Who's in charge of ticket charges?

Everyone loves to complain about Ticketmaster, and the shortage of alternatives. Shane Hegarty tries to sort fact from fiction on gig prices

There is a scene in The Simpsons in which a rock festival comes to Springfield and as the cash tills chime in tune with the acts, the evil corporate tyrant Mr Burns chides his assistant: "And to think, Smithers, you laughed when I bought Ticketmaster: 'Nobody's going to pay a 100 per cent service charge.'" Smithers replies: "Well, it's a policy that ensures a healthy mix of the rich and the ignorant, sir."

It hurts when you laugh. The Ticketmaster issue has been keeping the Liveline phones hopping for years now. The Consumers Association of Ireland gets about 50 complaints a month about ticket prices. It was criticised for not removing extra charges on tickets for recent tsunami relief benefits. An Irish online petition against the company solicited 8,000 signatures; there's even a "Ticketbastard" website. Every big gig brings big groans. Those extra charges again: €2 if you buy over the counter; 12.5 per cent if you buy online, though that is never less than €2 or more than €5.95. That's a charge per ticket, not per transaction.

However, gig-goers may not be aware that in many cases the extra fees are the second time you have paid money to Ticketmaster, as the promoter of the show also hires it as the ticket-selling agent. Already built into the ticket will be the price paid to Ticketmaster to sell the tickets to a public that is then charged for buying them.

Many promoters are happy with this situation. Ticketmaster prints, sells and then dispatches the tickets via its website and 24-hour phone line, so does the work that the promoter would rather not have to do. Others are less so, believing that the charges are exorbitant, and are fed up with fielding calls from annoyed punters. Some have looked to the alternatives of either selling the tickets themselves or through a competing agency, but with little success in a market dominated by one company.

Meanwhile, the occasional artist tries to buck the system, too. Most notable is Pearl Jam's 1994 attempt, which has gone down as the prime example of a major rock band taking on the Ticketmaster system - and losing. They decided to sell their own tickets and, because several venues were contracted with Ticketmaster, play their own temporary venues. It was a disaster. Unable to keep costs down, the band eventually had to cancel the tour and the attempt cost them $3 million.

The spirit, though, lives on. ReuBen, a comedy mime artist, has decided to play two shows in Dublin's Liberty Hall this weekend because he feels that it was a way to avoid the Ticketmaster route. When €2.50 of the ticket price from a previous show at Vicar Street went to the ticket agent before the extra fee was charged to the customer, he felt he should look at a way around it.

Understandably, Vicar Street points out that the tickets have to be sold some way and it contracts Ticketmaster because it not only gives the best service but is also good value, given that the costs of setting up a service of equal efficiency would be very high. It also says that it often helps acts who might want to print and sell their own tickets, and sells through independent shops, both of which are facilitated by Ticketmaster.

ReuBen, for his part, says it is not the venue that he has an issue with, but what he calls Ticketmaster's "monopoly"; although in this case that might seem to be splitting hairs. "I'm not saying that Ticketmaster shouldn't charge a fee," he says. "They're not a charity. But it seems an awful lot more than others are charging."

So tonight and tomorrow ReuBen will perform shows in Dublin's Liberty Hall, which uses a separate agent, Central Ticket Bureau. The booking fee is €1.50 and is included within the price of the ticket. Credit card fees are two per cent and are charged to the performer. ReuBen says that what appealed to him was that punters pay the price they see on the website while the artist is charged no additional fees.

"We run on the same overheads," says Phil Sterling of Central Ticket Bureau, "but we're not looking for huge profits. Ticketmaster adds on to the ticket prices, but we do our deals with the promoters." He believes that the Ticketmaster charges are too much. "I think it's really excessive. We have never charged more than €2.50 per ticket, and we've never done it afterwards. It costs the same to print out a €5 ticket as it does an €80 ticket."

It is one of a handful of alternatives to Ticketmaster. The website Tickets.ie has been selling shows in venues such as Dublin's Temple Bar Music Centre and Nancy Spain's in Cork. Another company, Just4Tickets, offers an online service through which tickets can be sold, but as of this week had only one event on its site.

Perhaps the best known rival is Ticketlord, with its very obvious pun, which sells tickets for some RDS events, among others.

