Last week, I wrote about the power of music to bring people together. After seeing the mania as people go to extreme lengths to get tickets to the six November 2024 Toronto dates for Taylor Swift’s Eras tour, this week I’m offering an alternative opinion. The desperation and concert ticket extortion I’ve seen over the last 10 days has exposed human greed and the nasty underbelly of the entertainment business.

Welcome to week 31 of The Sunday Spark, a series with weekly thoughts and highlights, nuggets of learning, and a sustainable living tip for the week. In addition to my thoughts on concert ticket extortion, this week I look at home sharing apps that match students and seniors, precycling, and water conservation. 

The Sunday Spark – Week 31

On my mind this week: Concert ticket extortion

It’s a difficult time to be a Canadian Swiftie. Taylor left Canada off the American leg of her Eras tour and then announced plans to move on to places further afield, leaving her Canadian fans—including our Prime Minister—saying “What the heck!”

She finally announced six Toronto shows a few weeks ago—the only Canadian shows planned so far. Although there are rumours of other dates and cities, at this point the six shows in Toronto in November 2024 are Canadian fans’ only hope to see Taylor on home soil.

As soon as the shows were announced, the craziness began. There will be no general sale. If you’re not a Blue Jays season ticket holder, the only way to get even a remote shot at tickets is to get on Ticketmaster’s “Verified Fan” list or sign up for RBC’s Avion Rewards program.

Ticketmaster “Verified Fan” is a joke

Let’s talk for a minute about Ticketmaster “Verified Fan”. I put the name in quotations for a reason. It does not involve any kind of verification that you are, in fact, a fan of the artist you’re signing up to see.

Although Ticketmaster claims this is a way of ensuring real fans get tickets, it’s really just their way of ensuring demand doesn’t crash their site. That’s what happened when Eras tour tickets first went on sale in the United States. Anyone with a Ticketmaster account—so pretty much everyone—can register as a “Verified Fan”. I like Taylor, but I wouldn’t actually call myself a fan. Even so, I registered as a “Verified Fan” so my daughter Laura—a dedicated Swiftie and concert lover—would have a better shot at getting her hands on tickets.

So what happened? Predictably, millions of people registered. Like many people—including my daughter Laura and all her friends—I got an email saying I’d been waitlisted. It would have been more honest to get an email saying “Sorry Michelle. You don’t have a hope in hell of getting your hands on any Taylor Swift tickets.”

In the end, many fans who live and breathe Taylor Swift every day got no code and no tickets. Who did get them? Opportunists who bought tickets and immediately put them on resale sites for thousands of dollars. Even some of the “true fans” who have already seen Taylor on her American dates bought more tickets than they needed and then resold them at an exorbitant price to cover their costs to fly to and stay in Toronto.

Sorry Ticketmaster! Your “Verified Fan” program is an epic fail!

Desperate fans do desperate things

There’s no denying Taylor Swift is the biggest thing since sliced bread right now. She has a huge following, and her loyal fans are desperate to see her. That’s what annoys me about the concert ticket extortion I’m seeing. Desperate people do desperate things. Taylor’s real fans are likely going into debt and paying ridiculous amounts of money to secure a ticket for one of these shows, and those “Verified Fans” that Ticketmaster’s algorithm deemed worthy of a pre-sale code are taking advantage of that desperation.  

As an aside, when my daughter Laura took to Twitter (I refuse to call it X) in frustration, her tweet about wanting to kill Ticketmaster got her account suspended for violent speech. Despite King Elon’s best attempts, I don’t think it really is possible to “kill” a company, yet her appeal to get her account reinstated was rejected. But that’s a topic for another post…

It’s time for the insanity to stop!

Opportunists are profiting from the desperation of real fans and the problem just gets worse, despite Ticketmaster’s claims that they are addressing the issue.

I remember when scalping tickets was illegal. Back in the day, most people I know bought tickets from some guy in a trench-coat lurking outside the venue an hour before the show. And if you waited for the show to start, you could score tickets for less than face value when the scalpers decided to cut their losses and go home.

