Matt Connarton Unleashed: Oasis reunion tour problems get worse

0:00 Speaker 1: For the first hour, we have some music news, music industry news to discuss.

0:05 Speaker 2: You know, I love this stuff.

0:06 Speaker 1: I'm a music industry nerd and I do some things in the industry, and I have for a long time. But we were talking last week. I think it was last week. Was it last week or the week before? I have to be honest with you, It all blurs together, but.

0:22 Speaker 2: No, I think it was last week.

0:23 Speaker 1: We were talking about Oasis and this debacle. We have an update on this well, and it relates to another issue happening in the music industry.

0:33 Speaker 3: But so.

0:38 Speaker 1: Oasis tickets went on sale. It's the first time they're touring in fifteen years. The Gallagher brothers loll. I'm sorry, not loll Noel and Liam. I do that once in a while. I create amalgams of words. I combined Nol and Liam into loll. I'll just call them loll. So Lowell actually managed to stop arguing enough to say, let's go make some money. That's how the uh, that's how people who are cynical about it or talking about it right, Oh, this is just a money grab.

1:09 Speaker 2: Oasis is there. They're coming for our cash.

1:12 Speaker 1: They just want to make some money now, that's not how I think about it necessarily. I mean, again, I do understand that that's very often a purpose of doing this, but but I also am a fan of Oasis. Although it's funny so back in the day, back in the nineties when Wonderwall was on the radio every five minutes, I actually really liked it that Wonderwall. I thought was such a great song. And I still think it's a great song. But if I hear it now, I'm like, eh, I'm over it. Oh, I was over it a long time ago.

1:46 Speaker 1: Acquiesce is my favorite Oasis song, which was actually a B side. But anyway, I'm I think it's cool. I mean, I'm not gonna go spend gobs of money. I don't know if they've even put any US tour dates on sale. I know they've got a bunch of UK dates, but you know, I'm not gonna go see them because I don't want to pay all that money and it's going to be expensive. It already is expensive because tickets went on sale in the UK, and that's what set off this whole controversy around the ticket sales themselves.

2:19 Speaker 1: But anyway, so Oasis, no matter how you feel about them, love them, hate them. They're kind of polarizing. I've always been a fan, but I also understand, and again, as someone who's done things in the industry, I have kind of a you know, I can look at it both as a fan and as a business. I can see it from both perspectives. So, yeah, maybe it is a money grab. I don't, you know, but it's a business. You got to make money, right, you got to make a living. You know, these guys probably.

2:52 Speaker 2: Spend a lot.

2:54 Speaker 1: They just seems, well, at least Liam does, probably spend a lot. Noel always struck me as a down to earth of the two, but I'm sure Liam has quite the lifestyle anyway.

3:06 Speaker 2: But put all that aside, regardless of how you feel about it.

3:08 Speaker 1: So we were talking on the show last week about tickets went on sale and the websites were crashing. I say websites plural because obviously you know Ticketmaster, which is owned by Live Nation. They put the tickets on sale, nobody could get them because the site kept crashing, but also the secondary sites were crashing, and then Oasis's management put out a statement saying, actually, don't even buy these tickets on secondary sites because those will be canceled. Those are not authorized. And we got into this a little bit last week Jenny and I talking about how, you know, you've got what a big tour like this goes on sale, So you've got Ticketmaster, which sells the tickets, but very often what happens is for I think a lot of people are probably pretty savvy to this already.

3:59 Speaker 1: But the reason that something can go on sale and then it sells out like immediately, I'm sure people probably assume, well, that's because of the Internet. You know that that didn't happen pre Internet for those of us who are old enough to remember, you know, when you would have to actually go and stand in line somewhere to buy tickets. But you know, things would sell out quickly, which is why if it was a big tour that you really wanted to see, you'd have to go and stand in line, you know, Like Jenny has told stories about, you know her, I think her and her mom standing in line for Prince tickets and like camping out overnight or something, or being there for hours.

