Ticketmaster has announced that it intends to “do a better job” explaining those universally-detested “convenience” fees. They telegraphed this on Twitter — on a Sunday — maybe because there isn’t much to see here.
The number one complaint by music fans (who tend to agree on little) is the additional cost which are disclosed late in the ordering process when you have more invested in closing the deal.
Ticketmaster’s fees are divided between Ticketmaster, venues, promoters, artists, managers, tour managers, etc. on a sliding scale depending on how the deal is structured. They aren’t trivial: As the illustration to the right shows, this fee can add 45 percent to the cost of the transaction.
This new system is not totally transparent because Ticketmaster doesn’t explain the exact breakdown of the fees between the various stakeholders in each transaction. (As Azoff tweeted, “The fees don’t go to TM. Only a portion do.”) If transparency is the point, why not tell fans where these fees are going?
That’s not all. When you select a certain number of tickets from the dropdown menu, Ticketmaster does not update its prices to include the total price and fees for all the tickets, but instead, keeps listing the single ticket price. To that charge, Azoff tweeted in response last night that Ticketmaster “can’t boil all fees down to a per ticket fee until we know how many tix are bought and shipping method chosen, so it has to happen later.”
Ticketmaster as much as acknowledges that it’s ridiculous to list the fees separately, saying in its blog post, “You will begin to see many of our clients move to truly all-in pricing, because they know it sells more tickets and makes you happier.”
We understand that the bit about the shipping method, but why not reveal the fees as pertain to single versus group purchases earlier in the process? Ticketmaster charges a flat per-ticket fee now, so it has nothing to hide on this front other than the way those fees add up.