Sponsored by AXS, this panel will take a deep dive into how artists and their managers are improving the live experience at the point of purchase. Moderated by Greg Schmale from AXS, this panel will include Katie Nowak from TBA Agency, Thomas Cussins of Ineffable Music and Fielding Logan from Q Prime.
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MusicTranscript
00:00I'd like to thank everyone for coming out to the 2024 Billboard Live Music Summit.
00:04On today's panel, we're going to be discussing some of the latest trends in ticketing that you
00:07may or may not be familiar with and the impact it's having on the live entertainment business
00:12from both the industry as well as the consumer perspectives. I'm very fortunate today to be able
00:17to share the stage with four powerhouse industry veterans. To my right is Fielding Logan, who
00:22started out at music business management firm FBMM, and after that decided about 25 years ago
00:30to try out life on the road as Nickel Creek's tour manager, which soon led him to overseeing
00:35touring for Q Prime South's stellar roster that currently includes Eric Church, the Brothers
00:40Osborne, and Ashley McBride, amongst others. Fielding works closely with agents and promoters
00:45to develop and implement innovative tour strategies for Q Prime South's artists.
00:49Next to Fielding is Rick Johnson.
00:55Rick's a 14-year ticketing veteran who currently holds a position of Senior Vice President of
00:59Ticketing and Revenue for AEG Global Touring. In that role, Rick devises ticketing and pricing
01:04strategies that meet the objectives of touring artists and promoters, and prior to joining AEG,
01:09Rick consulted and built dynamic pricing ticketing tools for the live entertainment industry.
01:13Next to Rick is Katie Nowak.
01:18Katie spent the last decade as a lead marketing strategist in touring and artist development,
01:23and currently serves as the Vice President of Marketing and Partnerships at TBA Agency.
01:27In that role, she oversees marketing, artist development strategy, and brand partnerships
01:31for TBA's incredibly robust roster of artists, including Jungle, Rami Wolf, Always, and Yeji.
01:38And then to Katie's right is Thomas Cousins.
01:43Thomas is the CEO and co-founder of Ineffable Music Group, a full-service music company that
01:50manages renowned artists like Stick Figure and Trevor Hall, operates several venues,
01:54including Santa Cruz's The Catalyst and Ventura Music Hall, as well as running the Ineffable
01:59Records label. And one of Thomas's claim to fames is selling the first ticket ever on Spotify.
02:07So I'd like to thank you all for being here today. So let's just dive in.
02:13As concert promoter John Miglin says, if you sell your show out in minutes,
02:17that isn't necessarily a success. It means we didn't price the show properly.
02:23Ticketing platforms can now dynamically price tickets at the seat level, which is a far cry
02:28from the days of only having three price levels across a 15,000-seat arena concert.
02:34McKinsey & Company estimates that the secondary market is doing about $20 billion in revenue
02:40today, which is more than a third of what the primary market does. They estimate within four
02:47years that they will grow to being 45 percent of the primary market at $26 billion in revenue
02:53in the secondary. This tells us fans are willing to pay for live entertainment, but they are also
02:59very vocal and passionate when they do, as Oasis recently experienced with the launch of their
03:04European tour. So my question to the panel is, how do we as an industry capture more of that ticket
03:10revenue for the artists and their stakeholders while balancing that sacred relationship that
03:15exists between the artist and the fan? And so Thomas, I'd like to ask you and then have everybody
03:19kind of jump in with their thoughts as we go through. Yeah, so we're looking for a way to
03:25have a healthy ecosystem that benefits all stakeholders in the concert. So that's the
03:32artist, that's the fan, that's the venue, that's the promoter. And when you're looking at
03:38pricing, the biggest thing, I mean 80 percent of shows are not selling out and going into crazy
03:45demand situations. But a lot of people are still googling and coming up on these secondary sites
03:50and it's just, it's rampant. And this sort of arbitrage situation where these
03:57resellers are able to charge more than the market price is really at the crux of the problem.
04:04So if we are able to list tickets across all platforms and beat the scalpers at their own game
04:13by pricing the tickets more to market, we could have, we could cut a huge chunk of that sort of
04:20fan waste, so to speak, out of the industry and take a big chunk out of that 20 billion dollars
04:25and be more fan friendly and better for everybody. Okay, is this on?
