Text Bo Number Three: Case Study of Concert Tickets Market Back in 1965, long before Ticketmaster,..

Text Bo Number Three: Case Study of Concert Tickets Market Back in 1965, long before Ticketmaster, StubHub, and TicketsNow, legendary rock music promoter Bill Graham noticed that mass parties erupted wherever local rock groups played. Graham realized that fans placed a high value on the experience of the concert, in addition to paying for a recording of the music He went on to revolutionize the business of rock concert promoting-booking and managing multl-city tours for bands and selling lots of tickets. Those tickets were carefully rationed, with a single purchaser allowed to buy only a

»Text Bo Number Three: Case Study of Concert Tickets Market Back in 1965, long before Ticketmaster, StubHub, and TicketsNow, legendary rock music promoter Bill Graham noticed that mass parties erupted wherever local rock groups played. Graham realized that fans placed a high value on the experience of the concert, in addition to paying for a recording of the music He went on to revolutionize the business of rock concert promoting-booking and managing multl-city tours for bands and selling lots of tickets. Those tickets were carefully rationed, with a single purchaser allowed to buy only a limited number. Fans would line up at box offices, sometimes camping out the night before for popular bands Wanting to maintain the aura of the 1960s that made rock oncerts accessible to all their fans, many top bands choose to price their tickets below the market equilibrium level. (Some bands, such as Montreal’s Arcade Fire and Toronto’s Broken Social Scene, have even played free shows when they have returned to their home towns after a tour.) In 2009 Bruce Springsteen sold tickets at his con- certs in New Jersey (his home state and home to his most ardent fans) for between $65 and $95. Tickets for Springsteen concerts could have sold for far more: econe mists Alan Krueger and Marie Connolly analyzed a 2002 Springsteen concert for which every ticket sold for $75 and concluded that Springsteen forfeited about $4 million by not charging the market price, about $280. So what was Springsteen thinking? Cheap tickets can ensure that a concert sells out, making it a better experience for both band and audience. But it is believed that other factors are at work-that cheap tickets are a way for a band to reward fans’ loyalty as well as a means to seem more “authentic and less com- mercial, As Bruce Springsteen has said, “In some fashion, I help people hold on to their own humanity-If I’m doing my job right.” But the rise of the Internet has made things vastly more complicated. Now, rather than queue for tickets at the venue, fans buy tickets online, either from a direct seller like Ticketmaster (which obtains tickets directly from the con- cert producer) or a reseller like StubHub or icketsNow (which is owned by Ticketmaster). Resellers (otherwise known as scalpers) can-and do-make lots of money by scooping up large numbers of tickets at the box office price and reselling them at the market price. StubHub, for example, made $1 billion in the resale market for tickets in 2010 Even in provincial and territoril markets where scalping is illegal, the enforcement of the law is relatively weak and the potential for profit offsets the penalty has infuriated fans as well as the bands. But resellers have cast the issue as one of the freedom to dispose of one’s ticket as one chooses. In 2013, both sides-bands and their fans versus ticket resellers-are busily lobbying gov- cnment officials to shape ticket reselling laws to their advantage Words: 532 of 100% 1 Sec Pages: 3 of 3 Print Layout View 08B FA F1l F6 20 F5 F1 F2

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