ILMC Panel Clarifies: ‘Dynamic Pricing Doesn’t Exist In The UK’

London – A panel at the International Live Music Conference ILMC in London, England, Feb. 26, delved deep into the world of ticket pricing. Naturally, the topic of dynamic pricing came up, and Live Nation’s executive president of touring, international, Phil Bowdery, took the opportunity to set the record straight.

“Dynamic pricing, it seems to be a buzzword, physically doesn’t exist in the UK,” he said, adding, “airlines have dynamic pricing, hotels and restaurants have dynamic pricing. We don’t. We set levels – if the artist wants to do that.”

What that results in are different tiers of tickets. But those are tied to specific seats inside the venue, and don’t automatically change price after a certain percentage of tickets has been sold, for instance, or because a technology recognizes an onrush, and therefore prompts a change in ticket price mid-purchase.

Dynamic pricing for concerts became a hot topic in the UK, when Oasis went on sale with their reunion tour last September. Ticket prices for the highly-anticipated tour had more than doubled in some cases.

At least, that’s what consumers reported, and what prompted the UK government to launch a review into dynamic pricing at the beginning of this year. Ticketmaster UK MD Andrew Parsons got invited to clarify the way prices are set.

Parsons highlighted three important aspects: (1) Ticketmaster UK does not set prices, the event organizer does. What Ticketmaster will do is work with the event organizers, if requested, and advise them on finding the right price, based on the company’s vast experience in all things ticketing.

(2) There is no algorithm or other technology at work that would make ticket prices change automatically during an on-sale, but some promoters will want different tiers of tickets, with a higher priced tier becoming available, once the lower-priced tier has sold out.

So, on a particularly high-demand show, where a lower priced tier may sell out in mere seconds, a fan might see a certain ticket price listed without yet paying attention to the seat number, but by the time they make a purchasing decision, they only have access to the higher-priced tier.

That’s the only way to explain how some fans during the Oasis on-sale reported they’d been charged a higher price at check-out than when they had first clicked on the ticket.

Ticketmaster UK confirmed this with Pollstar upon request, explaining, “when a fan selects a ticket, it is placed in their basket at a fixed price, which does not change. Ticket price ranges are determined before tickets go on sale and do not fluctuate during a sale. For example, if seat B7 is priced at £50, that price will not change during the sale. However, as you’ve said, lower-priced tickets tend to sell out first. So, if a fan joins the sale later and only sees higher-priced tickets available, they may mistakenly assume that prices generally have increased – when in reality, the lower-priced tickets have simply sold out.”

Parsons emphasized all of this in front of the UK parliament: The ticket price, he explained, “did not change, and I am happy to explain to you how and why. Many instances where dynamic pricing will be referred to (…) relate to technology that is in some way reacting to market, surging on demand, driving tickets up relative to the amount of traffic there might be on the site. We can be quite clear that that is not how the Ticketmaster [UK] website operates. We do not change prices in any automated or algorithmic way. Prices are set in advance with event organizers and their teams at the prices they want them to be made available.

“In certain instances, some cheaper tickets that may be available will inevitably sell through most quickly, meaning that the tickets that fans see at a later point will be at a higher price. This can give the illusion that those tickets have changed price, but they have not. We can be very clear that there is no technology driving any price change, and the price you see on the Ticketmaster website is the price the event organizer wanted it to be, including all fees, and that is the only price that we will ever display.”

Finally, Parsons explained, the vast majority of tickets actually went down in price over the course of the onsale, because most events did not sell out. The headline-grabbing cases represented only a small minority of events. In most cases, fans would profit from a flexible pricing system, dynamic or not.

Subscribe to Pollstar HERE