As music fans, you probably already know how difficult it can be to score tickets to see your favorite artists when they go out on tour. In an episode of HBO’s Last Week Tonight, host John Oliver addressed Ticketmaster and some of the scams it’s been involved in, using instances with Pearl Jam and Metallica to highlight the flaws in the ticket-buying industry.
During the segment, Oliver included a few video snippets of fans voicing their frustrations with purchasing concert tickets and the rising costs. “If you don’t want to be behind the stage, you’re looking at $500 per ticket. Who can afford that?” one fan said. “For the amount I’m paying to see any random band that’s going on tour, they better be fucking serenading me,” declared another.
Oliver pointed out that the average cost for a popular concert has more than tripled since the mid-1990s, and that Ticketmaster is the main culprit responsible, especially because of all of the fees that are slapped onto the face value price at checkout.
Former Ticketmaster CEO Irving Azoff explained the fees in a video clip, saying, “When people hear what Ticketmaster’s service charge is, Ticketmaster was set up as a system where they took the heat for everybody… In that service charge are the credit card fees, the rebates to the buildings, the rebates sometimes to artists, sometimes the rebates to promoters… We’re like the IRS — we deliver the bad news.”
A year after Azoff gave that speech, Oliver noted, Ticketmaster merged…
