ticketmaster dynamic pricing uk

[Muppetmark]

10 minutes ago, august1 said:

Was looking at getting Robbie Williams tickets as a Christmas present. For Manchester Ticketmaster seem to have different prices for the Wednesday compared to the Friday/Saturday?! £64 each has become £109 each.

Not reseller tickets so assume this is dynamic pricing. Absolutely loads of seats available in the higher bands so not working too well.

lcd had different prices for friday/saturday compared to the others from day 1. not dynamic.

[dotdash79]

23 minutes ago, august1 said:

Was looking at getting Robbie Williams tickets as a Christmas present. For Manchester Ticketmaster seem to have different prices for the Wednesday compared to the Friday/Saturday?! £64 each has become £109 each.

Not reseller tickets so assume this is dynamic pricing. Absolutely loads of seats available in the higher bands so not working too well.

Take a look at see tickets they have them on sale as well. 

[august1]

27 minutes ago, Muppetmark said:

lcd had different prices for friday/saturday compared to the others from day 1. not dynamic.

I'm not totally against a weekend premium tbh but forty quid a ticket 😂

[august1]

16 minutes ago, dotdash79 said:

Take a look at see tickets they have them on sale as well. 

Cheers, cheaper ones sold out there. Looks like they were given a lot less tickets than TM as well. I wonder why...

[Suprefan]

7 hours ago, Muppetmark said:

lcd had different prices for friday/saturday compared to the others from day 1. not dynamic.

Thats just say of the week normalcy. They know people will go to a saturday moreso than a weds. So you pay extra.

[gfa]

6 hours ago, Suprefan said:

Thats just say of the week normalcy. They know people will go to a saturday moreso than a weds. So you pay extra.

Not common over here.

[Watergirl]

On 10/10/2022 at 9:02 AM, gigpusher said:

At least proper touts have to put a shift in outside the venue on a night!! I actually have more respect for them. Plenty of ways to beat touts that don't involve Ticketmaster massively inflating prices to make extra profits for themselves. 

 

And with in-person touts you paid a bit more, maybe up to twice the ticket price. None of this £500 nonsense...

[Watergirl]

On 10/10/2022 at 10:24 AM, Matt42 said:

I appreciate the mainstream attention but I can’t help but laugh at these artists patting themselves on the back for keeping their gigs £30. 

It is a sign of the times that we feel we should applaud people for doing the decent thing, i.e. not ripping fans of.

[clarkete]

On 10/10/2022 at 10:24 AM, Matt42 said:

I appreciate the mainstream attention but I can’t help but laugh at these artists patting themselves on the back for keeping their gigs £30. 

I think you've missed the PR perspective that they're shining a light on an issue that the majority of the population are hitherto unaware of - which does a great service to anyone who isn't in favour of this exploitative practice.  Plenty of other artists are taking a stand in other ways as you know,so more power to them. 

[tarw]

Devils advocate. 
 

Before dynamic pricing it was the touts that made the huge profits from gigs where demand outstripped supply. They made large amounts of money just by having the resources to buy up tickets. 
 

With dynamic pricing at least the artists get a chunk of the reward for the demand that they have created. 
 

There is no pretence of them being a working class hero anymore 

[Comfy Bean]

On 10/9/2022 at 1:58 PM, Superscally said:

Haven't checked in for bit...

Fuck off ticketmaster.

Ace. See you in a bit.

I see they’re claiming that these ridiculous prices are to protect us from fake tickets 🤔🤣 They’re all heart.

[DeanoL]

11 hours ago, clarkete said:

I think you've missed the PR perspective that they're shining a light on an issue that the majority of the population are hitherto unaware of - which does a great service to anyone who isn't in favour of this exploitative practice.  Plenty of other artists are taking a stand in other ways as you know,so more power to them. 

Yup - I have to admit I had assumed that a lot of the price rise of arena shows was down to the arenas putting their prices up, increased costs of production and so on. I had assumed arena gigs for less than £50 were impossible. That Heaton is able to do them for £30, and still make a profit (presumably) was somewhat eye-opening.

[dj_tim]

12 hours ago, tarw said:

Devils advocate. 
 

Before dynamic pricing it was the touts that made the huge profits from gigs where demand outstripped supply. They made large amounts of money just by having the resources to buy up tickets. 
 

With dynamic pricing at least the artists get a chunk of the reward for the demand that they have created. 
 

There is no pretence of them being a working class hero anymore 

I know you're just being devils advocate but... at least back then if you were prepared and tried hard enough you had a decent crack at getting them at a lower price.

You are right in a way though, the issue is these events have been underpriced for a long time which is demonstrated by instant sell-outs. The secondary market shows the demand is there for much higher prices, astronomical in some cases. Just means your average fan is gonna be priced out more often and the tickets will go to those with the most money to spend.

[moogster]

3 minutes ago, dj_tim said:

 Just means your average fan is gonna be priced out more often and the tickets will go to those with the most money to spend.

Or as my local ticketmaster calls it "the real fans" 🤮

[DeanoL]

43 minutes ago, dj_tim said:

I know you're just being devils advocate but... at least back then if you were prepared and tried hard enough you had a decent crack at getting them at a lower price.

And you had a job that allowed you to be sat at a computer at 9am/10am on a weekday morning. It's a bit better now you have a shot at booking stuff on your phone, but you're out of luck if you're in a factory or on shop floor at that time.