4:39 Speaker 2: When Prince was touring.

4:42 Speaker 1: But then so the Internet comes along, for lack of a better way of putting it, and everything's available online. So things sell out instantly, and yes, uh, because in theory, you know, thousand, tens, hundreds of thousands, potentially millions of people can go and try to buy these tickets immediately once they go online in the digital age, so to speak. But there's another element to that. Very often these tickets are bought up by scalpers. And I don't mean when I say scalper, I don't mean the guy standing out in front of the venue trying to sell you a ticket to a sold out show because the show has sold out, but this random guy has tickets that he's willing to sell you at a premium cash only.

5:34 Speaker 1: I mean scalpers, these services, these ticketing sites that buy in bulk these tickets and then resell them at a profit. That goes on all the time. There are those who have tried to push back on it, trying to find ways to prevent that from happening, but it still goes on. And then, of course you've also got the other element of Ticketmaster itself. Some people think that, for example, the Live Nation Ticketmaster merger never should have been approved by the government. That gets into a whole other thing.

6:13 Speaker 1: So you know, a lot of people are dissatisfied with Ticketmaster itself as an entity. Remember back in the day again, this was yeah, this must have been in the nineties or early two thousands when Pearl Jam was kind of the first to say, hey, we don't even want to deal with Ticketmaster anymore. We don't like the way they do business, we don't like the way the fans are kind of getting the shaft. And so they started working with smaller you know, in various markets around the country. They started working with these smaller market ticketing agencies, which didn't really work out that great, and in the end pearl Jam had to give in, had to capitulate and go back to working with Ticketmaster.

6:49 Speaker 2: It's just the reality of it.

6:54 Speaker 1: So you've got all of that, and then you've got this new element. And this we did not talk about last week, but again it is part of this whole story with Oasis and these tickets. Is the dynamic pricing. Now, for those of you who don't know, you may have heard the term, some of you will know, some of you will not know what this is. But dynamic pricing is this concept where, well, you know, basic free market economics, right, supply and demand, When supplies low demand is high, things cost more money.

7:32 Speaker 1: Well, this concept has been applied to tickets and Ticketmaster uses it where Okay, so if demand is high for a show and supply is low, only so many tickets available, those tickets will automatically increase in price.

7:50 Speaker 2: There's even been who was it. There was a.

7:54 Speaker 1: Fast food restaurant chain that tried to do this, and I want to say it was Wendy's. They either tried it in some of their locations or they were testing it in maybe one location and they were thinking about rolling it out nationally or something. I don't remember all the details, but they tried to do some sort of dynamic pricing concept where at busy times of day the food would cost more. But I think they probably pulled the plug on that pretty quickly. I think it was Wendy's who tried to do this.

8:25 Speaker 1: But anyway, so this has been done with Ticketmaster, and that factors into the Oasis debacle, as it were, because now Ticketmaster is being investigated about the dynamic pricing. Now, if you're a ticket buyer, you may not like this very much. You might long for the days when tickets would go on sale and you know what the price is and you just go and you buy the tickets at the price that you're expecting them to be because that's what they're announced at, and that that is over, you know. I mean, if you're buying tickets to a smaller sh like, for example, if you're buying tickets to go see John Posse at Dart at the Rex Theater on Friday night, I don't think those prices are going to change, right, you know.

9:13 Speaker 1: But but when you're a ticketmaster, uh, and you can afford all this technology to control the prices and everything, you know, you can do whatever you want. I mean Ticketmaster, it is truly a monopoly. They can do whatever they want. But that doesn't mean that they can do whatever they want without some consequences. So let's look at this again. The newest wrinkle in the what did I say?

9:37 Speaker 2: I'm calling them loll loll Gallagher.

9:41 Speaker 1: I should if you're just joining us, I should clarify it's an amalgam of NOL and Liam, because apparently I have difficulty say NOL and Liam, so it's easier to just say loll. They are almost indistinguishable in terms of I mean, they don't look exactly alike. But if you listen to an interview with them. You know what's funny about OA Back in the nineties when they first got big, that first album definitely maybe really blew up. I remember seeing interviews with them on MTV and MTV would actually they would actually subtitle the interviews.