04:32Okay, this is my favorite topic, so I'm going to talk for just a minute here.
04:37And I think what Thomas said, I think is an important point, that 80 percent of the shows
04:43are not in the Oasis, Taylor Swift type of situation where they're blowing out at the
04:47on sale. And so for most shows, a fan can go in and buy a ticket pretty much along the
04:53life of the on sale period. But I want to address the Oasis situation since that's the sort of
04:57hot topic du jour. There was an Economist article that came out right after that that said
05:03fans should embrace price gouging or should welcome price gouging or something like that.
05:08Oasis fans should embrace price gouging, which nobody really buys. Nobody really believes that,
05:14right? I mean, I forwarded around a few people and everyone's like, ha ha.
05:18But, and I don't like the G word, I don't like gouging, I don't like to say gouging,
05:22but I want to talk about where they're coming from and what that means to me.
05:27So I'm just going to use a very simple example to kind of demonstrate what I think what that
05:31means. And so imagine I've got a show and I've carved out a P1 that has 1,000 seats.
05:37And let's say that for those 1,000 seats, the market price or the market clearing price is $200.
05:44At $200, there are 1,000 people that want to buy those tickets, right? If I charge more than that,
05:49there's less, I'm not going to sell out. But for those 1,000 tickets, $200 is the market price.
05:54But the artist wants to charge $100, let's say. If I charge $100, what happens? All of a sudden
06:00now, you know, those 1,000 people that want to buy at $200, they still want to buy at $100.
06:04But now there's, well, let's say that now there's 2,500 total people that want to buy those tickets
06:08at $100, right? And so, you know, now there's 1,500 more extra people that want to buy those
06:15tickets. And I think those 1,500 people broadly fall into three categories. One is, I'll call,
06:21so I'm going to call the first group that want to buy at $200, I'm going to call those diehard fans.
06:26And then the extra 1,500 people, I think, are going to fall in three categories. So one is
06:31going to be casual fans. It's like more casual fans, right? Like, yeah, I want to go see the
06:36show. I'm willing to pay $100 for it, not willing to pay $200. I could afford $200, not willing to
06:40pay that. I'm going to call those casual fans. Then there's brokers, right? Now you've created
06:45a $100 arbitrage opportunity for the brokers, right? Those tickets, someone will pay $200 for
06:49them. We're charging $100. Now all of a sudden the broker's motivated. Like, there's a big opportunity
06:53there. Now they want to buy those tickets. And then the third are the diehard fans who simply
06:58can't afford to pay $200. Like, they can afford to pay $100, they can't afford to pay $200, but they
07:03are diehard fans. So, you know, if you're making a decision to raise a price from $100 to $200,
07:09if that's what I'm trying to talk our artists into doing, right, what's happening is we're filtering
07:14out those 1,500 people. So we're filtering out the casual fans, we're filtering out the brokers,
07:19and we are filtering out the diehard fans that can't afford that, right? But we are left with
07:231,000 people who are diehard fans who are going to buy those tickets. And so for those people,
07:29you know, if we've done that, now they've got a 100% chance of getting those tickets. There's
07:331,000 people, there's 1,000 tickets. They're going to get a ticket. If we drop it to $100,
07:37now there's 1,000 people, 2,500, they've got a 40% chance of buying those tickets.
07:42And it's probably less because they're not as good at buying those tickets as the brokers are.
07:46So maybe they've got a 30% or 20% chance of buying those tickets. And so, you know, you can
07:50make a strong argument that it's much better for those 1,000 people to charge the $200,
07:55because now they can actually get a ticket, right? And now they're going to get a ticket
07:58from the primary market. They're going to know it's a legitimate ticket. They're going to know
08:01it's going to get them in the night of the show. They're going to know their money is going to the
08:04artist and not a broker. And so I think that's the argument to me, is like you really were trying to
08:10filter out casual fans, brokers, and really it's for the people who are the diehards that really
08:16value that experience. Pricing to the market actually helps those fans out.
08:21So I want to...
08:24Excuse me. Rick, I could not have said it better myself.