I'm not a fan of the rising prices but equally I'm not convinced it's less fair, it just benefits different people. For some people, getting to pay £120 for a ticket is preferable to having theoretical £40 tickets that you never get the chance to book as they're sold out by the time you get a break and can go and try and book. At least you get a chance then.

[stuie]

7 minutes ago, DeanoL said:

And you had a job that allowed you to be sat at a computer at 9am/10am on a weekday morning. It's a bit better now you have a shot at booking stuff on your phone, but you're out of luck if you're in a factory or on shop floor at that time.

I'm not a fan of the rising prices but equally I'm not convinced it's less fair, it just benefits different people. For some people, getting to pay £120 for a ticket is preferable to having theoretical £40 tickets that you never get the chance to book as they're sold out by the time you get a break and can go and try and book. At least you get a chance then.

I'm literally baffled why anyone apart from Ticketmaster beneficiaries would even think this system is ok! 

[tarw]

I remember going to see The Jam at a Right To Work benefit. 
Free admission if you showed your UB40 on the door. It couldn’t happen now unfortunately, you’d get touts flogging UB40s outside. 
I think that the dynamic pricing is hideous but I struggle to think of a better system that would actually work unless they went to a Glastonbury model with photos printed and pre-registration. Even then we all know of people that have got in on someone else’s ticket. 
 

I’m not a TM apologist. At least with this dynamic pricing the artists do get a cut rather than the touts getting it all. I hate the idea of anyone being priced out of music. I know that I am cutting back already and there will be more and more gigs that I will pass on due to the cost

[DeanoL]

2 hours ago, stuie said:

I'm literally baffled why anyone apart from Ticketmaster beneficiaries would even think this system is ok! 

It's not that I think the dynamic pricing system is okay, it's just that I don't think the current system is "okay" either. Obviously I can understand why people with the freedom to post on internet forums during the workday like it though!

[stuie]

4 minutes ago, DeanoL said:

It's not that I think the dynamic pricing system is okay, it's just that I don't think the current system is "okay" either. Obviously I can understand why people with the freedom to post on internet forums during the workday like it though!

I'm not sure what that means but in my opinion, tickets should be sold at a fixed price and only be able to be resold for face value + admin fees. 

The sooner we legislate this, the better. 

 

[Hotchilidog]

22 minutes ago, stuie said:

I'm not sure what that means but in my opinion, tickets should be sold at a fixed price and only be able to be resold for face value + admin fees. 

The sooner we legislate this, the better. 

 

Totally agree and it is possible to do so. I find it infuriating that on many occasions you have no idea how much the ticket is until you actually get to the payment page. It seems ridiculous to me.

If you only allowed face value secondary sales you would take away the incentive for touts to hoover up the tickets in the first minute of sales.

[DeanoL]

2 hours ago, stuie said:

I'm not sure what that means but in my opinion, tickets should be sold at a fixed price and only be able to be resold for face value + admin fees. 

The sooner we legislate this, the better. 

 

It means that for decades huge portions of the population have been blocked out of popular gigs because they're not able to be sat at a computer at 9am on a weekday as they're at work. (There's a reason Glastonbury runs the sales on a weekday evening and a Sunday morning).

Now with dynamic pricing a different but similarly huge portion of the population are blocked out of popular gigs because they can't afford them.

While dynamic pricing makes things worse for you (and to be clear, for me as well) it's not inherently a "less fair" system than the first-come, first-serve one we had before. It just moves the biases elsewhere. 

I'd personally do fixed pricing with a ballot system as that's the closest we'd get to fair. Failing that do sales in evenings rather than core working hours for the majority of the population. But I don't think either is going to happen.

[jannybruck]

It's also worth noting that dynamic pricing algorithms can also drop prices nearer to the show kick-off if stuff isn't selling. I haven't seen this switched on in the UK yet but I've no doubt a few of the arena tours coming up this autumn/winter that haven't fully sold all tickets might utilise it – Kenny's dates will be a good test to see if this happens as there's a bunch of gigs he needs to fill out still.

Basically we're getting to a point with Ticketmaster-generated shows in particular where there'll be no true fixed price for a lot of gigs and after the original 'start price' they simply fluctuate continually based on demand, muddying the water of what the perceived value of a gig ticket actually is and everyone pays a little differently based on the date they want to go to, seating option, time it was bought, etc.

[incident]

54 minutes ago, DeanoL said:

It means that for decades huge portions of the population have been blocked out of popular gigs because they're not able to be sat at a computer at 9am on a weekday as they're at work.

Bollocks.

54 minutes ago, DeanoL said:

(There's a reason Glastonbury runs the sales on a weekday evening and a Sunday morning).

There's a very good reason they started running Sunday mornings. It's because BT refused to sanction it any other time after the 2004 sale effectively took down the Nottingham telephone exchange.

[barcelonista1899]

Rage Against the Machine had a small percentage of tickets at vastly inflated prices for their USA tour. Caveat was that the extra was raised for local charities. Guess that's one way to do it.

[tarw]

5 minutes ago, barcelonista1899 said:

Rage Against the Machine had a small percentage of tickets at vastly inflated prices for their USA tour. Caveat was that the extra was raised for local charities. Guess that's one way to do it.

If artists are going to do it that’s the best way IMHO