Date confusion re ticket sale for Semi-final v Crows

[Meg]

From AFL website:

"TICKETEK will refund the service and handling fee to all AFL, Adelaide Crows and Sydney Swans members from Tuesday's ticket on-sale for finals this weekend. "

And now give members the best seats?? Too late of course.

[goswannies]

From AFL website:

"TICKETEK will refund the service and handling fee to all AFL, Adelaide Crows and Sydney Swans members from Tuesday's ticket on-sale for finals this weekend. ".

Handling fee?! What do they handle?! in my experience they randomly allocate seats (probably have a blindfolded chimpanzee throwing darts at the stadium seating plan for this task by all appearances) and you have to pay to print out or pick up your own ticket!

How the ACCC haven't acted on the latter is beyond me!

[Danzar]

Handling fee?! What do they handle?! in my experience they randomly allocate seats (probably have a blindfolded chimpanzee throwing darts at the stadium seating plan for this task by all appearances) and you have to pay to print out or pick up your own ticket!

How the ACCC haven't acted on the latter is beyond me!

They handle plenty in fact. They handle your time, sanity and money. They also handle sound advice, and offer such sound advice at just the right moments.

Ticketek keep trying.jpg

[Danzar]

Yes Ticketek ARE terrible.

After being online from 9am, I eventually managed to get a ticket sometime after 10am (fourth attempt, first three tickets allocated disappeared at payment stage and I had to start again).

I then moved to the Sydney Theatre Company online site where subscriber bookings had also opened at 9am. Dream run, everything worked smoothly, was able to go to a seat map for each of the seven plays (in three different theatres) I was booking and choose my own seat. Not a hiccup and have chosen exactly what I want.

Now obviously the demand load on the STC site would have been minuscule compared with Ticketek but that surely is a system capacity that Ticketek should be able to plan for and provide.

And equally the technological capacity to have a seat map from which you can choose your own seats exists - Ticketek just won't invest in it because as a duopoly they make big profits without bothering to do so.

Meg, I firmly believe they should be seen as a monopoly. By doing stitch up deals with specific venues, they capture that entire market for all events at that venue. No customer has the ability to choose either Ticketek or Ticketmaster to acquire tickets for a specific event or a venue.

There is no choice for the consumer; only the venue has choice of reseller, and the venue doesn't care one iota because they themselves are monopolies, and they get paid irrespective of whether ten tickets are sold, or 10,000.

[Meg]

Meg, I firmly believe they should be seen as a monopoly. By doing stitch up deals with specific venues, they capture that entire market for all events at that venue. No customer has the ability to choose either Ticketek or Ticketmaster to acquire tickets for a specific event or a venue.

There is no choice for the consumer; only the venue has choice of reseller, and the venue doesn't care one iota because they themselves are monopolies, and they get paid irrespective of whether ten tickets are sold, or 10,000.

I understand your point. But the client for Ticketek is (in this case) the AFL which has two choices - Ticketek or Ticketmaster.

As customers, you are right, we have no choice if we want to buy AFL tickets. But the AFL is in competition with other sports providers and other forms of entertainment. Make it too difficult or frustrating to book tickets and some will decide to save their money for other things. Just this morning I was on the verge of giving up and staying home to watch the game on television.

I have exactly the same issues with Ticketek booking cricket tickets. I've given up booking in the priority period to which I have access because I can't get the tickets in the area I want. But that means I forego a member discount and so probably will go to fewer days of cricket, or sink into apathy and just watch on TV.

I'd like to see the AFL and Cricket Australia (as the two biggest Australia-wide sports providers) form a joint venture and set up their own ticketing system with choose-your-own seat technology. They could probably then sell the service to other sports.

That would put a rocket up Ticketek!

[Doctor]

I could queue up at St George Leagues Club's Mitchell's Bass ticket outlet in 1985 and pick exactly which seats I wanted to sit in to see Dire Straits. That was 30 years ago!!!! The Ticketek system is more of a rort than Cabcharge adding 10% to every fare just because you're using a credit card (now down to 5%). The fact that we can get screwed over like this in this day and age is disgraceful. Their system is clearly desperately out of date but they have no imperative to fix it because we're stuck with them. Then they charge you $7 or something to print your own ticket!! They don't care though because, to them, it's money for nothing.

[KTigers]

Yes, each venue signs a (usually) long term contract with a ticketing company. The ticketing company sells the tickets for every event at the venue. Ticketek & Ticketmaster between them have about 80% of the market in Australia. Ticketek is owned by an Asian private equity firm, and Ticketmaster is part of a large US music industry conglomerate. Competition between the two companies is very intense. The venues do care (a lot) about how many tickets are sold to events at their venues as they are paid a flat fee plus a percentage of the ticket receipts. They also receive the food and beverage sales and a percentage of the merchandise sales.
Those sales are dependant on how many people attend each event.

Meg, I firmly believe they should be seen as a monopoly. By doing stitch up deals with specific venues, they capture that entire market for all events at that venue. No customer has the ability to choose either Ticketek or Ticketmaster to acquire tickets for a specific event or a venue.

There is no choice for the consumer; only the venue has choice of reseller, and the venue doesn't care one iota because they themselves are monopolies, and they get paid irrespective of whether ten tickets are sold, or 10,000.

[Danzar]

Yes, each venue signs a (usually) long term contract with a ticketing company. The ticketing company sells the tickets for every event at the venue. Ticketek & Ticketmaster between them have about 80% of the market in Australia. Ticketek is owned by an Asian private equity firm, and Ticketmaster is part of a large US music industry conglomerate. Competition between the two companies is very intense. The venues do care (a lot) about how many tickets are sold to events at their venues as they are paid a flat fee plus a percentage of the ticket receipts. They also receive the food and beverage sales and a percentage of the merchandise sales.
Those sales are dependant on how many people attend each event.

I thought Ticketek was owned by Nine?


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[KTigers]

No, Ticketek & a few other assets like Qudos Bank Arena were spun off Nine maybe eighteen months ago. Ticketek is now owned by an Asian private equity mob called Affinity Equity Partners.

I thought Ticketek was owned by Nine?


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[Bindo]

Oh great, just to add insult to injury, there are now a lot of overpriced tickets for sale on Ticketmaster Resale!! I thought this was scalping??

[Mauzza]

Oh great, just to add insult to injury, there are now a lot of overpriced tickets for sale on Ticketmaster Resale!! I thought this was scalping??

Well this is just a theory and can apply to any club (not pointing a finger at a specific club) but if you are a supporter from an away club who has to travel there is nothing stopping you buying tickets with no intention of going and then onselling through the Tickmaster Resale and making a small profit. Of course the risk is not selling and getting struck with tickets you don't want.

As for lots of better seats coming on public sale some of those could have been from the Crows allocation that was not exhausted. Just a thought.

[barracuda]

Wow, just took a look at ticketmaster. Yesterday I couldn't get seats I wanted as a member. I ended up in bay 28. Today, if I was a member of the public the seats I wanted are available. In fact there are loads of seats available to the public.

Talk about getting shafted.