David Michael Miller
When tickets for Greta Van Fleet’s Oct. 11 show at The Sylvee went on sale in May, they sold out almost immediately. Music fans posting on social media were frustrated — especially when tickets started showing up at inflated prices on sites like StubHub and Vivid Seats.
Fans continued to post online searching for tickets in the weeks leading up to the show, with many offering face value or higher. But hours before the doors opened, there were still plenty of tickets on StubHub, and prices had dropped to $11 per ticket. The same thing happened before the sold-out Death Cab for Cutie show on Oct. 3. The next sold-out show is Ghost on Nov. 3, and as of press time there were close to 150 tickets on available StubHub — many for less than face value.
Matt Gerding, co-president of FPC Live, the promotion company formed after the merger of Frank Productions and Majestic Live that now operates The Sylvee, the High Noon Saloon, the Majestic Theatre and the Orpheum Theatre, says the rise of digital ticketing technology has made things more complicated for fans and venues alike.
“The way the technology has advanced, there are bots on third-party ticketing systems that develop an algorithm to buy up tickets in bulk and resell them to the public on different platforms,” he says. “The problem has gotten even worse — a lot of these third-party ticketing sites are building Facebook event pages for [FPC Live] events and essentially confusing the public into trusting that the ticketing link is one that will get them into the event.”
To avoid scalpers, scammers and counterfeit tickets, Gerding recommends buying tickets at the box office or using official ticketing links provided by the venue. The Sylvee and The Orpheum both use Ticketmaster, and the High Noon Saloon uses Ticketfly, which is owned by Eventbrite.
Ticketmaster has publicly opposed scalping in the past, but in September, an investigative report by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation and the Toronto Star found evidence that Ticketmaster colluded with scalpers. Via a secret, web-based tool called TradeDesk, professional scalpers can buy tickets in bulk and sync their Ticketmaster account to sites like StubHub and Vivid Seats. The operation allegedly benefits Ticketmaster, which collects service fees on both the initial sale and the resale. Ticketmaster has pushed back against the reporting.
Ticketmaster merged with Live Nation in 2010 to form Live Nation Entertainment, which bought a controlling share of Frank Productions in 2018. Gerding emphasizes that Ticketmaster and FPC Live operate as separate entities, but the companies have had a long relationship.
“I can’t speak on behalf of Ticketmaster, but for us, as concert promoters, we’re trying to produce these concerts for fans,” Gerding says. “The speed by which the technology advances is tough for us to keep track of, but we’re trying to do what’s best for music fans.”
Editor's note: This story was corrected to read that Ticketfly is owned by Eventbrite, not by Ticketmaster.
