Our favourite US Brit John Oliver is back with a new episode of Last Week Tonight — and this time, instead of convoy leader cover bands, he has his sights set on the force of evil that is Ticketmaster.
In the segment, which begins around the 10-minute, 40-second mark of the clip, Oliver responds to a TikToker who asks why Bad Bunny tickets are so expensive (and worries she'll have to start selling photos of her husband's feet on OnlyFans), attempting to summarize the history of how ticket prices have more than tripled since the mid-'90s.
As Oliver explained in last night's episode, Pearl Jam attempted to boycott Ticketmaster at the height of their fame in 1995, with their tour manager admitting to the Washington Post at the time that, in lieu of working with the company or doing shows at its affiliated venues, they were going to have to "play at weird places like a ski resort in Lake Tahoe and a fairground in San Diego."
The host went on to recount how, in 2012, Justin Bieber sold out two nights at Madison Square Garden — which seats about 20,000 — in 30 seconds. However, a report for the New York Attorney General later revealed that fewer than 2,000 tickets were put on sale that day — and it's typical for only 25 percent of tickets to be initially released to the general public for top-billing acts. At another date of that same Bieber tour, investigative reports discovered that a group of those held tickets were actually released directly to the secondary market.
Oliver also cited a more recent 2019 Billboard report wherein Live Nation admitted to helping artists scalp their tickets à la Biebs, including Metallica. The band tried to collect higher profits from their 2017 North American "WorldWired" tour, reportedly taking 40 percent of the resale value while Live Nation did the same.
As per usual, the host also offers a call to action: transparency should be brought into the ticketing practice by passing legislature that requires the disclosure of fees upfront, as well as the identity of sellers on resale sites. He also suggests that marquee artists with enough clout could restrict resales by making tickets nontransferable — something Pearl Jam tried before their 2020 tour was postponed, creating an online marketplace in collaboration with Ticketmaster that allowed fans to resell tickets with no additional fees and not for a profit.
Watch the segment in full below.
In the segment, which begins around the 10-minute, 40-second mark of the clip, Oliver responds to a TikToker who asks why Bad Bunny tickets are so expensive (and worries she'll have to start selling photos of her husband's feet on OnlyFans), attempting to summarize the history of how ticket prices have more than tripled since the mid-'90s.
As Oliver explained in last night's episode, Pearl Jam attempted to boycott Ticketmaster at the height of their fame in 1995, with their tour manager admitting to the Washington Post at the time that, in lieu of working with the company or doing shows at its affiliated venues, they were going to have to "play at weird places like a ski resort in Lake Tahoe and a fairground in San Diego."
The host went on to recount how, in 2012, Justin Bieber sold out two nights at Madison Square Garden — which seats about 20,000 — in 30 seconds. However, a report for the New York Attorney General later revealed that fewer than 2,000 tickets were put on sale that day — and it's typical for only 25 percent of tickets to be initially released to the general public for top-billing acts. At another date of that same Bieber tour, investigative reports discovered that a group of those held tickets were actually released directly to the secondary market.
Oliver also cited a more recent 2019 Billboard report wherein Live Nation admitted to helping artists scalp their tickets à la Biebs, including Metallica. The band tried to collect higher profits from their 2017 North American "WorldWired" tour, reportedly taking 40 percent of the resale value while Live Nation did the same.
As per usual, the host also offers a call to action: transparency should be brought into the ticketing practice by passing legislature that requires the disclosure of fees upfront, as well as the identity of sellers on resale sites. He also suggests that marquee artists with enough clout could restrict resales by making tickets nontransferable — something Pearl Jam tried before their 2020 tour was postponed, creating an online marketplace in collaboration with Ticketmaster that allowed fans to resell tickets with no additional fees and not for a profit.
Watch the segment in full below.