08:30Well, actually, I wanted to come over to fielding because what's interesting is, you know, Rick,
08:36when you talk about that example of the selling, taking a $200 ticket, selling it for 100,
08:40and those three groups, you take the reseller. The reseller's incentivized to get that ticket
08:46because they have margin to make off of that, and they're willing to invest to try to cut to
08:51the front of the line to get those tickets to make that margin, so they'll invest some money.
08:55And fielding, you were sharing with us a little bit about how you went to a broker conference
09:02recently and saw the tools that were being offered to brokers and the sophistication that they're
09:09the amount of money brokers are spending to try to get that inventory.
09:13I'm watching this clock tick down in front of me, so I'm going to keep this as brief as possible.
09:17I went undercover at a ticket brokers convention in Nashville a few months ago, and what I was
09:23struck by is all the time we spend trying to get tickets in the hands of real fans and keep them
09:29out of the hands of brokers. I think about that a lot. What I saw there was really disheartening
09:37and made me realize that Sabrina Carpenter's team, to their credit, canceled some tickets
09:44that were purchased by resellers. I did that a lot 10 years ago. What I saw at this broker
09:50conference, there were eight exhibitors there selling anonymous ticket browsers where you can
09:57have 50 browser tabs open at any given time on a single show. There are payments processors that
10:02are giving you the ability to just make up a credit card number, virtual credit card numbers.
10:08There are companies selling technology to cloak your IP address so that we can't use that to tie
10:14together groups of buyers. All of the brokers there were using one or more of these forms of
10:24technology, all seemingly in violation of the Bots Act from 2016, the federal law that should outlaw
10:30this stuff. As I think through this stuff, particularly how to get tickets in the hands
10:40of real fans, I end up agreeing with Rick about raising our prices. Related to the Oasis thing,
10:48one of the things that drives me crazy, there was an article, maybe The Guardian or The Independent,
10:53and it quoted a fan who was complaining that she sort of seemed entitled to an affordable ticket.
11:05Then there was a British parliamentarian who said that these ticket prices are outrageous.
11:12My constituents are entitled to affordable tickets. That whole thing, as Rick described,
11:19is totally fraught. I think we all bring implicit biases as to what is an affordable ticket. When
11:26the Chinese acrobats came to the Performing Arts Center in Nashville, I was like, that show looks
11:30good. I looked it up and it was $149. I was like, I'm not taking my family to the Chinese acrobats
11:35for $149 times five. I didn't try. I let somebody else that values that experience more than me
11:44buy tickets to the Chinese acrobats. I think we need to let the market address
11:51some of this stuff, some of these issues. Can I just say, I agree with that sentiment.
11:57I do think that that makes a lot of sense. Also, I think that it's really hard to say
12:05objectively, A, what art is worth, and B, who is entitled to anything.
12:16I think that when we're having this conversation about affordability, about making sure that
12:22tickets get in the hands of fans, making sure that we combat brokers, all of these solutions
12:28make a lot of sense. Right now, in this moment, are the solution. Also, we need to find a balance
12:36between making sure that those tickets get in the hands of fans and not pricing people out who
12:44care a lot about the artists that they want to see and simply cannot afford a $300 ticket.
12:50I think the conversation needs to be, what is the balance? You can't make everybody happy.
12:57People are going to complain. People are going to be upset about ticket prices. This has been
13:01going on since the beginning of time. Also, as we can move forward and as we try to solve
13:07this problem, I think that we do have to keep as many people in mind as we can.
13:13One really quick follow-up. I see some Axis ticketing folks here in the audience. One product
13:20I've not seen on the ticketing side that I think is a partial solution, and we see it in other
13:26industries, but it's like, you know, think back to that, I'll never forget the Kid Rock $20 best night
13:33ever tour. The idea was he was going to offer some of the best seats at $20. It's like,
13:39if you want to offer underpriced tickets, make those the tickets that are restricted from transfer.
13:44If you want to offer market price tickets, let someone that buys a market price ticket do whatever
13:48they want with it. But I know that Ticketmaster cannot do that. I don't know if Axis can do that
13:53or not, but that's like an airline ticket. You buy the cheapest ticket, it's non-refundable.
14:00You buy the most expensive ticket, you can get a refund, which maybe that's a...
14:06Someone up here knows something about ticket refunds.