10:14 Speaker 1: Obviously the Gallaghers were speaking English in the interviews, but their accents were such that you almost couldn't understand them, so MTV would actually subtitle the interviews.

10:25 Speaker 2: It was funny.

10:28 Speaker 1: And I don't know if they were doing it to be funny or kind of doing it to be funny, but it was funny. They can be difficult to understand. By the way, Noel Gallagher is very funny too.

10:37 Speaker 2: He's got it.

10:37 Speaker 1: I don't think Liam's particularly funny, but Noel has a very dry sense of humor that I like anyway. Okay, so here's the newest wrinkle, and this is from Music Businessworldwide dot Com. UK competition regulator launches investigation into Ticketmaster over Oasis ticket sale. So now the government's involved, says here. The UK's Competition and Markets Authority CMA has launched an investigation in the Live Nation owned ticketing giant Ticketmaster. The reason for the investigation last Saturdays on sale for Oasis' twenty twenty five UK Actually, what was the date on this article, September fifth.

11:24 Speaker 1: Okay, so it is referring to last Saturday. So it's referring to the on sale that happened one week ago for Oasis' twenty twenty five UK and Ireland stadium tour, including quote how so called dynamic pricing may have been used unquote, the CMA said in a statement on September five. The Competition watchdog says the plans to scrutinize quote excuse me, whether the sale of Oasis tickets by Ticketmaster may have breached consumer protection law unquote, because again, like I was saying, not everyone thinks that the dynamic pricing is right or ethical, And I'm not saying that I have a problem with it.

12:11 Speaker 1: I'm just saying, you know, well, apparently it's people in government who are saying, we're not sure that this is the correct way to be treating consumers.

12:21 Speaker 2: I'm not making a judgment about it.

12:23 Speaker 1: I'm agnostic on that part of it, but I think it's interesting that you know, what I do think will be really interesting is does this stick around the dynamic pricing concept in terms of tickets. It's already lasted longer than I thought. This has been going on a few years now. When it started, I remember thinking this isn't going to last. There is going to be so much backlash to this. People are not going to like it. People are used to tickets go on sale, They go on sale for a particular price. If a show isn't selling, rarely will you even see the price go down, right, You rarely see that.

13:05 Speaker 1: You very rarely see discounted tickets.

13:08 Speaker 2: In fact, you're.

13:09 Speaker 1: Look, if you're a promoter and you've got a big show in an arena, say right, and tickets aren't moving, you'll give away tickets before you'll lower the prices. That's true if you've got if you've got a show in a ten thousand seed arena. Again, this is if you're the promoter putting on the show, not the band's management has no say in this, or certainly not the record label, nobody, or even the venue. You're the promoter and you're deciding. You're making decisions based on how these tickets are moving.

13:43 Speaker 1: If it's soft, meaning you're not selling enough tickets, you're not selling as many as you thought you were. What you'll do is very often is they call it papering the room, which means because what you don't want at the end of the day is a half empty arena. So if you're in a ten thousand seat venue and you're only on track to sell five thousand tickets, you don't want that. It just doesn't look good right to have a ten thousand seat arena that's only half full. So if you were thinking you're gonna sell eight thousand, right, so you'd be at eighty percent capacity.

14:26 Speaker 1: Sorry, if I'm getting two into the weeds, but I know a lot of people in the industry listen to the show.

14:32 Speaker 2: So if you're only at you think you're gonna be.

14:35 Speaker 1: At eighty percent capacity, you're gonna sell eight thousand out of ten thousand seats, and but it's looking like you're only gonna hit five thousand. You don't want a half empty arena, So you will give away tickets to that show. It happens all the time. You'll you'll be contacting every radio station you can find that you think might be interested in doing a ticket giveaway, be giving them out to businesses and saying, here, give these to your employees, or do some kind of contest, do whatever you want with them, just make sure people.

