Misinformation

Last night Bill Maher said the average price of a Taylor Swift ticket was over $4000. Really.

My favorite story on this came from Tony Wilson. His first job out of Oxbridge was in a television news department. On a Saturday night he collected the European football scores and the newsreader got them wrong. Tony swore to me that he delivered them correctly, but that's not really the point. On Monday he was confronted by the big boss. Who said he usually fired people for this offense. But he was going to give Tony a break this time and this time only. And then the boss said that no one cared about the late night European football scores, it's just that viewers felt if the station couldn't get it right about something so simple, what were they getting wrong about the big stuff?

Now I have sympathy for Maher. As in a talk show host cannot read everybody's book and know everybody's backstory. He interviewed Kenny Chesney at the top of the hour and it was as if Bill had read Kenny's Wikipedia page and had been briefed briefly by his staff. But that was a relatively softball discussion, whereas when you sit down with Bill O'Reilly and Representative Jared Moskowitz...

Bill O'Reilly reminds me of Gene Simmons. Most celebrities who build their image on pointed anger, sharp retorts, are as normal as you and me off camera. Usually even nicer. You can connect in the green room, have a fruitful discussion. But not these two! O'Reilly couldn't take Maher's banter as playful, he had to dig and then self-aggrandize, talking about numbers for his town hall, all the while speaking as if he was the only authority extant. As for Jared Moskowitz...this guy is a star. The more he talked the more I nodded his head.

So what do you want Live Nation to do? What do you want Ticketmaster to do? What do you want the acts to do?

Got to give kudos to O'Reilly on this, he said it was all about supply and demand, and it is. People want to go to the show. Furthermore, the acts have to keep prices relatively low or otherwise the public will scream, and then the secondary market hoovers up a bunch of tickets and resells them, sometimes for thousands...but most people don't pay anywhere near that price.

Sure, some of the wealthy pay these inflated prices to sit up close and personal, so they can tell their buddies. Or so their children can see their favorites. We can discuss all day long the issue of income inequality, how some can afford the best and the rest of us are left with scraps, and that's true for some tickets to the show, but not ALL!

Most people are paying face price. Which could be $200, give or take. And you might think that's a lot, but how much did you just spend for dinner?

We could make the tickets $75 by tying them to the purchaser, but the public doesn't like this, then they can't scalp their own tickets. There's no solution to this problem...even when the promoter says they'll give you your money back if you can't use them, if you've got a conflict on that date. No, people say MY MONEY, MY TICKET! I can do whatever I want with it!

So the acts try to charge as much as they can without pissing off the public. But in almost all cases with household names, they're still cheaper than their true worth. Ergo the secondary market. Raise the ticket price and the bots and the rest of the secondary market disappears, or close to it. And that's what should happen. BMW doesn't price its cars artificially low so the less fortunate can afford them. People want them, they pay for them.

And sure, BMW is a luxury item... Then again, there are many luxury items that the hoi polloi pay for. And the truth is the average Joe will pay a high price to see his favorite. That's how much they want to go.

So... You've got the public, you've got government, everybody is beating up on ticketing companies and promoters. Not the acts, because the dirty little secret is the ticketing companies are paid to take the heat. You don't see Ticketmaster or Live Nation complaining that the problem is the acts, which it is. We can argue all day long about fees, but without them there is no show, almost all of the profit in big shows is in the fees. Because the acts take all of the face price. Which is fine, but then the acts turn around and complain about the ticketing company, say they're on the side of the fans, they wish there were no fees...talk about duplicity. And when promoters try to go with an all-in price, it's the acts that scream, they want the perception that the price is lower, that it's not their fault that prices are high, the added fees are the problem.

And then you've got Bill Maher saying the average price for a Taylor Swift ticket is in excess of $4000. That would mean the average gross in a fifty thousand seat stadium, and the Eras Tour played in stadiums, was $200 million! Business is good, but not that good. There's all this press that Swift is a billionaire, if those were the grosses she'd be a MULTI-BILLIONAIRE!

But she's not, because the average ticket price is nowhere near that. Not even $1000.

But it makes a better headline if it's north of $4000.

And while we're at it, why don't those kids get off the damn phone!

Bill Maher has been anti-tech for decades. Isn't it funny that he's now got a podcast, Club Random? So he wants people to spend over an hour listening to him and a guest, shouldn't they put the damn phone down and go out and play?

Talk about being late to the party. The oldsters adopt last, if at all.

It'd be hysterical if they didn't take their position so seriously, if the government wasn't run by oldsters...

Where does it stop? No e-mail? No texting? No research on the web?

And anointed entertainment? You can watch it if it's on a streaming service like Netflix but not if it's on TikTok? This is utterly ridiculous. Talk about supply and demand. Make something off the phone better than what's on it and people will clamor for it. But right now, a personalized feed on your phone, a fountain of information, is mesmerizing.

But that does not mean a lot of that information is not incorrect.

Once again, if we can't get it right about concert tickets, good luck convincing people of the truth on political issues...ranging from taxes to government spending, the list is endless.

And if you're playing in this sphere...

This is what oldsters don't understand, what old time/mainstream media doesn't understand. They used to go uncorrected, they used to be able to get away with this. They'd weigh in on a topic they're unfamiliar with and it would go unchallenged. But the truth is there's an expert online in every vertical, you can go to them for answers, for the truth, and when the mainstream gets it wrong, it undercuts its credibility. If you've got a White House reporter and you're telling me what goes on in the room with Karoline Leavitt, I believe you. But you don't have full time reporters in a plethora of areas and when you stumble into them you often get it wrong and those truly involved in this world shrug their shoulders and laugh.

It's a worthless effort to try and correct somebody. Maher went for dinner with Trump in the White House and got a lot of blowback. He didn't analyze that blowback, didn't consider whether he was fully-informed, whether he'd thought it through before he went, no he just got indignant, defending his action.

That's America, and it's not only Bill Maher.

Is Ticketmaster perfect?

OF COURSE NOT!

But it's only the most hated entity in America because everybody is dying to go to the show, and since they're a big fan of the act they believe the price should be cheap. I can say I watch every Yankee game on TV, does that mean I'm entitled to go to the stadium for $1.50? Even $10?

This is an America run on emotion, not facts. And there can be no progress if we don't start from agreed upon facts. And when bloviators like Maher self-satisfiedly get it completely wrong...that just adds fuel to the fire.

So, if you're interacting with the public, try and get it right, or stay out of the way. Furthermore, if you do get it right, be prepared for blowback...that's the world we now live in. Even if you're right, people don't like it. They won't only criticize your take, but your identity.

Sometimes the truth is unpopular, but that does not mean you should not utter it.

Then again, we've got a president who lies on a regular basis.

And now I'll get e-mail from Trumpers saying he doesn't.

That's the world we live in. One in which even politicians, especially politicians, are afraid of speaking the truth because the uneducated masses, or those with an agenda, will contradict them.

What you end up with is a Tower of Babel society.

And here we are.


--
Visit the archive: http://lefsetz.com/wordpress/
--
Listen to the podcast:
-iHeart: https://ihr.fm/2Gi5PFj
-Apple: https://apple.co/2ndmpvp
--
http://www.twitter.com/lefsetz
--
If you would like to subscribe to the LefsetzLetter,
http://www.lefsetz.com/lists/?p=subscribe&id=1

If you do not want to receive any more LefsetzLetters, http://lefsetz.com/lists/?p=unsubscribe&uid=0eecea7b60b461717065cbde887c8e25

To change your email address http://lefsetz.com/lists/?p=preferences&uid=0eecea7b60b461717065cbde887c8e25