Ticket Technology, Secondary Markets, and Oasis...
Hi!
I’m working on a piece on dynamic pricing right now.
I got the idea from a reader question.
So don’t hesitate to send me a note on things you are seeing or thinking about. I enjoy getting your thoughts and ideas.
I spent a weekend reading Mehrsa Baradaran’s latest book, The Quiet Coup.
It is a history of neoliberalist economic thinking and policy.
Her book is about the systems that govern our economy.
Three of them are at play here:
The money doesn’t trickle down, it floats to the top and sits there.
Businesses are incentivized to extract more and more from their customers.
The standard operating procedure is to do nothing and use the letter of the law as a defense to hide from the spirit of the law.
All 3 of those ideas are at play in this case:
Call the pricing whatever you want, the higher the ticket price, the higher the “service fees” are for Live Nation/Ticketmaster.
Surge pricing and dynamic pricing are ways to raise prices for fans. The cover story is about the secondary market.
The statement about dynamic pricing technology is all about the old Bill Clinton thing about defining the word “is”. It is semantics.
PS: The CMA opened an investigation of Ticketmaster regarding the sale of Oasis tickets.
The whole premise of this study seems to be that people are “rational” and that “rationality” should win out.
People aren’t rational.
People don’t act rationally.
The decisions about how to market, price, and sell tickets isn’t a rational exercise.
It should be born out of your strategy.
The challenge is that most organizations have zero strategy.
Please let me know what you think by hitting reply. Or, sharing your piece in the Slack Channel.
A question I received in the Slack Channel: Can I do a podcast on the topic of someone in music and the secondary market so artists, venues, etc. can use the tools of the secondary market more effectively?
Who should I talk with?
What else should I have conversations about?
Chris Castle looks at the StubHub IPO.
The bigger question to Chris is “Where is the FTC’s enforcement of the BOTS act?”
You know things are bad if Marsha Blackburn is going back for another piece of legislation.
Live Nation’s Q2 earnings call says, “Business as usual.”
I’ll point you to the comment that Live Nation expects business to continue to grow at 9-10% annually.
My question to you is do you feel that is realistic?
There is a lot in this article:
Spec ticketing
Legislation
BOTs
More.
I’ll point you to one key thing from my POV: one of the bills being pushed at the federal level would put the clamp on deceptive and misleading advertising.
This is more common in other countries.
When I teach brand management, I talk about ethics in marketing and to see someone pushing to codify the practice is interesting.
I’m curious what you think of the Maryland law that was passed. The protections and penalties go much further than many other bills.
Tell me what is on your mind!
Hit reply!
Share this note with someone who might benefit.