My Most Hated Company by Scott Stolz, CFP, RICP (week 44)

 

This week I’m going to take a break from writing about financial stuff.  If you read this blog on a regular basis, you’ll probably appreciate a break as well.  Sunday’s Flyover Florida polled its readers on whether or not they have plans to go to a concert this year.  Today’s edition reported the following results:

Will you attend a concert this year?

1.      No: 44%

2.      Maybe: 30%

3.      Multiple: 17%

4.      One: 9%

I have to say, those results surprised me.  Since Covid, tickets for almost any concert or sporting event have gone through the roof.  My economics background tells me that this is about too many people chasing too few tickets, thereby driving up the price.  But with only 1 out of 4 respondents saying they were planning to go to one or more concerts this year, that doesn’t seem like excessive demand.  Me, I’m a concert guy.  We saw Collective Soul last weekend and currently have seven more concerts on our 2026 calendar.  Therefore, the price of concert tickets does interest me – and it has an impact on my retirement expenses (sorry, I couldn’t resist adding some link to financial matters).

This leads me to my most hated company on the planet – LiveNation/Ticketmaster.  Are they a monopoly and do they have a financial interest in selling tickets at the highest price possible?  The answer to both questions is most certainly “yes.”  In fact, in 2024, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) and 30 states filed an anti-trust suit against LiveNation/Ticketmaster claiming they were a monopoly that artificially drove up ticket prices.  The DOJ and a handful of states recently reached a tentative settlement with LiveNation/Ticketmaster after the company agreed to cap “service” fees at 15%, pay a $280 million settlement, and put some limits on how it operates.  No word yet on how the ticket purchasers will get $280 million, or whether they will get any of it at all.  Fortunately, most of the states saw the settlement as inadequate and continued ahead with the trial.  Last month the jury decided that LiveNation/Ticketmaster was indeed guilty of U.S. and state anti-trust laws.  Duh.  Anyone that has bought a concert ticket in the last 5 years already knows that to be true.  Now we just have to see what penalty is placed on the company by the judge.

I would actually be fine if the judge left the company intact.  It’s not their business model I dislike, but rather the ridiculous fee they tack on for doing nothing more than placing an order.  It’s actually pretty convenient to buy all of my tickets and then subsequently hold the tickets all in one app on my phone.  On the rare occasions I buy tickets from another site, I inevitable have to scramble a bit to locate the tickets as the concert approaches.  The solution to this is quite simple.  Put a fixed dollar cap on the fees, not a percentage cap like the DOJ agreed to.  It’s not the ticket prices that really make me angry.  I still buy into the concept of supply and demand.  I’m actually fine with artists getting whatever they can.  But why should Ticketmaster get a higher “service” fee for a $500 ticket versus a $100 ticket?  They didn’t do any more work to process the more expensive ticket.  Yet, they get 5 times the fee.  The current fee structure gives them a financial incentive to charge as much as they can for a seat.  Therefore, they have established various ticket categories to justify a higher priced ticket.  Let’s look at the Teddy Swims concert here in Tampa in October as an example.  I have the following options, all in the same section and no more than 6 rows apart:

Ticket Category	Ticket Price	“Service” Fee	“Service” Fee %
VIP Lounge Exp.	$429.25	$77.25	18%
Official Platinum	$315.75	$56.85	18%
Standard Admission	$184.25	$39.49	21%

 

Can you imagine financial services firms getting away with charging an 18-21% commission on a stock purchase?  Especially in this day and age.  The conflict of interest would be so obvious that the regulators would be all over it in a heartbeat.  Setting aside their outrageous pricing scheme, the other reason LiveNation/Ticketmaster sits at the top of my most hated company list is the fact that they provide so little service for their “service” fee.  For the longest time after Covid, they didn’t even have a published phone number you could call.  They also eliminated their chat function.  The only way you could contact them was by e-mail, which based on my experience, took days to get a response – if any.  Even today, if there is a problem with your order, good luck getting it fixed.  I’m hoping that part of the judgement is that they are no longer allowed to call it a “service” fee.  Perhaps something like “our cut for doing almost nothing” fee.

Let’s have some fun with this topic.  Put into the comments section your most hated company and why.  I’ll send a free copy of my book “Rest Easy Retirement” to the best answer.