Sterling admits that Ticketmaster remains the only agent with the capacity to sell tickets for something as big as a U2 show (although disgruntled fans who couldn't get on to Ticketmaster's site when the U2 tickets were released would disagree with that assessment).

Ticketmaster has long argued that its fees are both justified and fair, covering postage, credit card fees, telephone and Internet facilities and the cost of running 90 outlets across the country. Its UK and Ireland head, Tommy Higgins, used to be a soccer referee so the criticism is "water off a duck's back" to him. "It comes from a belief that what we are doing is right and that we have the clients, who really wouldn't use us if they thought it could be done better elsewhere."

In 2003, Ticketmaster made €3.3m pre-tax profits, down from €3.6 million in 2002. Higgins says that at six million tickets, that means 50c profit a ticket. "That we make a huge amount of money is a myth, it's a relatively small business. This notion that we have a monopoly is untrue. Of the entire ticket market, we have 16-20 per cent share."

Of course, when considering the relevance of this statistic we should remember that is for overall ticket sales - Ticketmaster has a far greater hold of the music market than of sports events, and none at all of movie ticket sales.

He insists that it is a transparent company. "A recent investigation by the Office of Fair Trading in Britain gave Ticketmaster a completely clean bill of health. And the Competition Authority is investigating here and is looking at the business inside-out so we'll see what they conclude." That report is due in the next few weeks.

Ticketmaster would not give any detailed information on the breakdown of the deals it has with promoters, as it is "commercially sensitive" because some are negotiated individually.

The Irish Times understands that it is standard for between 10 and 12 per cent of the ticket price to go to Ticketmaster before any of the extra charges are incurred by the gig-goer.

Meanwhile, we were also told by a source that the bank handling charge levied on Ticketmaster is one-and-a-half per cent, meaning that if you buy a ticket for €20, the credit card fee would be an additional 30c. Tommy Higgins will not comment on this, but he does say that banks have treated the company as high risk given that it relies on postal orders and credit card purchases online.

It certainly has the clients, and it is likely that unless the major promoters, notably MCD and Aiken Promotions (which also owns Vicar Street), decide to sell their tickets themselves or through another agent, things are unlikely to change. There is no sign of that.

"We found we couldn't do it any cheaper," MCD's Denis Desmond said after looking into Ticketmaster's pricing structure. "We would have to sell 1.2 million tickets just to break even. It is a great service. Yes, it is a little bit expensive - but go to New York, Paris, Amsterdam or London and you will pay a lot more."

In fact, charges can work out higher in The Netherlands and and in London, where a £75 ticket for Elton John will be followed by a £5 service charge and a £1.95 processing fee.

There is similar discontent in the US. The Chicago Tribune recently pointed out that if you had gone to see a show by Aaron Carter at the city's House of Blues, the Ticketmaster charges would have added $14.25 to the $30 ticket price. That's a 47.5 per cent add-on.

But if you had bought a ticket for a rock group called The Lovehammers, the original $10 price ended up as $19.55, a riot-inciting 95.5 per cent extra. The larger fee is a "convenience charge", explained as being the cost for the "convenience" of being able to buy tickets from home at any time.

"When computerised ticketing first started 25 year ago, people deemed it an incredible convenience . . . Now it has been deemed a necessity, and people wonder why they have to pay for that necessity," a Ticketmaster spokesman told the Washington Post.

There could yet be more for the customer to complain about. In the US, there are now Ticketmaster auctions. The promoter puts tickets on the site and lets the market dictate the price. There are no plans to bring it to Ireland as of yet, but if the promoters want it, it will happen.

Ticketmaster argues that the auctions only provide a service for the clients, and that it is a good system for charity gigs, but it certainly won't go poor doing it. "Traditionally, the reselling of tickets has been done by third parties in an aftermarket that is often insecure, potentially fraudulent, and may provide poor value to consumers," says its website. In other words, touts sell tickets at huge mark-ups, so we might as well help the promoter do it first.

There's even a benefit gig for auction at the moment. Current price is $250 per ticket, with bid increments set at $25. That's a lot of money. Must be a good show. Who tops the bill? Pearl Jam.

Alternative ticket agents:

www.tickets.ie

www.just4tickets.net

www.ticketlord.ie

www.centralticketbureau.com