Since we’re all here complaining about the presale, let’s talk about why it’s such a nightmare.
The only mod who could stop me has abandoned their kingdom. Spam has swept across the land. Only God can stop me and she’s like “Nah, actually, you’re good”. So I‘m gonna post something semi off-topic because it’s relevant and informative.
The TLDR version is that Ticketmaster/LiveNation is a ruthless capitalist pig-demon and so are AXS and pretty much all the rest. Our politicians are a bunch of geriatric old fucks who take donations from companies like this so they either don’t care or deliberately allow it. It’s all a big racket.
If you’re like me and prefer reading to watching videos, or you just want to know more check this out:
https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2022/mar/14/john-oliver-ticketmaster-live-music-costs
>”*That investigation also found that Ticketmaster often holds back the vast majority of tickets from the general public for the resale market, where they are mostly bought by professional ticket brokers with bots – “as I’m sure you all assumed, all of those stupid ‘are you a robot?’ tests have very much not kept them all out,” Oliver quipped.
Brokers flip those tickets on the secondary market for a huge mark-up on sites like SeatGeek, Stubhub and Ticketmaster, again. “These sites badly want you to think of them as fan-to-fan marketplaces,” said Oliver. “But the truth is, resale sites are not just fan-to-fan at all.” A government accountability report from 2018 found that the “overwhelming majority” of ticket sales on these sites were conducted by professional ticket brokers, marked up anywhere from 49% (on average) to as high as 7,000% (a One Direction concert).*”
And:
>”*When you take all of this together,” he later concluded, “**the reason tickets are so hard to get when they’re on sale is that they’re often not on sale**, and the reason they cost so much on the secondary market is that you’re paying exorbitant fees to the platform and might be buying from a broker or in rare cases, even from the artist themselves.””
https://www.reddit.com/r/Concerts/comments/1nop3z0/i_think_ticketmaster_just_admitted_to_me_how_they/ (Ticketbastard’s own resale market is a grift.)
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/california/2026/05/13/california-bill-aims-to-place-a-cap-on-resale-concert-ticket-prices/90050391007/# (This just happened a few days ago?! Sweet.)
https://www.theverge.com/policy/912689/live-nation-ticketmaster-antitrust-monopoly-trial-verdict
https://www.reddit.com/r/Music/comments/1t6ubzv/six_months_after_the_live_nation_settlement_heres/ Making them pay a tiny fine doesn’t do shit though.