Nick Persico Hates You (and your ticket fees)
Per-ticket fee of $16.75 on a $99 ticket? Charging ticket fees is to become prosecutable under usury laws? Questions like that can only mean one thing... Free Free Friday is back with reports from the trenches in the War on Ticket Fees. If you want to join ticket sites with no fees, take a look at what ThunderTix has to offer! This week Fee Free Friday has new vox populi videos and we want to let you know that Nick Persico hates you.
Why does Nick Persico hate you? Read on and find out!
Nick Persico Hates You
We found an articulate, concise expression of how unreasonable per-ticket fees impact the everyday person that you need to read. Earlier this week, Nick Persico wrote a post on his personal blog titled “Why I Hate Buying Tickets” that describes his utter frustration and disgust at the ticketing buying process.
The post starts immediately with a pain point that is all too familiar... “23.8% Of My Ticket Price Were Charges & Fees” and goes on item-by-item, point-by-point just how bad his ticket buying experience has been.
...[then] as I moved through the buying process, the fee frenzy began with the infamous “Convenience Charge”: A whopping $10.30 per ticket convenience charge. That is 25.7% of the total ticket price. I really want to go to the concert, so I decided to proceed to the next step.
It gets worse.
Print at home delivery method, I see a charge of $2.50 per order! What the hell?! Let me get this straight, I need to pay $2.50 to print out my tickets at home? I’ve come this far, so I might as well continue with my purchase. Before I click Purchase and throw a fist pump in the air, I notice another fee. An “Order Processing Fee” for $4.45
Once Persico finally completed the ticket purchase he ended up paying $105.00 dollars for a $45 ticket. especially his manifesto of the ticket industry's “A Broken Pricing Structure”
It’s Time To Change, Here’s What Needs To Happen...Someone needs to create a new ticketing platform [and] create a online/mobile ticketing platform for venues and artists that does not charge per transaction. Your revenues are generated by a monthly subscription to the artist or venue.
(We can help you with that one Nick! :D)
If you work in any area of event ticketing you are strongly encouraged to read the entire post, and appreciate the perspective of a consumer. Only after reading the post can you determine if Nick hates you.
Want to see who else may hate you? There are some videos you need to watch....
Vox Populi
Our kindred spirits over at Fans First have posted two new Vox populi (or "man in the street") videos that let regular everyday people have their say about ticket scalping, high prices, fees and service charges. The videos are highly recommended viewing for anyone who sells event tickets or owns a venue.
First the importance of offering paperless tickets is discussed.
Then the general dismay and frustration fans feel when secondary market "value add" services force ticket prices into the stratosphere, often artificially out of line with actual demand. Note the real emotion, the honesty.
Gut wrenching isn't it? Imagine if these videos got promoted to the front page of YouTube and viewed several million times an hour?
If the opinions of regular folks are not convincing enough, how about the opinion of a respected economics professor, who is well versed in the law?
"Usurious" Ticket Fees
Prof. Mark J. Perry asks a great question in his post "What About the Legal "Usurious" Ticket Fees?". After citing the rancor in Michigan, Perry coins a new term - Usurious Ticket Fee.
Usury is defined as "the practice of making loans with excessive or abusive interest rates by taking advantage of others' misfortunes". The professor wants to have ticket fees considered in that context (Uh-oh):
Forget about the high ticket prices in the secondary market, what about the legalized, usurious scalping going on in the primary market? If you order a single $17 ticket for the Detroit Tigers home game from the Tigers website, your total cost with a $4.75 convenience fee and a $4.10 order fee, brings the total cost to $25.85, or a whopping 52% above face value!
Summing up his intent, Perry asks if states should also introduce legislation aimed at the ticket fees in the primary market when they surpass his proposed threshold of 50% of the face value of a ticket.
We defer to the professor's knowledge of economics, but his math is sound. The idea of unreasonable ticket fees may have just graduated (pun-intended) to the domain of academics and ivy league professors who have a command of usury laws - that is probably not something those who charge excessive service charges and per-ticket fees want. Customers want ticket sites with no fees.
Of course, if the thoughts of an economics professor isn't convincing, we have a choir of animosity to listen to...
Weekly Wall of Woe
The Weekly Wall of Woe is, yet again, rife with what people are talking about. Ticket fees are what people talk about more than any other aspect of attending an event, by far.
"$15 a ticket convenience charge @Ticketmaster? What's so convenient about that?"
"$16.75 in fees for a $99 ticket. ruining rock the bells before it even starts"
ThunderTix, A Ticket Site with No Fees
With so many people’s written and spoken opinions on what they think about unreasonable ticket fees included in this week’s Fee Free Friday, we sincerely hope it causes you to pause and think very carefully.
We have written an extensive guide on ticket fees - To Fee or Not to Fee, That is The Question - and time spent reading it may just be the final push you need to re-think your ticket fee policies. Our technology offers more tools and options for ticket fees than any other. We offer ticket sites with no fees. Plus, ThunderTix users do not pay per-ticket fees, we have an annual subscription fee for just about every event and venue size, including yours.
That’s it for this week. We hope Nick Persico doesn’t hate you, or anyone else for that matter. Sell Tickets Online with No Fees on ThunderTix. Fee Free Friday will be back next week with all new war stories to tell. Until then, if you want ticket sites with no fees, be sure to take a look at all the features we have to offer and sign up for a free trial today!