14:08Yeah, we're going to get to that in a moment. I think it's a nice pivot, because we talked
14:14about pricing, and there's just pricing it close to market, does curb resale, brings money back
14:19into the rights holders. But there are just some artists that are fundamentally against pricing
14:24their ticket for what it's actually worth. And there are tools out there like non-transferability
14:29and others that can help ensure the right fans getting the ticket, not being taken advantage of.
14:34They're not completely foolproof. Brokers know how to get around those. But Katie,
14:39I'd like to... What tools are you seeing that can help address that? If the ticket's worth $200,
14:45but the artist wants to sell it for $100, how do you make sure that you can get it to the
14:50right fans' hands? Yeah, for sure. There's not a one-size-fits-all solution to this problem,
14:54because to your point, a broker can figure anything out. They have the technology,
14:58as we've learned, through Fielding's undercover mission. But we use tools all the time that I
15:08think most of you are probably pretty familiar with, and it starts with artist-driven pre-sales.
15:15And so using tools like Fair Access, using tools like Verified Fan, and then using third-party
15:22tools like Seeded or other third-party pre-sale platforms. Seeded is the one that we work with
15:30the most. And basically, at the end of the day, sometimes an artist... It depends on the artist's
15:36goal. Sometimes artists want to sell as many tickets as possible and get them out the door
15:40and sell out the pre-sale. And in that situation, in all these situations, the point is to be
15:45really proactive, to entice fans to sign up for something, to be a part of a community that then
15:52gets access first to a pre-sale through either a generic password or something that I think is
15:58more effective in combating bots and brokers, which is unique codes. Or you can pull tickets
16:06off-platform and sell them through the third party to ensure that those tickets come to you.
16:12And with certain platforms like Seeded, for example, that eliminates fees. That eliminates
16:19certain fees that Ticketmaster might charge or that the ticketer might charge. And when you
16:26pull tickets off-platform on certain third parties, they use that kind of difference to give back to
16:33the artist in the form of a rebate. So these are different kinds of tools that we like to use
16:39that proactively allow fans to come in and join the community that then get either, like I said,
16:49a pre-sale code or a unique pre-sale code or some kind of off-platform opportunity to buy a ticket
16:55before anybody else so that those tickets ensure that they're theirs.
17:00Well, you know, we've talked about pricing. We've talked about ways to protect the ticket.
17:06These are for the fans that are going to jump through hoops to see the artists that
17:13they love. Let's talk a little about distribution. And Thomas, you talked about this when we were
17:18talking about pricing. If you think about it, 50% of fans don't know the difference
17:25between a primary and a secondary ticket. And then that, coupled with the fact that 92% of all
17:31global web traffic comes from Google. So the average consumer, when they're buying tickets,
17:38is going to Google and typing in artist name, tickets, and then it's based off of who's spending
17:44the most to get the top listing on Google to try to direct their fan to their platform.
17:50The brokers and the marketplaces are spending hundreds of millions of dollars to kind of
17:54control that pathway. And if you think about it, for years, the brokers have been able to put
17:59their tickets on sale simultaneously on multiple platforms, while the primary marketplaces and
18:07ticketing platforms have always said you have to go to one single website to buy tickets.
18:12You know, recently, Access has launched a program called Access Distro, where you can
18:17simultaneously have your primary tickets on sale on access.com and have them on sale at the same
18:24time on the secondary marketplaces, so that consumers that are being driven there can see
18:29that inventory for as close to face value as possible and be able to purchase that. So how
18:35important is that, do you think? And Thomas, I'll pose the question to you.
18:39Yeah, so if we're saying that market price tickets is the best way to
18:47get the fans to be able to get the tickets and not be, you know, not be overcharging, like
18:56how do you keep the price as low as possible but still realize we live in a capitalist society?
19:01And the best way to do that is to undercut the scalpers and beat them at their own game.
19:05So if I put most of my tickets are on my primary ticketing site, but I've sent a few tickets to
19:10every other site on the internet, whatever pops up when you search in Google, and I'm lowering that
19:15as close to face as possible, that means that scalper, they lost their margin. There's no money
19:21for them to make. And this starts to get back to like, hey, if we are undercutting the scalpers,
19:27but we're still paying market, that's great for the primary, it's great for a lot of the
19:31stakeholders. But what can we then do to take care of the fan, right? We've brought the money
19:37away from the secondary market, we've brought it back into the primary pot by having our main
19:41primary ticketing and distributing across every platform but undercutting the scalpers. So now
19:47there's no reason for them to be working. But we didn't really take care of the fan.