So how did we get to the point where sites like StubHub and Ticketmaster resale are thriving? I don’t know how we got here, but his concert ticket extortion has to stop. It’s hurting real fans, and the wrong people are profiting from the popularity of these artists.

Potential solutions to stop concert ticket extortion

As a music lover and avid concertgoer, I humbly propose some possible solutions to stop the concert ticket extortion that seems to happen with every big-ticket tour. Here are my ideas:

• Limit ticket sales to 2 per person. Yes, it’s way more fun to go to a concert with a group of friends, but limiting numbers would give more fans a shot at getting a ticket.
• Ban resale for more than face value plus fees paid. This feels like a no-brainer to me.
• Give Ticketmaster some competition. Part of the problem in North America is Ticketmaster’s monopoly in the ticket selling game. Maybe someone needs to step up and give them some competition.
• Better define a “verified fan”. In the UK, fans who bought Taylor’s album or merch on her website got first crack at tickets. That’s what a verified fan should be!
• Finally, consumers need to stop supporting these opportunists. I get that it’s hard to miss out on seeing someone you’ve idolized for years. (I’m the Queeniac who never saw Queen with Freddie, after all.) But the only way to shut this down is for people to refuse to give in to these idiots.

But while I’d love to see a solution, I expect the insanity will continue. And if Taylor does announce the rumoured shows in other Canadian cities, it will happen all over again!

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Three highlights of the week

It’s important to celebrate big milestones and simple pleasures in life. Keeping the trend going, here are three highlights and simple pleasures of the week gone by:

• Last Saturday, my husband and I went to see the Toronto Blue Jays. Before the game, they had a wonderful ceremony to add fan favourite José Bautista to the Level of Excellence. Unfortunately, the Jays lost 5-4 to the Chicago Cubs but it was a fun day out.
• On Sunday, I finally got to see the musical Kinky Boots. My daughter Laura and I had tickets to see it in 2020 and it was cancelled. Since Laura has moved to the west coast now, one of my high school besties came with me to the show. She ended up winning $600 in the 50/50 draw. Talk about a lucky outing. Oh, and the show was fabulous.
• I arrived safely in Seattle on Friday. I don’t have much free time while I’m here but I did get out for a harbour cruise on Friday afternoon. It was a beautiful day.

Three things I learned this week

Life is all about learning. Here are three things I learned this week:

Home sharing apps match students and seniors with rooms to rent

There’s an app for that! Actually, there’s an app for pretty much anything these days but this one caught my eye this week.

Student housing in most university towns, including the one where I live, is a nightmare. Sparrow Living, and SpacesShared, offer apps that match seniors with rooms to rent with students looking for housing. Sounds like a win-win to me! (Source: The Vancouver Sun)

Precycling

I’m an avid recycler but I’d never heard the term precycling until this week. Precycling is about being a savvy consumer and educating yourself on the products you buy to ensure they can be repaired, recycled, reused or composted when you’re done with them.

Check out Earth911 for more information and for questions to ask before buying. Understanding the full lifecycle of our purchases is an important first step toward holding manufacturers and retailers accountable.

Canada warming twice as fast as the rest of the Earth

I learned this week that Canada is warming at two times the rate of the rest of the Earth, and the Arctic is warming at four times the rate of the rest of the world. That’s because wintertime snow acts as a giant reflector of the sun’s warmth meaning snowy parts of the world feel a greater impact of global warming. (Source: Canada in the Year 2060, Maclean’s)

Sustainable living tip: Take shorter showers

During our recent vacation on Vancouver Island, water use restrictions were in place pretty much everywhere we went. Between forest fires and drought conditions, the island is parched. It’s an important reminder that water is a precious resource not to be wasted.

There are a lot of things you can do to reduce your water use. Taking shorter showers is an excellent place to start. This week, try setting a timer when you jump in the shower and then see how much time you can shave off your showering time.

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I’d love to hear your thoughts on any of this week’s topics. Drop me a comment below and let me know your thoughts and ideas.