As a formerly true blue libertarian, and still one of the light blue variety, I’m loath to say “there oughta be a law” to almost anything, but this particular business seems so rife with fraud that I could support a law prohibiting “convenience fees” altogether, and requiring venue owners to either not engage Ticketmaster, or to give them a cut of the ticket price instead in lieu of the fees. Another option would be to require any venue owner who engages a ticket agency like TM to advertise the total price as the face value, but remain free to offer a discount to those who purchase directly from the venue owner, if they want to (and of course they won’t want to, since encouraging more people to come there will cost them rather than saving them money). Oddly enough, I’m not even sure Ticketmaster would oppose that. It’s not as though they’re the ultimate beneficiaries of the scam. The venue owners are, being allowed to advertise their tickets as though they were cheaper than they really are.

That’s actually not a difference in position. I agree. If I can drive over to the venue box office at buy a ticket for the advertised price, then that’s legit, as far as I’m concerned, even if they charge extra for stuff like printing your own tickets (stupid but not illegal — and actually not even stupid as long as there are people stupid enough to pay those charges), or charge-by-phone “convenience” fees, or whatever. If you’re advertising the ticket price as $20, as long as there’s some reasonable way people can actually get a ticket for $20, I don’t have a problem with that.

And this is the way it usually is with things like sporting events. But when it comes to concerts, theater tickets, touring shows, etc., you often get hit with service charges no matter how you obtain the tickets. (You’re right that this might be a state-by-state thing.)

The most egregious example I remember is a yearly music festival that happens here in Memphis in a downtown park. Since there is no actual “venue,” there’s no venue box office, and so the only way to buy tickets is through ticketing outlets, which of course charge the “convenience” fees — generally a per-ticket fee plus a per-order fee. They do open ticket booths at the park during the event, if it’s not sold out beforehand, but they also raise the ticket prices once the event starts. So as far as I can tell, there’s absolutely no way of paying the advertised price for tickets.

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As for buying tickets at face value at the venue box office, I wonder if this is a state by state thing. It seems to be pretty standard here in NC that the venue box office is the one place that actually honored the official price, and I remember California that way, too. I’ve always assumed there was some law allowing you to lie and pretend that the price of the ticket is actually lower than it is, as long as there is one place in the world where people can actually obtain it at that price. But I don’t know.

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That’s true: Before there was the monopoly, there was collusion. :) But I’m surprised driving to the venue box office saved you anything. Most of the time, you still get hit with a bunch of service charges. You know me, I’m a Democrat, and I like regulation: I’d put in a regulation that says that your advertised price for any tickets must include any and all service charges. I bought some tickets for an event here where the advertised price was something like $35, but the lowest actual price you could get them for was almost $60.

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