19:51And that's where I think a industry-wide refund policy would really make a huge difference.
19:58I'm going to jump ahead and do this just so I can get it in. But we did this with Stick Figure
20:02this summer, and it was a massive success. Only 0.55% of people refunded their tickets. We said
20:11anybody can get a refund until 10 days before the show for any reason whatsoever. You don't like the
20:15music anymore? Refund. Doesn't matter. 0.55%. And so what happened with that, we also had 86%
20:25of people say they were more excited to buy a ticket knowing that they could get a refund.
20:31This is a tiny, tiny marketing cost. Even if we couldn't resell those tickets, which we did,
20:36this is a tiny marketing cost to increase fan confidence. So for the artists who are worried
20:42about the optics of selling at market pricing and are trying to beat the scalpers at their own game
20:47and then losing, as Fielding says, with these horrible bot situations, even if they're doing
20:54great things like Katie's talking about with the fan club ticketing, which I'm all in favor for,
20:58you're still going to lose that game. So with the refund, we're now saying,
21:04hey, look at this. You're paying the right price for the ticket, which is fair. You're not getting
21:11gouged. And also, if you don't like it, return it. Tiny, tiny cost. Everybody should adopt this
21:18across the board, make a much healthier ecosystem for everybody. And also, we do need some limited
21:23legislation to get rid of speculative tickets. When someone sells a ticket they don't even own.
21:29Everybody agrees on that across the board.
21:32Thomas, how do you... It's interesting. I just learned this week that...
21:39What about now? Should I just yell?
21:43Okay. I just learned this week that in Korea, I think it's in South Korea, that actually is the
21:50culture and the practice that tickets are refundable, which I was shocked by. And my first...
21:58The first question I had was, is there a secondary market there? Is there a broker?
22:05And there really isn't. But if there was, I'm like, there is here. How would you...
22:11Because my fear is brokers then buy the whole house, and then whatever they can't sell,
22:15they just refund 10 days before. How did you think about that, preventing that?
22:21It was explicitly stated that any ticket that had been available on a secondary site of any type
22:29was not eligible for refund. Now, how do we verify that? This was a very manual process,
22:33as it's not built into the ticketing companies yet. We literally searched our fan database.
22:39If the name popped up in the Facebook group or the name that they'd ever bought something on
22:43Shopify or anything, automatic process of the refund. If it did not, we reached out and asked
22:48for their ID, and their ID needed to match... A picture of their ID needed to match a ticket to
22:53get the refund. I'll tell you this, we might have been a little under the radar, but there was
22:58probably only a few cases that slipped through the cracks on this. And I know with some of the
23:02really smart ticketing folks in this room, that could be solved.
23:09So we're kind of going back to open distribution. How have you experienced open distribution
23:16when you're putting tickets on sale for AEG tours?
23:24Thank you again. So we have used the access distro program that you mentioned before. We've
23:31used that pretty extensively. It's sort of a dream scenario. I wish every ticketing company
23:38would offer something like that, where there's really no downside to it. We take inventory,
23:46we have it listed on access.com. We don't have to take it off of primary. And then
23:51simultaneously, it's listed across 10, 12, whatever it is, additional marketplaces. And so to
23:57your point, when people are going to Google and they're seeing the first three links that they
24:01see are ads to recent marketplaces, and a lot of people clicking on those, we're going to have
24:06inventory there that's primary inventory that's generally, as Thomas was saying, is generally
24:10going to be priced below what the brokers are trying to sell for. Because we're just trying to
24:14sell it for face. It's going to be more expensive to buy it on StubHub than to buy it on Access,
24:20because StubHub has to eat and their fees are layered on top. But what there isn't there is
24:26another layer of a broker trying to make a profit. And so we can have inventory all over. We fish
24:33where the fish are. It's across all these marketplaces. So the people that don't know
24:39what primary means or where to find the primary inventory, we're giving them options that are
24:45more reasonably priced.
