On a misty Friday morning, fans lined up with chairs and blankets outside the State Theatre.
They weren’t there for a show. They were waiting for the box office to open – something it does just one day a week.
The dozen or so people there are among a handful of Portland concertgoers who have committed to buying tickets in person instead of online. They will brave bad weather, parking woes, long drives and lines for one common goal: avoiding fees.
“We’re sticking it to Ticketmaster,” Jeremey Kriss, of Portland, said while standing in line.
The international ticketing company based in California and used by the State Theatre and two other local venues, has been criticized repeatedly for its high fees and stressful online queues. Dissatisfaction came to a peak last year when millions of fans were unable to get tickets for Taylor Swift’s tour, resulting in a congressional hearing about the company’s power and reach.
On May 23, the Justice Department filed a lawsuit against Live Nation Entertainment, the parent company of Ticketmaster, claiming it holds an unjust monopoly in the live entertainment industry by manipulating artists and venues into solely using its platforms, limiting competition and raising ticket prices.
Online ticket fees for venues across Portland that use Ticketmaster – or other platforms such as PortTIX and Tixr – can range from $5 to $15 extra, often equating to anywhere from 10% to 40% of the base ticket price, according to an analysis by the Press Herald. It’s not always clear to customers where their money is going.
But buying tickets in person lets people avoid those fees and get the cheapest possible tickets, as some Portlanders have caught onto.
Gary Desroshers, of Portland, said “the convenience fees that are not really convenient because you’re being charged” encourage him to skip the online prices and come in person.
“I don’t need (the fees) because I live locally,” Desroshers said.
ONLINE SALES MORE POPULAR
Area venues say most people still buy tickets online.
State Theatre General Manager Lauren Wayne said that, while fees are frustrating for customers, they’re necessary to cover the costs of putting on live shows at any venue.
At the 1,870-seat State Theatre, which also handles tickets for outdoor concert area Thompson’s Point, around 92% ticket sales are made online.
Wayne said that as an organization that sells over 200,000 tickets a year, Ticketmaster is the only platform that can keep up with its demand.
Ticketmaster and Live Nation control 80% of direct ticket sales at major concert venues, according to the Justice Department.
“I don’t support (Ticketmaster). I don’t like the enormous fees, and I think they should be broken up,” Kriss said. “I don’t want to financially benefit them.”
Kriss, who was in line to buy tickets for The Head and the Heart at Thompson’s Point, said he has been buying tickets in person in Portland and other cities he has lived in for years.
The Cross Insurance Arena, which is the city’s largest venue and seats up to 9,500 people, and Aura, which seats up to 1,000, also use Ticketmaster for their online sales.
Managers at those two downtown Portland facilities declined to answer questions about ticket sales, why they use Ticketmaster and whether more people have been buying in person.
Live Nation did not respond to requests for comment.
ALTERNATIVE PLATFORMS
Other local venues have opted for different ticketing platforms. Portland House of Music uses Tixr, One Longfellow Square uses its own system, and Merrill Auditorium and the Portland Conservatory of Music use a platform called PortTIX, which is owned by Portland Ovations and Portland Symphony Orchestra.
At PortTIX, co-director and operations manager Liz Currier said fees are the same online, in person and over the phone.
Since June 2021, PortTIX has been using a scaled fee structure in which there are lower fees for lower-priced events, like small classical groups at the 150-seat Portland Conservatory of Music. More expensive events have higher fees, like comedy shows by nationally recognized performers at the 1,908-seat Merrill Auditorium.
Most customers purchase online, Currier said.
At One Longfellow Square, in-person tickets are always more expensive than presale prices, despite not including fees. That’s because the venue only sells in-person tickets on the night of the event. Business manager Fiona Grady says that the higher night-of prices are to encourage people to buy tickets in advance, so they can set up the 180-seat listening room accordingly before the show.
Grady says One Longfellow Square has seen a modest increase in tickets bought in-person recently, with door sales accounting for 10% of total ticket sales this year, compared to 8.5% last year.
