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Fix The Tix Coalition Makes Bold Demands To End Exploitative Ticketing Practices

by:

Joe Patti

A little over a month ago, I wrote about the newly formed Fix the Tix coalition which is urging the US Congress to pass legislation to protect ticket buyers from exploitative ticket pricing/manipulation, ticketing scams, and use of bots to purchase high demand tickets.

Last week they released the details of what they are pushing Congress to enact. It is pretty much everything ticket buyers and venue operators have been praying for.

In addition to restrictions on just plain gouging, the plan calls for the end of speculative ticket selling by requiring sellers to legally have physical or virtual ownership of tickets.

● require that resellers and ticket resale platforms legally obtain each ticket and have each ticket in possession, virtually or physically, prior to placing it on sale.
● require that the ticket resale platform has written proof that a reseller possesses a ticket to sell.

Similarly, they ask that attempts to make a ticketing site masquerade as official outlet of a venue be made illegal.

● make illegal the use of deceptive URLs, search engine optimization, or advertising that improves the visibility of secondary sites over primary sales platforms and makes fans believe they are buying tickets from the venue or artist.
● require secondary ticketing resellers and platforms to clearly and conspicuously disclose:
○ a notice that it is not the primary ticket issuer and venue;
○ that a ticket may still be available from the primary ticket seller and link back to the primary ticket seller;
○ the original face value and fees of each ticket; and
○ a certification that the event ticket offered for sale is in the possession of the reseller or secondary ticketing platform.

Note, I haven’t listed everything they are asking to occur in each of these situations. Check out the full document for more info.

As you might imagine, they are also insisting on full transparency for fees up front during the purchasing experience.

In terms of privacy and safety, they are asking the secondary market sellers be required to provide venues with the contact info of ticket purchasers so they can be reached in case of emergency or rescheduling. But they also insist that secondary market buyer information be protected and not used for sales and marketing without purchaser permission.

As mentioned, Fix the Tix also want to prevent tickets from being snatched up by bots and to ensure secondary ticket sales are made at or near face value on a one on one basis rather than by corporations to individuals:

● ensure that artists, working with venues, determine how to get tickets into the hands of actual fans.
● prohibit companies that operate both primary and secondary ticketing platforms from forcing tickets sold for more than face value to only be resold on their platforms.
● encourage ticketing platforms to operate exclusive, no-fee, fan-to-fan exchanges of tickets as long as they are not exchanged on those exclusive platforms for more than the face value (or the original total cost) of the ticket.
● prohibit companies that are primary sellers and secondary resellers from offering secondary resales on the same web page or display where the primary seller also offers tickets for primary sale.

Arts in an Age of Technology, Audience Relations, Pricing, State of the Arts

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Questions of Relevance Not Limited to the US

by:

Joe Patti

German arts colleague Rainer Glaap has been feeding me interesting articles over the last couple weeks. I was going to follow up on some content he sent earlier, but he hit me up with an interesting study today that I am moving to the front of the line.  The recently released Culture Relevance Monitor shows a number of parallels between general cultural attitudes in Germany and the U.S.  (Note that the PDF document labeled as the German version is actually the English version and vice versa)

I use the term general cultural attitudes because many of us in the US would be envious to read of an large overall expression of support:

People in Germany (91 per cent) believe it is important to preserve cultural offerings in theatres for coming generations. A large majority (76 per cent) is also of the opinion that these should continue to be financed from the public purse. The offerings are part of Germany’s cultural identity (82 per cent) and education (91 per cent)

However, German cultural offerings seem to be faced with the same generational challenges as those in the US. Despite saying they enjoyed their experiences attending these activities when they were children, a significant segment of the population doesn’t feel these offerings resonate with them:

Both in the population as a whole and in the generation of young adults aged between 18 and 29, two-thirds are not at all interested or are not very interested in theatre performances, classical music concerts, or opera, ballet or dance performances. Four out of five respondents stated that they did not make use of traditional cultural offerings like these over the last twelve months.

37 per cent of respondents had never attended a classical music concert or an opera, ballet or dance performance (for theatre performances: 10 per cent). Many 18- to 29-year-olds feel that cultural offerings do not cater to them (43 per cent); they feel out of place there (39 per cent).

A summary of recommendations on another site also sounds similar to conversations on the same topic in the US.

  • get to know and address their target groups better: There is demand for cultural offerings such as those that are specially directed at children and teenagers (85 per cent), that make people laugh (83 per cent) and that are easy for everyone to understand (81 per cent). The performances should also stimulate social and political discussion (61 per cent) and be new and topical (63 per cent).
  • be more open and network: Theatre venues should see themselves as a gathering place (80 per cent) and offer amateur theatre groups/orchestras or similar ensembles opportunities to perform (74 per cent). Social and habitual barriers to access must be removed.
  • carry out marketing in social and modern ways: The pricing structure should be socially fair (89 per cent), and 18- to 29-year-olds in particular need easier access to programme information (42 per cent), for example via social media platforms.