15:07 Speaker 2: From your company show up at the show.

15:09 Speaker 1: You'll do anything that you can to get more people in the door. And at that point, it's all about the optics of it. It's all about what it looks like. Because you don't want to put on a show in a ten thousand seed arena that's literally half full and then have that, you know, have people hear about it, have people seeing on social media tickets of a half empty arena, just.

15:33 Speaker 2: All of that.

15:34 Speaker 1: You want it to look like everything that you do is successful. So you're going to paper again, it's called paper in the room. You're going to try to get as many people in there as you can, and if that means because you have nothing to lose, right, if you're not going to sell those tickets, you might as well give them away because the show's gonna happen no matter what, and you're gonna have to pay everybody.

15:56 Speaker 2: No matter what.

15:56 Speaker 1: If you're the promoter, you've got financial obligation tied up in this. You might take a loss on that show, but you might as well get as money as many people in the door as you can, so at least.

16:06 Speaker 2: It looks good.

16:07 Speaker 1: So the point being, what you'll rarely see. I can't say never, but what you'll rarely see is a promoter say, Okay, these tickets they're not moving at sixty dollars, so I think we're going to drop the price to fifty or to forty and see if we can sell some more. You just don't see that they'd rather paper the room than lower the price on the tickets. Reason being, if you lower the price on the tickets, again not using Ticketmaster's dynamic pricing, I'm just saying, if you decide, as the promoter, you're going to lower the price, now you're you're risking well, first of all, you're risking alienating the people who already bought the tickets at the higher price, So you don't want them going on so media saying hey I got ripped off.

17:01 Speaker 1: But although that's probably not that likely. But what you also don't want to happen is what if you lower the price but it doesn't it doesn't juice the sales. Now you're taking an even bigger loss. You could lower the price, but it doesn't increase your sales. The same number of people who were probably going to buy tickets end up buying the tickets anyway regardless. Right, So they would have bought the tickets anyway if they were still ten dollars more, twenty dollars more. So you lower the price, you still only sell five thousand tickets.

17:34 Speaker 1: You're you've still got a half empty room, and you've actually made less money.

17:38 Speaker 2: So it's not worth the risk.

17:40 Speaker 1: So the best thing to do, at least in my experience and from what I've seen, is in that situation, you leave the ticket price as it is and you just hope that you know, you get a lot of walk up right, you know, people coming showing up on the day of and and you try to paper the room, you try to give out some tickets too. But this dynamic pricing has changed to everything. So again getting back to this article, over ten million fans from one hundred and fifty eight countries are confirmed to have queued up on Saturday, August thirty one to buy tickets to the tour.

18:23 Speaker 1: Yeah so it was yeah, so, like I said, it was last weekend that the tickets went on sale. Two Additionally, additional Wembley Stadium shows have been added due to quote unprecedented demand during the sale, which Oasis said in a press release Saturday, quote saw all ticket platforms struggling to cope, resulting in immense frustration and disappointment for fans who missed out after queuing for many hours.

18:49 Speaker 2: Unquote. By the way, the.

18:51 Speaker 1: Same thing happened in the United States. If you remember with Taylor Swift, same thing. You know, people were frustrated. They were trying to get I remember seeing people on social media just you know, in tears over it. They were so desperately trying to get Taylor Swift tickets and uh and couldn't because you know, you wait, you log onto the website, you're in the queue, You're waiting and waiting and waiting, and then eventually something happens. You know, maybe the site crashes, or you know, there's something something goes wrong, maybe your computer suddenly wants to update and shuts itself down and restarts or whatever it is, right, you know, after you've already invested hours of your time and then you now you're you're at the back of the line, or now you log back in and the shows sold out.

19:37 Speaker 1: So you know, so this this is not in and of itself unprecedented, but to put the extent of that demand into context, Wembley, where Oasis are now set to play seven of the tours nineteen dates, has a capacity of ninety thousand, which means that the band would need to perform one hundred eleven dates at the stadium to meet the demand for next year's tour.

