There has been plenty of controversy over the past couple years about concert tickets and the sites used to buy them scamming people. Overall, the controversy comes down to ticket-selling services taking advantage of celebrity popularity to get the most money possible, and it’s not ok.
On January 24, Peyton Earls was ordering a ticket to see one of her favorite bands and the site charged her $100 in fees. Most people try to blame the artist or band for making their tickets so expensive, but in reality they do not have control over the fees charged or the people reselling for outrageous prices.
This is just the start of a long overdue call out. The ticket sellers need to be held responsible. One of the biggest and most known is the issue with Taylor Swift and Ticketmaster. Midway through last year, Swift announced a tour and fans, being as die-hard as Swifties are, went on a rampage to buy tickets. However, when fans started paying upwards of “70 times face value,” according to AP News, there was a riot. The main culprit was Ticketmaster, which was selling tickets up to $500 a piece. Because of the strength within the community, petitions began for there to be some sort of legislation passed to protect consumers from this scam-like behavior.
Sadly, after the anger ceased and the outraged silenced, the proposal failed and no real change was made. To this day people are paying double or more the price of their ticket in additional fees and constantly being scammed out of their perfect experience because they can not afford the trip.
In a justice-filled world, the fees would be smaller and people could spend that money on their transportation and accommodations for their trip to make a better experience. Most small towns like Corry do not have venues close by that are often visited, so people not only have to make hour-long trips to even see the concert, but also need to book hotels and pay for food. This is all nearly impossible when their money is being spent on fees so a distribution company can make some extra money. That leads to an additional point. Where is all the money going? From the experience of peers, the ticket sellers have not upgraded or changed their sites in years. The money from the fees does not go to the artist… so who is getting rich?
Some people might say, “Well, what about the people designing the site or keeping track of sales, etc.” The response is simple: we live in a world in which a program can keep track of sales all on its own. Additionally, as stated before, the sites have not changed so there is no graphic designer to pay that is making active changes.
