Has the physical sale of tickets disappeared?
There is no other way to buy tickets online, not online, on your mobile phone. Physical purchasing represents a very small percentage, about 5 percent.
We have moved from physical queues on the street, in the open field, to virtual queues where confusion and confusion sometimes reigns.
We try to do a lot of pedagogy so that people know how virtual queue works. When you go shopping and see that there are 70,000 people in front of you, it means that you have 70,000 open sessions, not 70,000. If it connects 10 times, 10 people will be counted. We always insist that each person opens a single session, does not renew, does not get as full as the number of people in front of him, and that the queue progresses in this way. The sale must be organized, organized neatly, well organized, but then chaos will be avoided because there is no platform that provides access to 10,000 people at the same time. Our sales are clean and transparent, you see the people in front of you.
How do they work against speculation and fraud, two of the most common evils?
Fighting speculation and fraud is one of our priorities at Ticketmaster because we want tickets to reach real fans who want to see their favorite artist. We don’t want these tickets to end up in a secondary market where there is speculation, there is fraud, and there is no money going to artists or fans. We have many measures to avoid this, and we have many measures that we offer to organizers and artists, from pre-registration to an organized manner at the time of access, to nominal tickets or dynamic price. We’re launching a Fan-to-Fan platform where fans can buy tickets from each other in a secure and transparent way and then re-sell tickets at ticketmaster.es at a fair and reasonable price. With this functionality we take a big step forward in our fight against exorbitant prices and counterfeit tickets. This will come.
Bots, tickets before everyone else, public enemy #1?
We are investing millions in technology around the world against robots to prevent these machines from attacking our pages and then taking many tickets that are resold. Bots are a very fast learning demon.
Take advantage of the way politicians seem to care about everything these days. What does he want from them?
A few years ago, we worked very closely with the Ministry of Culture, asking for a law to be passed that would prevent speculative sales. Our priority is to try to prevent resale platforms that have a lot of money and are always well positioned on Google from appearing in the first place because they misinform fans more than they inform them. We want to sit down with the Ministry again and continue these talks.
Why are concert tickets so high?
Let’s be clear, we do not set the price of tickets as determined by the organizers and artists at Ticketmaster. Artists who could not go on tour for two years due to the pandemic, their only livelihood is live music, records are no longer sold. In addition, a concert, organization, production costs are very high. There are a lot of people working behind a scene. The trend is that prices will settle in supply and demand instead of falling in the short or medium term.
What about management fees?
These too are determined by the organizer, not by Ticketmaster. And it is usually a percentage of the ticket price. All ticket offices in Spain manage the same percentage, and in the case of Ticketmaster, the only collection that the ticket companies have acquired and also shared with the organizers and venue, is geared towards maintaining the investment in technology. Developing new experiences for fans so they can purchase tickets online with full transparency, security, convenience and above all hassle-free. In other words, we reinvest with the user in mind.
He was giving an award at the Independent Music Awards. What was the impression of the gala held in Palma Auditorium?
These are the awards that have been held for fifteen years and we should congratulate them this year because they have outdone themselves after years of the pandemic. MIN is already a benchmark in the industry. The gala looked very well organized and the people were very motivated.
From MIN to MIM, the Association for Women in the Music Industry. What do you demand from your ranks?
All women of this association, which is also open to men, are always working to raise awareness in a highly masculinized industry. We must give more and more voices to all of us who are part of it. We claim our existence, visibility, sights, and that we are a part of this world. We are not a small group, on the contrary, we are many.
You hold an important management position. Is the number of women with power in the music industry increasing day by day?
Yes, there are three women as CEOs of three ticket companies in Spain that have been consolidated for years. We still have a long way to go, but it’s fair to say that something is moving forward.
How has Ticketmaster balanced so far in 2023?
The first quarter was very positive and wonderful, just like 2022, a year full of concerts and very important broadcasts. This 2023 will be done for all the concerts we put up for sale last year and other newly released concerts. Next week we have two Elton John concerts postponed ahead of the pandemic; and four from Coldplay in Barcelona, which we will deliver to 200,000 people.