20:10 Speaker 1: The following Wednesday, and the same press release announcing the two additional Wembley shows, Oasis publicly distanced themselves from the decisions that led to the use of Ticketmaster's dynamic pricing tools during the sale.

20:25 Speaker 2: Yeah, so a.

20:26 Speaker 1: Lot of this went on. Where now Oasis, the Gallagher brothers, Lowell.

20:33 Speaker 2: I'm calling them.

20:34 Speaker 1: I've melded them together into one person, Lowell Gallagher. It's just easier economy of language.

20:41 Speaker 2: My friends.

20:43 Speaker 1: So now fans are pointing at them and going, you guys are bad, you guys are greedy.

20:50 Speaker 2: All this.

20:51 Speaker 1: In reality, it really doesn't have much to do with them, but they're going to take the blame. Of course, they're the public faces of this. I'm I have a hunch that they probably don't care that much because.

21:08 Speaker 2: You know, they they're extremely.

21:11 Speaker 1: Rich and famous, and you know is you know it probably doesn't affect that much. I don't think a mean comment from a fan is going to hurt the Gallagher brothers. But but that is, you know, they're they're the face of it, so it's they're going to take the brunt of the anger and ire from people. It says here, informed sources speaking to MBW, which is Music Business Worldwide, This is a great website. This week estimated that ten to fifteen percent of the one point four million tickets sold over the weekend were quote dynamically priced on ticket Master, meaning the price automatically adjusts based on supply and demand.

21:52 Speaker 1: The price for these tickets more than doubled from a face value of around one hundred and fifty pounds I assume that's pounds to an in demand price tag of around three hundred and fifty five, causing fan outcry on social media platforms and much discussion in other media outlets including MBW on Tuesday, and again, that takes us back to what I was saying before about how long will this last? People don't like the dynamic pricing, They end up feeling taken advantage of, and they end up feeling ripped off as a free market economist.

22:34 Speaker 1: I'm not an economist. I'm sorry as but as but as a I don't know why I said economist, but you know, as someone who believes in free markets, let me put it that way. I you know, I'm not I'm not really taking a position one way or the other. It's it's supplying demand, it's being applied here. It's almost like an auction in a sense. Right, but buying the tickets, I'm not taking a position. I'm gonna remain agnostic on it, at least for now. But I'm telling you this could be the nail in the coffin of this particular strategy, because people are you know, the last thing you want is your consumers or your fans to feel that they've been victimized.

23:21 Speaker 1: You know, I saw one comment somebody directed at the Gallaghers saying, you know, I wouldn't have thought. I wouldn't have thought you would be so greedy. You know, your fan base is, you know, kind of working class people, and here you are being so greedy. And again it's but it's not it's not them. I'm not saying they're not greedy. Maybe they are.

23:46 Speaker 2: I don't know.

23:47 Speaker 1: Again, you know, you get when you get to that level. I mean, there's been plenty of research and studies done on this. When you get to a certain level of fame and money, there is a certain almost as sociopathy that sets in.

23:59 Speaker 2: Right, So you know, I'm not.

24:03 Speaker 1: Saying they're not terrible people. They may be, they may not be. I don't know. I'm a fan of their music, but if I actually met them, I might be horrified. They say, don't meet your heroes.

24:15 Speaker 2: I don't know. But it's ultimately not their fault.

24:18 Speaker 1: But but if there's enough outcry over this, over this whole dynamic pricing thing, this might be the beginning of the end of it. So the band's press release said, quote, it needs to be made clear that Oasis leave decisions on ticketing and pricing.

24:37 Speaker 2: Entirely to their promoters.

24:39 Speaker 1: And management, and at no time had any awareness at dynamic pricing was going to be used.

24:46 Speaker 2: Unquote.

