 I know, I know, I know, I know you hate Ticketmaster, okay? I know this, you tell me this, I hear it all the time. Everybody knows this. And one of the things that you guys hate the most, dynamic ticket pricing. So today, we're going to talk all about it. Let's dive into it. What's up, everybody? Welcome back. My name is Shiraz here on Thumbs Up Run, where we talk about buying tickets, selling tickets and making sure that you have all the fun with your tickets. Be sure to subscribe and hit that little bell icon below so you can make sure that you're always staying on top of all the ticket news that comes out every single week to make sure that you become the best ticket buyers out there. Now today, I want to talk all about dynamic ticket pricing, what it is, how it works, where you'll see it, what, you know, how can you work around it potentially, and what's, you know, what's the future of it? All right, first off, first thing we got is dynamic ticket pricing. What is it? On a very basic level, it's just saying, what is the price we should set this good or service to make sure that we maximize our profit? This can work in one of two ways. This can either go up or price it and go down. Now when you think of dynamic pricing, I believe the most common option is prices going up, up, up, gain more expensive, but the flip side is also true, especially in the secondary ticket market. So when you're out there, you can just jump over to StubHub or Seeky or wherever you go and you're just going to see all these different options for tickets at price at these various, various levels. What Ticketmaster is doing from their end is they're saying, okay, we want to make sure that we're going to price these tickets accurately from the very beginning when they go on sale from the box office to make sure that we can maximize our profits. Sometimes we don't want to just leave all the profit for these ticket resellers to go ahead and make their money on the secondary market. What we can do is we'll raise our prices a little bit or a lot of it and basically be able to capture a bit more revenue on each of those tickets' sales. So discounting is another way of managing this dynamic ticket pricing model. It's a bit different in the sense that you're not seeing it on the face value, but you're seeing it when you go on to Ticketmaster and you see the ticket price at 50 bucks and then you just dump in that promo code, all of a sudden your ticket price might be slashed in half, $25, amazing. So that's just another example of how they're using dynamic ticket pricing to make sure that the right ticket into the hands of the right buyer. Now, Ticketmaster has been using this strategy for many, many years at this point. In the past, it was mostly used for tickets that had already gone on sale. For events that were, you know, getting close to that sellout level, Ticketmaster would realize, hey, you know, maybe we can charge a bit more because obviously a lot of people want to go to this event and we may not have priced this accurately. So over time, Ticketmaster was learning from that saying, okay, maybe we can change the prices a couple of weeks after they go on sale. And then, you know, they got a bit more aggressive. They said, what if we change it a few, you know, few days, just a few days after they went on sale? And then they get more aggressive, like, oh, oh, oh, we're getting, you know, maybe we can even raise the prices during the general sale. Do it a little bit, a little bit, a little bit. And then, and then, oh, and then they had the great idea of saying, oh, what if we just raise the prices during the pre-sales? Now they're really cooking here. Now they're saying, okay, we can start capturing more value. We know immediately how much people are willing to spend on these tickets because we're getting all this data right away. We see that these waiting rooms are flooded. We know people are buying these tickets off the shelves, left, right, and center. It's amazing. It's fantastic. How can we now capture even more of this value? How can we make even more money off these people who are willing to spend the money to buy those tickets? And that, my friend, is where they've introduced the official platinum ticket. Now this invention has, again, been around for quite a while. And the way it was, you know, marketed and designed to be sold to customers was basically saying, hey, you want to go to this event, fantastic, and you want to support your favorite artist. So what you should do is actually pay a bit more, or a lot bit more, to buy these specific tickets in these great seating sections. But the money is going to go to your artist, so they're going to get supported by you. And then you're also going to get your 100% verified tickets, so you have nothing to worry about. Don't buy them on the resale market. You can go ahead, just buy them through us. It'll be fantastic. Don't worry about it. Everything will be taken care of. Now over time, though, Ticketmaster, again, as you can tell, they were getting a bit more aggressive with their pricing strategies. So now they're realizing, okay, we know there's people who are willing to spend the money to buy these tickets in these specific designated areas. But sometimes these tickets, they're selling too fast. And we want to make sure we capture some of this value. So what we're going to do is actually during these first pre-sales, we're going to track and make sure and see how much people are willing to spend on these tickets. So we're going to see how well are the VIP and soundcheck and experience type seats. How well are those selling? How is the rest of the arena? How are the rest of the tickets selling? Are they selling fast? Are they selling slowly? Is there a certain region or certain seating area or seating section or a specific price point where people are flooding to faster than others? All these different factors take it all into consideration. And what Ticketmaster has done is, one, they took the official platinum ticket and then they started to implement it in a bit of a different way. Instead of just having a specific set of seats set aside for the official platinum section, they're starting to do is actually pull down tickets that were initially assigned, you know, for the pre-sale at a specific face value price and they're actually just converting them directly to official platinum status. So that ticket that might have cost you $299 in the, you know, one of the main prime sections of the floor is now a official platinum seat with the same ticket available but at like three or four or five times the price. It's very worrisome because it's like, oh, I was ready to part these tickets, I had clicked the blue dots, I was ready to go check out buy my tickets, have a great time. And then it says, oh, we got an error. It's like, oh, this is odd. And then the page refreshes and you go back to the section, take a look at, see what the seats that are available in that section yet again. And you see, oh, oh, I just clicked those but now when I click them, they're not coming up as $299, they're coming up as $799. What? Why? Why? Huh? What