The beginning of the school year is a much better time for resolutions than January 1st. The weather is optimistic rather than bleak, you’re rested rather than hungover, and no-one’s talking about veganuary. So far today I’ve been to the gym, I’m on track for a record screen-time low, and I’m now writing a blog. The rule of three is alive and well.
And what else to write about other than the Oasis on-sale?
If anyone apart from my mum reads this it will most likely someone who has some professional interest in the selling of tickets, so I won’t waste much time explaining why dynamic pricing is a good thing. But, to recap for mum’s sake:
- show business is intended to be a profitable endeavour, and dynamic pricing done well maximises revenue which is a good thing for those seeking to maximise their profits (or, on a bad day, minimise their losses) – it should go without saying that that there are different considerations in the subsidised sector
- live entertainment always has a limited supply so the only lever you have available to attempt to match supply and demand is price
- if tickets aren’t priced to match demand, then they become very attractive to touts who can sell them at their market price capturing the value for themselves rather than for the artist who created the work or the backers who risked their capital (and touts are often not very nice people…)
But we have a new government, and a new government that is committed to introducing legislation relating to ticketing, and a culture secretary who was quoted last night saying that it was “depressing to see vastly inflated prices excluding ordinary fans… we will include issues around the transparency and use of dynamic pricing including the technology around queueing systems which incentivise it, in our forthcoming consultation on consumer protections for ticket resales. Working with artists, industry and fans we can create a fairer system that ends the scourge of touts, rip-off resales and ensures tickets at fair prices.”
While I look forward to DCMS attempting to define an “ordinary fan” and a “fair price” I suspect we can probably discount some of this as political rhetoric. It’s also not clear to me why queuing systems provide an incentive to price dynamically – queuing systems exist to prevent websites falling over. As for transparency, I suppose all queues could carry a notice saying “By the time you reach the front of the queue, the cheaper tickets may have sold out and you may end up either disappointed or spending more than you’d hoped” but that’s quite low down the list of regulatory reforms we need.
I have no doubt that the culture secretary will come to realise that dynamic pricing actually helps to achieve one of her objectives (ending the scourge of touts and rip-off resales). If fans feel cheated, ripped-off or let down, then that is between them and the artist, and it is the artist who will bear the cost of that. Although curiously in this case most of the opprobrium has been directed at the ticket agent who is left to plead that they don’t set the prices, the “event organiser” does.
And perhaps this is an area where the culture secretary should focus her attention. From a ticket agent’s point of view, the “event organiser” is a far more important customer than the public. So why is it the public that pays the booking fee? And, although Oasis didn’t split up while you were in the queue, the gigs are nearly a year away. If the show is cancelled, what are the chances of that dynamically priced booking fee being refunded?
Andrew Collier 