We like to think that the Fan Freedom Project serves as the voice of music and sports fans in the ticket industry, where too often ticket companies, artists, teams and venue owners seem to make business decisions without thinking about how their actions will impact fans. To get a better handle on what you, the fans, are thinking, we polled over 1,000 individuals to find out what they thought about restrictive paperless ticketing, artist hold backs, ticket ownership and other ticket industry practices.
The results were clear. Fans like you think that the ticket industry is stacking the deck – and you’re right. Every week fans try to buy tickets for their favorite events, only to see tickets sell out in minutes or seconds. Where did all those tickets go? The truth is, teams, artists, venues and promoters all hold back tickets for VIPs, and some – like Katy Perry – even scalp their own tickets on the secondary market at hugely inflated prices. Fans are beginning to notice these shady practices and they’re fed up.
Two-thirds of ticket users we polled (68 percent) said artists, venues and event promoters should have to tell fans how many event tickets are made available to the general public for purchase, and how many (usually lots) are set aside for private sales to VIPs. Seventy-two percent of respondents said they disapproved of original ticket issuers such as Ticketmaster, artists, teams and venues secretly selling tickets through resale markets for higher than the face value.
Fans were also confused by new ticketing technologies like restrictive paperless ticketing. With companies like Ticketmaster putting out misinformation (see: Fan Protected Paperless Tickets), who can blame them? Only 29 percent of fans we polled could correctly describe restrictive paperless ticketing, with many confusing restrictive paperless tickets with electronic, mobile phone or barcode tickets (for a full definition, go here).
If there was one area where fans were not confused, it was around issues of ownership. Of the 1,000 ticket users surveyed across the nation, 90 percent said they “should have the right to resell or give away tickets that I purchase to anyone I choose.” And 89 percent of respondents believe that once they have bought a ticket, it becomes their personal property, and they have complete control over what they do with it.
Ticket industry insiders take note – the numbers don’t lie. Fans are mad as hell about ticketing manipulation that drives up prices and decreases the availability of tickets, and they want more control over their ticketing experience.