On the March 13 episode of “Last Week Tonight with John Oliver,” Mr. Oliver attempted to tackle the opaque and confusing world that is the sports and entertainment ticketing industry. The issues are vast, and Mr. Oliver and his team did a very thorough job of explaining some of the root causes that make buying tickets incredibly frustrating and expensive. However, they missed a few important points that play a major role in how tickets are released to the public, how they are priced and who actually protects the public from bad actors.

First, Mr. Oliver references “bots”, automated software used to rapidly purchase tickets, as a scourge on ticket sales to the general public. While it is certainly true that bots have played a serious role in the procurement of tickets — especially over the past decade, Congress combatted this issue by passing the “BOTS Act” in 2016. Today, using a bot to purchase tickets in amounts greater than the limits placed at the time of sale is against federal law. Moreover, and more to Mr. Oliver’s point about Ticketmaster in general, Ticketmaster – and other primary ticket sellers – has the ability to monitor and shutdown IP addresses used to purchase tickets. While Ticketmaster can prevent the use of bots, it serves their bottom line for these tickets to be sold. Bots cannot circumvent pricing or the purchasing of tickets – they simply buy more tickets quicker than any human ever could. At the end of the day, Ticketmaster has still sold blocks and blocks of tickets – regardless of who purchased them. Ticketmaster pockets the money without showing any good faith efforts to prevent sales to bots.

Mr. Oliver did a tremendous job explaining how artists  sometimes fail to disclose how many tickets are released at the time of on sale – a practice commonly referred to as “hold backs”. Hold backs are used in ticket sales for nearly every major concert and sometimes with good reason. However, the general public often believes that when tickets go on sale, they have access to the vast majority of seats in the venue. It’s not fair to fans when an artist releases less than 20% or 30% of a venue’s seats to be sold to the general public. Ticketmaster should inform the buyer at the time of sale how many seats are actually available for any given show. Ticketmaster uses holdbacks to their advantage through “dynamic pricing”. This is the practice of only releasing a portion of event tickets at the initial on sale and allowing the resale market to raise prices before releasing the remainder of tickets. In other markets, this is known as price gouging.

Mr. Oliver suggests that one way to fix all this unseemliness is by limiting or prohibiting the transfer of tickets. Ticket transfers occur whenever a ticket is resold or changes hands. While I appreciate that position, I would counter it by suggesting the opposite is true. The consumer should have as many options as possible to buy/sell/transfer tickets. Ticketmaster specializes, as Mr. Oliver alluded to, in being all things (e.g. ticket seller, venue owner, artist manager) to everyone in the ticketing universe – including the secondary market. One of Ticketmaster’s biggest revenue drivers is forcing the consumer to get stuck in their platform system – often limiting how/where and to whom a consumer can transfer their ticket. For instance, Ticketmaster utilizes a proprietary system known as “SafeTix” under the guise of protecting consumers from ticket fraud. SafeTix prohibits moving tickets to websites and apps owned by anyone other than Ticketmaster. This often results in Ticketmaster selling non-transferable tickets; in some cases you can’t even give these tickets away. More frequently, Ticketmaster will sell tickets on the primary platform, and if you want to transfer or re-sell your tickets, you can only use their secondary resale platform, with additional fees, of course.

Mr. Oliver spoke about the ridiculous fees Ticketmaster charges on the primary sale, but he did not talk about the doubling down on fees that Ticketmaster utilizes by forcing the transfer or resell of tickets only on their platform. Using SafeTix, Ticketmaster will force a consumer who bought a ticket on their primary site to use their secondary site as the means to transfer the ticket to someone else. In doing so, not only do they control all facets of the transaction/data, but they also charge – again – similar fees they charged on the primary sale. Some might call this double dipping. While other secondary companies also charge fees – StubHub, SeatGeek, Vivid, etc. – consumers do not have the ability to shop around for the lowest fees/costs if Ticketmaster is monopolizing the secondary market.

Mr. Oliver’s tremendous show has once again rattled the cages in Washington D.C. Following the airing of this episode, US Senators Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) and Amy Klobachar (D-MN) sent a letter to the Department of Justice (DOJ) requesting an investigation into ticket pricing. This isn’t the first time that Congress has intervened in the operations of Live Nation Entertainment. It’s too early to tell if the DOJ, or any other arm of the Federal Government, will look into Live Nation’s ticketing practices, but this is the type of spotlight that needs to be shined on the otherwise opaque industry.