The survey also asked what would have to change to make them attend more frequently:

40 percent of respondents indicated that theatre venues would have to have more cultural offerings that interested them …. 29 percent would have to have more leisure time, and for 28 percent of respondents, the tickets would need to be cheaper or free … 20 percent would need someone to accompany them for such visits, 14 percent would like it to be easier and cheaper to travel to theatre venues. 11 percent say that their health would have to improve, and 11 percent say that the quality of the cultural offerings would have to be better.

[…]

A quarter (28%) of respondents say they would need easier access to information about interesting offerings before they would attend theatre venues more often. 13 percent would like to see more diverse and varied offerings in terms of the topics, 6 percent want more options for childcare during the events.

I found it interesting that childcare came up so frequently among the 2505 respondents. This put me in mind of the last pre-Covid CultureTrack survey I wrote about in 2017 which reported on barriers to participation for those who frequently attended and those who didn’t.

For frequent attendees, the top barriers were inconvenience, no one to attend with, and rather do other leisure activities, in that order. For infrequent/never attendees, not for someone like me, didn’t think of it, and inconvenient were the top barriers, in that order.

Audience Relations, State of the Arts

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Providing Attendees With A Happy Ending

by:

Joe Patti

About a year ago, I wrote about a post Colleen Dilenschneider made showing a link between museum gift shops and museum memberships.  She recently wrote a similar piece about how gift shops can help cement relationships and good impressions in museum-goers.

She presents data that shows people who visit museum retail spaces report higher levels of satisfaction than those that don’t visit those spaces. She admits there is a chicken and egg element to this data because it isn’t clear if people who are already satisfied with their experience are then choosing to visit the shop or if visiting the shop is generating an increased level of satisfaction for them.

Dilenschneider suggests that it may not matter which scenario is in operation:

If people who are having better experiences are more likely to go into the store (to experience one of the best parts of visiting a museum retail shop), then that’s fantastic. They are further heightening their experience and paving the way for positive endorsements – which are key for motivating attendance. Alternately, if someone isn’t having a good experience and they enter the shop and have a better experience as a result, that’s fantastic as well.

Even if you aren’t running a museum or have a retail element associated with your arts related experience, Dilenschneider cites some data which is very much relevant for you. She references studies conducted by behavioral economist Daniel Kahneman who

“…explained that “our memory of past experiences (pleasant or unpleasant) does not correspond to an average level of positive or negative feelings but to the most extreme point and the end of the episode.” …He discovered that humans don’t often remember much of an experience accurately. Instead, we primarily remember how we felt at the peak of the experience, and at the end of it.

Organizations with well-executed retail experiences may be grateful for the peak-end rule, as it means people who visit the shop before leaving the museum have a greater likelihood of departing with a more positive view of their entire visit. (Those with difficult parking situations, on the other hand, may be less enthused about the peak-end rule…)

It is not always possible to control the peak experience of the evening–it could be the dinner before they arrived, a pleasant/unpleasant interaction with another attendee as easily as it could be the predictable crescendo experience everyone else in attendance had. The end of the experience is more frequently within our scope of control –although as she mentions bad parking/traffic can be among those defining final moments. There is an opportunity to influence someone’s willingness to return by investing attention into the quality of experience as they depart.

Audience Relations, Info You Can Use, Working In The Arts

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Be Careful Monetizing Those Vacation Videos

by:

Joe Patti

So as you are getting out there traveling to enjoy the natural beauty of the U.S. National Parks this summer, you may want to take a cautionary note from a case Gordon Firemark wrote about in May.  A guy who was filming parts of a feature film was dinged by the Nation Park Service for not securing the proper permits. While the charges against him were dropped, he pressed suit claiming that requiring permits and fees were unconstitutional. The 1st District Court of Appeals held that the fees and permits requirement was constitutional and the Supreme Court declined to hear the case.

Firemark notes that this ruling puts some casual recording and photography activities at risk of prosecution if people seek to monetize those materials.

You take your family vacation to Yellowstone, Mt. Rushmore, or Yosemite, and you capture some beautiful video. Then, you post it on Youtube. If you monetize that video, it just became commercial., and you could be fined, penalized, or even jailed for violating the park service’s fee-and-permit regulations. Same could happen if you capture a great still image and decide to offer it for sale via a stock-photo agency?

Do a livestream on your monetized YouTube channel from inside the park? Bingo. You need a filming permit. And that costs.

[…]

There are a few things we as creators can do to address this situation.

Don’t monetize your work. Ever. Period.
Get the permits. (As understand it, the permit Price should’ve obtained would’ve cost $500 if obtained before filming… and there were penalties and interest tacked on later since he didn’t).
Write to your congressional representatives and ask them to address the situation.

creativity, Info You Can Use, Legal Topics, Working In The Arts

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