Olivia Rodrigo Dynamic Pricing Fiasco | Matt Connarton Unleashed

0:00 This is from Digitalmusicnews dot com. This is one of my favorite resources for music industry news. Always some interesting articles here right on their homepage. And I've got a couple here, a couple things pulled up we can look at, and you know, they both relate to things that we've discussed on the show, obviously one of them being dynamic pricing. This article is titled and this just went up two days ago, dynamic pricing strikes again. Olivia Rodrigo's AMEX Ticketmaster presale quickly devolves into a price spiked nightmare.

0:33 Now, for those of you who don't know what dynamic pricing is, and we've been talking about it on the show for at least a couple of years now, it's something that Ticketmaster uses, it's something that other they've tried it in other industries, even fast food. I think Wendy's was trying to do this at one point but it kind of didn't work out. But dynamic pricing is where the price of something will fluctuate depending on demand for whatever it is, for whatever service item or in this case, tickets.

0:58 Ticketmaster has been using this. When demand is high for a certain show, then the ticket price will increase quite a bit. In some cases, if demand is low, the ticket price will automatically go down. So it makes sense in theory, but it causes a lot of problems. But gone are the days seemingly so, or at least with some shows where you know you know what the price is. The price of a ticket is announced and you say, okay, that's the price now. Of course, with Ticketmaster there's also the problem of you go on to their site, you think a ticket costs a certain amount, and then by the time you get to check out, the ticket price is nearly doubled with all the fees and taxes and everything else it gets added on that they don't tell you about upfront, even though the Federal Trade Commission has told them you got to start displaying that all up front, not waiting till the end when they go to check out, and all of a sudden, the ticket price is twice what it was, or you know, close to twice forty percent higher whatever it is, right So, but dynamic pricing is where the price automatically fluctuates based on demand.

2:09 And again some people really really hate this, but apparently this Olivia Rodrigo tour has already when we talked about this the first time on the show. I think it had to do with the Oasis tour, the Oasis Reunion tour that was happening in the UK where they were using dynamic pricing, and it just it just caused all kinds of issues. We won't revisit that, we'll focus on this, but this is the newest kerfuffle, a word that I feel has not used nearly enough involving dynamic pricing. So again, this is from Music Business Worldwide.

2:44 Oh no, I'm sorry, this is from Digital Musicnews dot com. Music Business Worldwide is a great side too, but this is from Digital Musicnews dot Com. Ticketmaster's dynamic pricing strikes again, angering fans with exorbitant ticket prices that some said should be illegal for an arena show. Olivia Rodrigo, who by the way, was the musical guest on Saturday Night Live last weekend. If you missed it, Olivia Rodrigo is embarking on the Unraveled Tour, a global trek with sixty five plus dates in supported her forthcoming third album, but fans are already disgruntled over the pre sale ticket prices.

3:20 Unfortunately, it's a tale we've heard before. Yeah, the article even references this has become a problem that you know, we've certainly discussed many times on this show. It says here. On Tuesday, the presale for the Live Nation Promoted tour kicked off for American Express card members. But when tickets first went on sale, fans quickly took to social media to vent their frustrations over sky high prices for an arena performance. Prices ranged from over two hundred to eight hundred dollars depending on location.

3:49 Either way, not for nothing, but we live in a time where that actually doesn't sound I mean, you know, compared to what ticket price is were twenty years ago, that sounds very high. But I feel like tickets to any kind of arena show, whether it's music or you know, you see this. This is a big subject in professional wrestling right now. They talk about it on all these podcasts. We've talked about it on Tough Bumps, the wrestling podcasts that I do with Eric Pilcher and Austin Hicks. That's every Sunday night, by the way, usually well I should say afternoon, usually around four pm Eastern, we go live.

4:29 You can find it online. That's strictly online. That's not associated with the radio station. But but in fact, someone gave me some off air advice last night that maybe I should do more of that anyway, if you know, you know, but yeah, so so. But this is a problem with WWE events too, where people are getting you know, families, This is a big discussion going on right now. Families are getting priced out, you know, not being able to go to WWE events unless they happen to be wealthy because the cost has become so prohibitive.

5:07 Okay, but to me, two day eight hundred dollars, it almost that almost Maybe I've just become desensitized. Maybe a lot of us have. That almost sounds normal. Now, two day, eight hundred dollars. I look at that number and I think, yeah, I'm not that surprised, it says here again, going back to the article, many would be attendees admitted that they were willing to dish out more for Taylor Swift's aristore, which was a stadium level blowout affair, with each show lasting over three and a half hours.

5:38 But as much as fans love Olivia, she's no tailor. One fan wrote on Twitter, quote, in no universe should any standard seated tickets be what is that pounds? You know? This is all I'm just going to convert it to dollars. I don't know how to do it. In no universe should any standard seat seated tickets be the three hundred dollars plus let alone in the in a twenty thousand capacity arena. I paid one hundred and fifty dollars for seats at Wembley's for the at Wembley for the Ariostore, a ninety k capacity stadium, for a three and a half hour show, and forgive me, I must take a gulf of water because my allergies are still terrible and I'm really feeling it in my throat.

6:26 Bear with me. M does the mic pick up my swallowing the water? I'm curious, let's see. Another person wrote on Twitter, quote the prices for Olivia Rodrigo are actually making me sick. I would understand if it was one ten for standing in a stadium, but an arena. Another person wrote, what do you mean a back row of the two is being sold for one forty seven in some sections? Absolutely ridiculous pricing. Another person's literally watch ticket prices go up as I was in the queue as well, and another person wrote those Olivia Rodrigo ticket prices were disgusting.

7:09 What business do you have charging Beyonce prices in the O two arena? Oh my goodness. The article continues, but it's not just rodri or Rodrigo's shows that have drawn the ire of fans. Sabrina Carpenter, Zach Bryan, Ghost Green Day, and Bruce Springsteen fans have all sung the same song complaining about Ticketmaster's infamous dynamic pricing. The idea behind okay, so this is I explained this before the article, but the article might explain it more succinctly. The idea behind dynamic pricing is that ticket prices increase based on demand, but many fans have pointed out that nothing in the industry will change as long as people continue to pay such prices.

7:51 One Twitter user said, no wonder everyone thinks they can go do massive tours when people can sell out in seconds at five hundred dollars. Good point. Another said, y'all need to stop complaining and just mutually agree to refuse to pay these unreasonable ticket prices. Olivia Dean played the same venue as Noah Kan and Olivia Rodrigo and had sold out shows at half the price. Indeed, the demand for Rodrigo's shows has been such that new dates have already been added. In London. Initially she was scheduled to play four shows at the O two Arena between April five and nine, but this has been doubled with shows on April twelve, fourteen, fifteen, and nineteen.

8:35 Well, this demand, all right, my god. Other new shows have been added in Amsterdam and Paris and and state side. Joining her on the tour will be grace ives and we don't need to get in all that. There's some details about the tour at the end, but the point is, yes, dynamic pricing in fact strikes again and some people are very upset.