Ticketmaster is doing is basically saying, hey, we know that people are willing to spend the money they've set in these specific areas and so what we're gonna do is we're gonna raise the prices to what we think the market will actually bear. We think that someone is going to be willing to spend the $700, $800, $900 to sit in these seats and that, my friends, is dynamic ticket pricing in a nutshell. For Ticketmaster, this is one of their revenue growth strategies at this point. They're trying to make sure that they can get as much money out of a ticket buyer as possible through the official platinum seats and you'll even see this in some extreme cases now where you're gonna see not necessarily even just the prime seats that are right next to the stage where everybody wants to see that they don't get right up and close to your favorite artist, now they're actually setting up official platinum seats, setting up all the way up in the upper bulls in different sections, in lower bulls in the back in different sections, just any type of, anywhere they think that they can get some additional value out of it, they're gonna start converting these into official platinum seats. Now, with all the doom and gloom I've just noted, there are a few things to keep in mind. So one, if you get in on the very first presale, if you get in pretty quickly, get in right away, you're gonna see the true face value for many of these seats. You're not gonna see this dynamic pricing model come into effect right away. Ticketmaster still needs to gather that data to make sure that they know whether there are tickets that we can convert into official platinum status and then also if we need to raise the actual face values of these tickets themselves. So if you get in right away, ticket prices will be set at the initial posted face values that you saw when you were looking for these tickets. So that's one thing. Now, if you get in a bit later than others, you might start seeing some variations now. So that $50 ticket that you once thought was gonna be $50 when you actually got through the waiting room is now a $65 ticket or a $70 ticket. And I mean, there's something you can really do from that point of view. If it's a face value that's gone up in price, then obviously that's what you're gonna be forced with. If you wanna sit there, that's what you're gonna have to pay by buying it through Ticketmaster. If you aren't willing to pay it though, then that's where things can get a bit more tricky. So if you're not someone who's willing to pay whatever the face value price that has been set, then what you're gonna have to do is either make the decision of like, are you going to actually spend that much money that you didn't initially plan for and didn't wanna spend? Or are you then going to go the other way and say, I'm not gonna buy this. I'm gonna wait and see if ticket prices will come down in the future. This decision is not necessarily an easy one, especially if it's someone where you're very excited to go see, they're only gonna come once a year, maybe even less. You don't know if they're gonna come back. And the timing works out, the dates work out, everything works out perfectly. Sometimes you just feel like you have to commit regardless. And a lot of times that's what people do. Even if the face value has increased, sometimes you don't have a choice and you just gotta buy them and you just gotta go and it doesn't mean it's not gonna be a good time. It's just you're gonna have to spend a bit more than you had initially planned. But then if you go the other route and say, oh, I'm just gonna wait and hope that ticket prices will come down. Yes, it's very likely they will, but on this other hand, there's always that risk that it just might not. Or it might be that tickets are not available in a certain section anymore that you were wanting to sit in and now you sit somewhere else away from your friends. There's a lot of issues that can arise with not making that initial purchase. In terms of the future of dynamic ticket pricing, this is something that's not going away. Unfortunately, it's here to stay. It's driving a lot of revenue for Ticketmaster and various other companies. So this is something that is not gonna go anywhere. You're gonna be forced to have to deal with this. And so the best way to really combat this and fight this is one, you gotta get into those waiting rooms as early as possible to make sure that you're getting the first initial wave of true face value tickets. And two, the other thing is that you really have to make your decisions based on the amount of money you're willing to spend. If you're not gonna buy those seats because you think they're too expensive, then don't buy them. Very important, you take a look at everything you do, be patient, take your time, don't rush through anything. Make sure you double check because there have been times, especially with Ticketmaster where sometimes you'll go to the checkout process. You know, you'll have carded the tickets at one price but when you actually get to the actual checkout process, you'll realize that they actually changed in price. Prime example of this was actually last summer with Rolling Stones. What happened there? The entire venue had a set price for the general admission entry but then when people were actually going to the checkout process, the price had actually jumped, you know, $50, $70, $90. And people obviously didn't pay attention because why would you? When you go to the checkout, you assume that the ticket price that was set when you put it in your cart with the same price plus fees of what you're gonna actually check out at when you actually go to the payment process. What people were noticing is that no, this was not the case. So make sure you take a look, understand what's happening. It's very possible that ticket prices can change. And if they do, you gotta make sure you make that decision of saying, hey, am I willing to spend that much money? Yes or no? If yes, obviously go ahead, do it, fantastic. If you're not, then you gotta back out. You gotta just say, okay, you know, I'm willing to just take my time here and not make this purchase right now. And then just hope that maybe ticket prices will come down in the future on the secondary market. So you gotta be careful. That's all I can say. Dynamic ticket pricing, it's here to stay. Can't do anything about it. So just watch out for it. I think that's unfortunately the only thing I can tell you. There's no, there's no good happy ending here. There's no good conclusion. It's all just doom and gloom. And unfortunately that's how I'm gonna leave you. With that being said, hope you guys enjoyed this video. Be sure to subscribe if you haven't yet because I have a lot of great content coming up again to make sure that you guys become the best ticket buyers possible. And see you guys next time. You know, I was looking at the footage and kind of like just reviewing everything we just kind of recorded. And I realized I sound very, very depressed about this dynamic ticket pricing thing. And I mean, it kind of is, but no, don't be depressed. Smile.