FEES V. BOTS
Customers are not always clear what added fees are going toward on ticketing platforms. Common online fees include a service fee, processing fee and facility fee, which are often shared between the venue, the ticketing vendor and the promoter. Ticketmaster, for instance, doesn’t receive any portion of the base ticket value, which is decided by the artist or promoter.
Online fees at One Longfellow Square often equate to around 20% of the ticket price. As a small venue and a nonprofit, fees are important in supporting One Longfellow Square as it only has a limited amount of tickets it can sell for the small listening room, Grady said. Fees go toward covering credit card transaction fees, ticket-selling infrastructure and paying staff who sell tickets, she said.
“Ticketing fees are here to stay,” Wayne, of the State Theatre, said. “It’s a service that is provided, that needs to be covered. Any venue has ticketing fees, every and all venues, whether they’re a Ticketmaster venue or not.”
Wayne says the problem with online ticketing isn’t Ticketmaster though, it’s the scalpers and bots.
She noted that the State Theatre often falls victim to bots immediately buying up tickets and then dramatically marking them up on secondary platforms like StubHub. Sometimes, scalpers sell tickets multiple times, forcing the State Theatre to turn people away at the door who thought they bought a real ticket but didn’t.
If the ticket does not come from Ticketmaster, there is no guarantee that its holder will have a seat at the show, Wayne says. She is grateful for the money Ticketmaster invests in combatting scalpers and bots, but it still proves to be an immense problem for concert venues.
“It’s frustrating, and I don’t want to give money to Ticketmaster or scalpers, who are reselling them on their sites, I’d just rather have the tickets myself,” Megan Drew said while waiting in line at the State Theatre.
IN-PERSON SALES AREN’T A CURE-ALL
Despite issues buying tickets online, coming in-person isn’t always a foolproof method.
Matt Keith, of Standish, said the line at the State Theatre for Maggie Rogers’ shows at Thompson’s Point last summer wrapped around the building. The pop musician initially only made tickets available in-person for her nationwide tour, in an effort to combat fees and bots. A week later, she opened sales online.
Despite the long line on the first day tickets were for sale, Keith did end up getting a ticket for Rogers’ show and said he even enjoyed chatting with people in line.
Others aren’t always as lucky.
For Portlanders looking to get tickets to Gracie Abrams’ State Theatre show in October, waiting outside the box office for hours wasn’t enough.
Artists can choose to set aside tickets to be bought in-person, but if not, in-person sales are included in the same general sale pool on Ticketmaster. Wayne says that 90% of the time, concertgoers will be able to get tickets in-person at the State Theatre on a Friday, even if it’s a day after tickets first went on sale. If it’s a bigger artist, however, the chances can go down.
Hannah Preble and Meredith Saunders were the first two in line at the State Theatre to get tickets for Gracie Abrams the day tickets went on sale June 7. They were dissuaded from purchasing tickets online by the stress of maneuvering Ticketmaster presales and online queues of thousands just for shows to sell out in minutes. They chose to take their chances and buy tickets in person for Abrams’ show in hopes of a more streamlined and relaxed ticket-buying process.
When the State Theatre box office opened at 10 a.m., however, fans in line were shocked to discover there were only two tickets left.
Immediately, all Abrams hopefuls in line jumped on their phones to join the general sale Ticketmaster queue, and many found their place in line to be in the thousands. Despite coming to the box office to avoid this process, they all found themselves back on Ticketmaster. As a result, only two people left the State Theatre with printed out tickets to Abrams’ show.
“(Ticketmaster) is a scam,” Dina Malual, of Portland, said after learning about Abrams’ sold-out show while waiting in line. “I had her artist presale code, I had Spotify presale code, I had the platinum stuff. … I had everything, and I still didn’t get tickets, and I had friends on it.”
So while in-person ticketing can be a workaround for fees and competitive queues, it can also be a bit of a gamble.
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