How Concert Ticketing Works In Australia

From Taylor Swift to Fred Again, we have seen several big concerts over the summer with a massive demand for tickets resulting in long online queues.

No matter how quick you are to get onto the website, whether you actually get a ticket seems pretty random – but is it?

Bension Siebert speaks with LiSTNR journalist Tessa Randello to find out more about Australia’s ticketing industry:

Ticketek customers will be familiar with waiting in an online lounge to hopefully be assigned a ticket.

“There’s actually no queue for the tickets on sale – people are picked randomly,” Randello says.

TEG is the company that owns Ticketek, who says: “the Ticketek lounge is our way to prioritise fair access to tickets for all fans.”

“Everyone in the Ticketek lounge has an equal opportunity to get into the site regardless of when they arrived.”

While it is still unclear what is actually happening in the background to decide who gets a ticket, ticket-selling professionals likely have it worked out.

“They know how to extract the maximum utility and return that they can, and as a consumer, you’re an amateur,” says consumer campaigner Christopher Zinn.

Ticketing companies hold contracts with venues and big touring companies that dictate how tickets are sold.

They also can restrict artists’ choice on how they want to sell their tickets or share ticket administration fees.

The rules and regulations around ticketing also vary from state to state.

“The issue we’ve got in Australia is we don’t have uniform anti-scalping laws, so each state is slightly different,” Live Performance Australia CEO Evelyn Richardson says.

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