Consumers pay more than double in ticketing fees for live music concerts if a promoter uses Ticketek or Ticketmaster instead of an independent ticket agency of their choice, according to modelling released to Guardian Australia.
Transaction fees, “infrastructure credit card” fees and “inside charges” mean concert goers pay as much as $21.73 to the Live Nation-owned company Ticketmaster on top of the actual ticket price, compared with a maximum $8.10 if the promoter is able to use an Australian-owned independent seller such as Oztix, the modelling shows.
The price differential is even higher when comparing Oztix to Ticketek, owned by another multinational titan of the live music industry, TEG.
Ticketek’s inside charge, booking fee, transaction fee and a “supplementary booking fee/credit card fee” adds an additional $25.85 to each premium ticket sold.
The modelling was released by national live music promoter Paul Sloan, managing director of Supersonic Australasia. The producer and agent for artists including Nick Cave, King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard, Bon Iver and Amyl & the Sniffers and event producer of the Wave Rock festival released his ticket sales data to demonstrate how venues that have exclusive deals with either Ticketmaster or Ticketek can add to the cost of a single ticket.
The modelling, based on 1,000 single ticket sales for three different venues, is based on a forthcoming tour of an international act playing in Kings Park Perth – where the venue is operated by Live Nation and tickets are sold exclusively through its company Ticketmaster, Brisbane’s Great Hall– operated independently but with an exclusive deal with Ticketek, and Melbourne’s Plenary Theatre – which allows the promoter to use a ticket seller of their choice, in this case Oztix.
All three venues have similar seating capacities and overhead costs, Sloan said.
“These high fees charged by Ticketmaster and Ticketek are not representative of the services offered, some of them are just made up,” he said.
“Exclusive ticketing rights, once granted, have no competition. In a free market where there’s no exclusive contracts, we would at least see ticket fees prices fall to current free market levels, which is half or less of the current Ticketmaster/Ticketek settings.”
Sloan said he decided to go public on ticketing fees after the live music industry’s peak body, Live Performance Australia (LPA), issued a statement on Tuesday condemning Monday’s Four Corners program on Live Nation, which suggested the multinational’s vertically integrated business model (a model shared by TEG) was reducing competition and driving up concert ticket prices.
“We are already in a situation where the majority of people in the business are too scared to talk publicly for fear of commercial reprisals, so having an accurate voice in media and government is excruciatingly difficult when you have PR teams at TEG, Live Nation and now peak bodies like LPA defending what are universally recognised inside the business as deteriorating market conditions for artists and fans,” he said.
“The paradigm we are worried about sees lowest artist earn, highest ticket fees and highest customer spend to see the same artist.
“If we lose independent venue, promoter and ticket options, then that is what we have left and we all lose.”
LPA, which on Tuesday described the ABC program as “regrettably missing” a number of facts, represents more than 400 organisations and companies working in the live music industry. But Sloan said its decision to come out in defence of its most powerful member, Live Nation, which occupies two seats on the LPA’s executive council (including one of its vice-presidential positions) comes at the expense of many of the smaller Australian players the LPA is supposed to, for an annual fee, represent – players that have no capacity to compete with Live Nation and TEG and their behemoth ticketing companies.
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Sloan said more than a dozen of these organisations, including corporate and government venues, arts & music festivals, promoters, agents and cinemas, have expressed their disappointment and dismay at LPA to him.
“There is clear evidence locally, nationally, and globally of problematic practices which ultimately push artificially inflated costs on to artists and ticket buyers,” said one email seen by the Guardian, sent by the artistic director of one of the largest arts festivals in the country
The LPA’s media release was “not indicative at all of where our industry sits as a whole”, another Sydney-based promoter said.
A Western Australian-based venue operator described the media release as “very disappointing”.
LPA’s chief executive, Evelyn Richardson, who issued the release, declined an interview with the Guardian, saying: “I stand by my statement which corrected factual inaccuracies in the ABC’s Four Corners program.”
TEG has not responded to the Guardian’s request for comment on its ticketing fee policies.
In the wake of the Four Corners report, Live Nation issued a detailed response describing the program as “biased and highly inaccurate”.
On Friday, Live Nation responded to the Guardian’s queries, stating its “venues and ticketing practices are consistent and competitive with the rest of the industry and all other operators”.
Fees are how the ticketing company is paid for its services, and some fees are paid to venues to help cover costs of operating the facility and hosting shows, including expenses for staffing, security, venue improvements and more, a spokesperson said in a statement.
“Venues set ticketing fees with their selected ticketing agent,” the statement said.