Ticketmaster said they would ‘lead by example’ after Dean called out companies when tickets for her North American tour appeared on resale sites at prices in excess of $1,000

Ticketmaster has given fans of Olivia Dean partial refunds after the British singer condemned ticketing companies for allowing touts to relist tickets for her North American tour at more than 14 times their face value.

After the tour sold out in minutes on 21 November and tickets appeared on resale sites at prices in excess of $1,000, Dean addressed the major ticketing companies on Instagram: “@Ticketmaster @Livenation @AEGPresents you are providing a disgusting service,” she wrote. “The prices at which you’re allowing tickets to be re-sold is vile and completely against our wishes. Live music should be affordable and accessible and we need to find a new way of making that possible. BE BETTER.”

In a statement, Michael Rapino, CEO of Ticketmaster’s parent company Live Nation Entertainment, said: “We share Olivia’s desire to keep live music accessible and ensure fans have the best access to affordable tickets. While we can’t require other marketplaces to honour artists’ resale preferences, we echo Olivia’s call to ‘do better’ and have taken steps to lead by example.”

  • NewNewAugustEast@lemmy.zip
    14·
    16 hours ago

    It is so bad these days. People have been complaining about it for a long time, and Ticket Master is doing this themselves.

    Bill Kreutzman of the Grateful Dead said in 2009:

    “I hate that scalping thing. It’s one of my pet peeves. It’s legal robbery. There should be a law against it. I’m not going to mention names, but the bigwigs in the business, the promoters—whatever you want to call them—one of them now owns a ticket company, and they were going to try to take a whole lot of tickets and scalp them, and we got them to stop that. It’s asking our fans to pay too much money for something that really should almost be free. Garcia always said, “Music is so good for you, it should be free.” That’s a famous Jerry quote. It’s a sore subject with me. Our ticket prices are 80 bucks, and that seems like a fortune to me. I mean, in today’s market, “Am I buying food for my family or gas? Am I taking my kids to school, or am I buying outrageously expensive tickets?” It doesn’t make much sense to me.”