24:50 Speaker 1: Is that satisfactory? Probably from a pr standpoint, probably not. No one's going to believe that. No one who's no no one who's angry about this is going to read that statement and say, oh, Okay, it's really got nothing to do with them. I mean, it's true in a sense right. But there's a big hole in this though too. Let me read part of this again. It needs to be made clear that Oasis leave decisions on ticketing and pricing entirely to their promoters and management. One little problem with that. So promoters are people you're in business with, right, the promoter is the one.

25:31 Speaker 1: Well, the promoter first of all, takes all the risk. Again, I have experience in this, so I know how this feels. Not on this level obviously, but you know the promoters putting on the shows and handling all of that, so you are somewhat at a promoter's mercy. The problem is the sentence says that they leave this to their promoters and management. And management is a problem to me because that's there's a cop out there. Oh that's our management. Well, here's the thing is management works for the band.

26:08 Speaker 1: The band doesn't work for management. It's not how you know, it's not. It's not like in the corporate world, you know, when if you have a manager, you work for your manager, right, they're your boss, you know. In the music industry it's the other way around. In that if if you are an artist and you have a manager, the manager is someone you hire they work for you. You hire them to run your business, the business of your music. So for the band to say, well, that's not up to us, we leave that to our management, Well that the management works for you, dude.

26:43 Speaker 2: You know, you can't really pass the buck.

26:46 Speaker 1: You know, they're your employee in a sense, not literally an employee.

26:50 Speaker 2: They you know, they've got contracts and everything. But you know what I'm saying, you know, So.

26:54 Speaker 1: To say it's one thing to say, I you know, you can kind of let it fly a little bit and say, well, it's it's not our fault, it's you know, we leave that to the promoters. Well, yeah, that's what the promoter does, right, that's their function. But to say and management, well, that's your management is they're your management. You You can fire your management if you want to. You can tell your management don't do it this way. It's upsetting our fans. You can tell your management to handle it differently.

27:22 Speaker 2: Okay.

27:23 Speaker 1: So there's more to the statement quote. While prior meetings between promoters, ticket Master and the band's management resulted in a positive ticket sales strategy which would be a fair experience for fans, including dynamic ticketing to help keep general ticket prices down as well as reduced touting. The I don't know touting is that maybe that's a term for that almost sounds like a might be another term for scalping. In the United States, we call it scalping. Maybe there they call it touting. I don't know, Sorry, I just I don't know what that word means in that, but I assume from the context it might be another term for scalping.

28:07 Speaker 1: The execution of the plan failed to meet expectations. All parties involved did their utmost to deliver the best possible fan experience, but due to the unprecedented demand, this became impossible to achieve. M I feel like there's a contradiction here. Did anyone else here a contradiction? Yeah, there's a there's a pretty latent contradiction self contradiction in this statement that to me seems glaringly obvious. So let's back up a little bit. So the statement opens with it needs to be made clear that Oasis leave decisions on ticketing and pricing entirely to their promoters and management, and at no time had any awareness that dynamic pricing was to be used, So the band had no idea according to that paragraph or that opening statement, that opening sentence, that of the statement that dynamic pricing was to be used.

29:10 Speaker 1: But then they say, oh, okay, I'm sorry. No, I was wrong. I was wrong.

29:18 Speaker 2: I retract. There is no there is no contradiction.

29:23 Speaker 1: I thought there was a contradiction because it sounded like they're saying that Oasis had no idea, the band had no idea. And then I see this sentence while while prior meetings between promoter, Sigmaster and the band's management resulted in a positive ticket strategy, you know that everyone thought would be fair, and I thought I took that as everyone was involved in that decision. But no, that's not correct. The band the band is not mentioned in that part. So there is no contradiction. I was wrong about that.

29:55 Speaker 1: I apologize. Okay, all right, Well, so taking that into a count, it's probably the best possible statement that you know, it's the best damage control they could do. Let me put it that way. It's not going to satisfy people, but its damage control is about just doing the best you can with a rough situation. The CMA said today that and again that's the part of the government that does consumer protection in the UK that it is at the initial stage of its investigation. It will now engage with Ticketmaster and gather evidence from various other sources, which quote may include the band's management and event organizers unquote.