24:46May I interrupt for a second? Show of hands from the audience, does this concept of taking
24:54tickets that would normally be on Staple Center's access.com ticketing page and putting them on
25:02StubHub at face value, does that seem controversial to anyone? Show of hands.
25:08Only a couple hands. You take tickets from access.com, that Staple show, and you put it on
25:17StubHub at a triple markup. Does that seem controversial to anyone? Maybe a third of the
25:27people. I mean, I think that is a hugely important question that we need to work on resolving is
25:37like, you know, bringing that idea out of the shadows, making it less controversial and like,
25:42you know, putting inventory wherever people are going to buy it at whatever prices they want to
25:47pay, you know, and having it all go back to the pot and not having it be done, you know,
25:52surreptitiously or in secret. It's like, you know, Access Premium tickets, which I don't think
25:58anybody thinks that Access Premium or Ticketmaster Platinum is controversial at this point. But what
26:03if those same tickets were on StubHub at those prices? Not really that different, but man, I
26:12definitely don't want anybody to accuse my artists of scalping their own tickets, which that does
26:18sound unseemly. I want to dive into that because I think it's an interesting point. It takes it to
26:26the next level, which is if people are going to StubHub and the average ticket price on StubHub,
26:31let's say, is $400 for that ticket that Rick says is worth $200 or $100. But it's still on sale on
26:39Access or the primary ticketing platform at $200. It's essentially the consumers paying a premium
26:46for going to that website. And then that money goes back into the pot towards the artist.
26:52So they're paying for their stupid, well, their lack of curiosity in trying to figure out where
26:59the primary ticketing platform is. I think I'm more interested in thinking about that premium
27:05inventory of moving it from Platinum or Premium on the primary page to the same prices off platform.
27:15So the way you think that Groupon and Goldstars have the more distressed discount inventory and
27:22you think about Groupon as these are where I get deals, this is where you're going to pay premiums
27:27on these marketplaces that have tickets at premium ticket price.
27:30I definitely don't like the idea at all of tripling an available face value ticket on primary and
27:37putting that on StubHub. That's not good. But more of how to push premium inventory out everywhere,
27:45that seems really interesting.
27:47I guess also too, I know that we have to wrap it up in a second, but also part of this is
27:53educating consumers. I don't know what the answer to this is and I don't claim to,
27:57but educating consumers on where the primary ticketing platform is. How do we educate people?
28:04How do we, you know, what is the campaign? I'm using my marketing brain. What is the campaign
28:10that says for tickets, go to either the artist's website or access.com? How do we spread that
28:19message and spread it wide? How do we optimize an SEO? Because if the problem is that half the
28:26people are just Googling and clicking on the first thing they see, that's an education problem.
28:31And there needs to be a way to fix that.
28:33I think the genie is out of the bottle on that though. I think that ship has sailed,
28:39to use two metaphors.
28:41Well, we, you know, like,
28:45not to mention Axis has Stable Center, but Ticketmaster has a staples page. Axis has a
28:50page for Bridgestone Arena that's a Ticketmaster page. So, you know, even our friends at these
28:54primary platforms are deep in the resale business. So it's, it is kind of, I mean,
29:00in some ways I want to lean into that and have it be all blended.
29:03So, of course, all the marketing that we're doing in advance of a pre-sale and on-sale
29:08is directing people to the primary ticketer, right? So we are trying to get people directed
29:12there. You know, I don't know if I should even bring this up because I don't know where we
29:16stand on it, but we have had conversations with Google as well about, you know, labeling and
29:22marking, this is the primary ticket seller. They do do that for other, in other industries of saying
29:28like, this is the primary, not a resale marketplace. And just having like a label there,
29:34which again, you know, I don't know what the latest is on that, but we have,
29:38we have started those. Oh, it already exists? Okay. So there you go. Problem solved. Problem solved.
29:56If you can find the, if you can find the venue page, staplescentertickets.com.
30:01Yeah. And that, I think there's legislation to try to get that done. Unfortunately,
30:06we are running, we are out of time. I can't thank you. 20 seconds of Q and A.
30:13I really appreciate all of you taking the time to share with us your perspectives and hope everyone
30:18in the audience enjoyed this as much as we did. I do want to thank everyone for coming out today.
30:23And here's to a great Billboard Live Music Summit. Thank you very much.