fighting the use of automated bots, we have also taken the most restrictive stance on speculative ticketing, not allowing any seller, professional or otherwise, to post tickets we have not validated to our TM+ pages.”
Via The Star.