30:43 Speaker 1: SJM, Live Nation, MCD and DF Concerts are promoting the Oasis tour. Ticketmaster was one of the three sites used, along with Gigs and Tours and See Tickets. The CMA stressed in its statement on Thursday that quote, it should not be assumed that Ticketmaster has broken consumer protection law unquote No, I mean and from look, I'm not a legal expert of any kind, and there may be an element to this that I'm missing, but I don't see any anything that makes me say, oh, it sounds like, Look, we can talk about this whole dynamic pricing strategy as being kind of dirty business.

31:22 Speaker 1: Right again, I'm going to remain agnostic on it for now, but that doesn't mean it's and that anything's illegal about it yet. Right, There's nothing illegal about it that I can see. The Competition Regulator added that it will quote also consider whether it is appropriate to investigate the conduct of anyone else in relation to the matter.

31:45 Speaker 2: Unquote.

31:47 Speaker 1: Dynamic ticket pricing sees prices surge in real time as demand rises, similar to airline.

31:53 Speaker 2: Tickets or Uber Live.

31:55 Speaker 1: Nation has previously argued that the program addresses the issue of scalper is buying tickets at face value and then selling them at a higher price point. Wait, they have I gotta click this link they have. That's their argument that it reduces scalping. That's why they do it. Uh, I just clicked and our I just looked another article that might explain it. But well, we might come back to this later if we have time.

32:35 Speaker 2: I don't see how that would be the case. But I'm open to the argument, but.

32:42 Speaker 1: I don't see how how would that How would that prevent scalping? What am I missing? Maybe I'm missing something again. I'm trying to be fair, all right. The CMA said on Thursday, they quote this is not the first time that the use of dynamic pricing has raised concerns among fans of live sporting events and music events unquote. According to the CMA, while the practice is quote not automatically unlawful, it may breach consumer protection or competition law in certain circumstances unquote. Sarah Cardell, chief executive of the CMA, said, quote, it's important that fans are treated fairly when they buy tickets, which is why we've launched this investigation.

33:22 Speaker 1: It's clear that many people felt they had a bad experience and we're surprised by the price of their tickets at checkout. We want to hear from fans who went through the process and may have encountered issues so that we can investigate whether existing consumer protection law has been breached by the way. That's something there's more to the statement, but that's something we can all relate to. Right, you go to buy tickets and again, I you know this doesn't I don't think this really happens with smaller ticketing agencies or smaller tours.

33:50 Speaker 1: But you go to buy tickets from Live Nation and you go to check out, and the ticket price is suddenly much higher, not necessarily because of dynamic pricing.

34:00 Speaker 2: But all these all these fees.

34:03 Speaker 1: And taxes and everything, and you thought you were gonna spend one hundred dollars on a ticket, and all of a sudden it's you get to check out and it's one hundred and fifty and you're like, where did this other? I mean no, I'm not even exaggerating, Right, it'll be that much more it's it's wild and and there's like all these fees and you know, there's a yeah, there's just any any fee you can you can imagine. I don't remember too, It's been a while since I've even.

34:31 Speaker 2: Bought tickets from Ticketmaster. I don't know.

34:34 Speaker 1: Uh, I don't remember if it even itemizes it for you, doesn't Maybe if somebody's in the chat room, I should take a breath and say hello to everybody in the chat room. But does it even itemize it for you? Or does it just say taxes and fees and it's this huge additional number that you weren't expecting, or you were expecting if you buy tickets from Ticketmaster regularly. But

34:57 Speaker 1: Alex Whiteley is in the chatroom. Are one of our friends from the UK? Oh says touting is a term used for people selling tickets on for higher prices.

35:05 Speaker 3: Okay, Oh.

35:11 Speaker 1: Miriam Banish also joins us in the Facebook clatchat Yeah, thank you for that, Alex.

