Ticketmaster has a dream. A dream that one day, it will be “pleased to have partnered with” your child’s school, making it “easier for you to buy tickets” to the nativity play. Which will henceforth be known as the nativity experience. But listen – Ticketmaster wants to make the whole process run more smoothly, freeing you up to connect with the performers you love (your kids) while being “gifted” the paper cup that forms part of the package in these platinum seats (the tiny chairs from the classroom).
No, none of the standard seat tickets are still available. But you can upgrade to the ultimate VIP package, meaning you have access to the Bethlehem lounge (the reception reading corner) an hour before the event. If you want to experience magic this Christmas, do remember to clear all cookies, have only one tab open, and prepare nevertheless to be ejected from the queue four hours in after being accused of being a computer, by a computer.
So yes: Ticketmaster. After the Oasis tickets horror show last weekend, the row about the ticketing website this week developed into such a horror show that you could probably sell tickets to it. And if you could, Ticketmaster surely would, having previously handled ticketing for such fan-facing events as the crucifixion and French Revolution guillotinings (mandatory purchase from one of our knitting concessions). Sadly, the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) doesn’t seem to recognise that rich heritage, opting to launch an investigation into Ticketmaster over Oasis ticket sales, “including how so-called ‘dynamic pricing’ may have been used”. Sarcastic scare-quotes: the CMA’s own.
I’m not saying the ticketing websites are quite simply the worst people in the world, even though I’d quite like to provoke Ticketmaster’s lawyer into writing a cease-and-desist letter listing much worse people from the 20th and 21st centuries. Listen, I already love this notional lawyer. Like a lot of people who draw a salary in his stratum of reality-laundering, he possibly tells himself he works in respectable business, but may be better off informing his parents he works in a more popular trade, like puppy-drowning or journalism.
Now, there are some companies in this world of ours that love to be talked about. But a feature of ticketing companies is that they don’t want anyone talking about them, because if people are talking, the talking is always bad. Nobody goes through a ticket purchase these days and wants to sing its praises. They get to the final scene of an absolute ring quest of an attempt to see an artist/show/ballgame they like, are faced with the last-minute news that, actually, their ticket is going to cost nearly three times as much as they thought, cycle through the five stages of grief while a little counter threatens to time them out, decide to pay the extra, and are left staring at the success screen thinking: “Fucking Ticketmaster.”
Obviously, it’s better if they say this on their own. Unfortunately for Ticketmaster, more and more people are saying it out loud, some of whom are the UK culture secretary, others of whom are the CMA, and the last of whom is the US attorney general, who in May launched a lawsuit against LiveNation-Ticketmaster seeking to break it up on grounds of “monopolisation and other unlawful conduct that thwarts competition in markets across the live entertainment industry”.
What its Department of Justice detractors don’t love about the firm is its ability to dictate to every part of the entertainment supply chain, from venues to artists to promoters, and that’s before you get into its role in the resale market. Unsurprisingly, this is not the vibe you get from the Ticketmaster website, which is a masterclass in that very particular self-pitying corporate tone. “The fees we charge,” it quavers, “are often the only revenue we get for making sure you can get the tickets to the events you love.” Oh no! Who’ll spare a thought for poor old Ticketmaster, simply trying to connect fans with their beloved artists, and surviving only on the coins thrown into its begging bowl? Counterpoint: this is a vast international firm headquartered in Beverly Hills, currently worth an estimated $22bn.
That’s enough cash to make you the proud licensee of some ultra-high-end euphemisms. “Processing fee”, “service fee”, “delivery fee” – truly it has 100 ways of saying “because-we-can fee”. If that feels like you accepting a wage for your job, then charging your boss a supplementary “doing my job” fee each time you feel you’re doing your job … try it, see how you get on! The fact is, Ticketmaster fees can be as high as 75% of the base price of the ticket. Arguably the worst euphemism of them all is “dynamic pricing”, which sounds buzzy and energetic, and something we’d all like to be involved in, until you realise that it means the £148 ticket you queued for hours for now costs £355 – and your favourite artist agreed it all via their management. Whatever they may now say (“Shut up”, in the case of Liam Gallagher.)
In the end, like most things with the word “experience” tacked on to them these days, the “fan experience” has become a soul-swallowing submission to getting rinsed and having to look grateful. But with so many hares now running on Ticketmaster and the practices of the wider ticketing industry, it would be nice to think we might be closer to better regulation in the interests of the customer. Record numbers of fans would buy tickets to that.
Marina Hyde is a Guardian columnist
