We’ve said this since, oh -2001. Why do companies break the ticket fee out in a line item to consumers? I’ve blogged about it on several occasions, but our general feeling is that “convenience fees” are hated by customers. I personally helped work the call center for an event recently, and more than one person expressed dissatisfaction with the fact that fees were charged at all.

Now, the company who trained consumers to hate convenience charges by systematically defrauding and flogging them for the past two decades has decided to swipe a page from our playbook. You can read the article here, but basically, TM is trying an “all in” ticketing price. The article implies that this was the idea of Irving Azoff, the high powered new CEO of Ticketmaster Entertainment who joined the company when Front Line Management merged with Ticketmaster earlier this year. They will test the strategy on the upcoming Eagles concert tour.

I tried to buy Eagles tickets for the “Hell Freezes over” tour back around 1994, Tickets were $90 for nosebleed seats at BJCC. I can imagine once you factor in all of the TicketMaster fees this time around you may drop two or three benjamins to see Glen, Don, and the crew phone in your favorites.

Regardless, this is a good idea. I have no doubt that Ticketmaster will see better numbers with this experiment, and this may become their standard operating practice in the future.

So let’s see- in the past couple of months Ticketmaster has:

  • Merged with FrontLine Management in a copycat strategy to address LiveNation
  • Renamed the company to reflect the acquisition
  • Named a new CEO, and
  • Changed their ticketing strategy

Seems like straw-grasping to me. In their quarterly revenue report, Ticketmaster showed that revenues dropped 76% from the quarter earlier. The economic downturn is hurting them (as it is most live entertainment businesses) and they are trying to respond. Will any of their responses benefit musicians or music fans?  Probably not.