35:15 Speaker 2: Uh we don't use that.

35:17 Speaker 3: Term in the Uh.

35:18 Speaker 2: We we don't use touting. Uh.

35:23 Speaker 3: We have a call. It's see who we have here?

35:29 Speaker 2: Hi, welcome to Matt Conderson. Unleast, who's this?

35:33 Speaker 4: Hey?

35:34 Speaker 2: Hey, Charles Richardson, how are you?

35:37 Speaker 4: I've been better, but hanging in there?

35:40 Speaker 2: What's what? What's going on?

35:41 Speaker 1: I should, by the way, Charles, I should just tell you upfront. We only have a few minutes because we have a guest calling in UH at ten am.

35:48 Speaker 2: But what's on your mind?

35:50 Speaker 4: I want to try and make it quick. Number one take a master Live Nation. All these other they're all scam artists, uh. And the fact that they're going with this this pricing technique is really embarrassing. Listen, if I buy a seat in section one oh one, in the first ten rows, it should be one price. The next ten rows is another price. There should not be any alternative pricing. But there's scam artists because you got this ticket surcharge fee, you got this fee, that fee, the damn fees costs more than the damn tickets sometimes, so I think it's all just a really big joke.

36:26 Speaker 2: If you want my est opinion, well it is it is true. I mean you get to the uh, you get to the end of.

36:32 Speaker 1: The process, and the price is it just all of a sudden It's Yeah. Sometimes the fees they are almost as much or perhaps even more uh than the ticket itself.

36:43 Speaker 2: It's wild.

36:45 Speaker 4: It is, it is. It's embarrassing to buy tickets nowadays because everything's done online and they're just reaping the benefits the fact that they do alternate pricing for scalpers. Are you kidding me? Please? That's such a lame excuse. That's almost like the glib your honor.

37:03 Speaker 2: All right by Charles. Good here for me, my friend, take care all right.

37:06 Speaker 1: That was Charles Richardson, of course, from the Charles Richardson Show, although I think he's taking a little bit of a break from that right now.

37:12 Speaker 2: But good hear from Charles. Yeah, I mean, I'm not gonna go.

37:18 Speaker 1: I relate to his frustration, certainly, I think most of us probably do. I'm not going to go so far as to say that it's a scam, because you know, to use that word, I would say a scam would be in my mind, if you go to buy the tickets and you after you've checked out, you end up with a charge on your credit card or your debit or whatever that's higher than what you thought it.

37:44 Speaker 2: Was going to be.

37:45 Speaker 1: You do know what the final price is before you click that to pay that and make that purchase. But it is true, so I would not. I would not technically call it a scam. I would I would just with Charles on that, although I'm certainly sympathetic with the broader point that he was making. And again, and I think a lot of us can relate to that frustration, and it is interesting, like you you really and this absolutely, I don't think anyone can argue with It is definitely designed the process unless it's changed.

38:18 Speaker 1: Again, I haven't bought tickets from Ticketmaster in quite a while, so unless the process has changed, it is designed so that you don't see that final number until the very end. So you're going through the entire process of picking your seats and everything. You're going through that entire process unless you have bought tickets recently. Right If it's if you go to a lot of shows, none of this will surprise you.

38:46 Speaker 2: But if you don't go to a lot.

38:47 Speaker 1: Of shows, you're going through that entire process with one price in your mind. And then you get to that final screen and that's where it shows you all these fees and you're like, oh, this ticket just doubled in price.

39:03 Speaker 2: Let's see. Isaac Banks is also.

39:06 Speaker 1: In the chat room. Alex Whiteley says people had to sign into their Ticketmaster way to be accepted into a ballot, which took hours for some. Then some were told that they were going to have to pay upwards of four hundred pounds per ticket.

39:27 Speaker 2: Yeah.

39:29 Speaker 1: I mean again, I don't know that I would call it a scam per se, but it certainly is. I think we can all understand why, just from a consumer standpoint, you might have a pretty bad taste in your mouth after going through that, right,