Physical Season Cards



Boris Bear said:
That I’d enjoy watching somebody who gives out nowt but abuse have a meltdown?

Maybe he would be one of those exceptional cases
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He does not give abuse

He is making a perfectly reasonable point that as a loyal and long term customer, he would expect the club to organise his entry to the ground in a way that suits him

Rather than creating some bogus nonsense that it is either expensive or technically impossible

Entry cards are simple and straightforward - it is the club who are being difficult here - almost certainly doing Ticketmaster’s dirty work imho
 
chunksafc said:
Maybe he would, but we don't know and unless I do all the emailing for him we won't know. Or I could ask him to traipse over to the ticket office and ask if they would consider him worthy of a physical card.

Or he could just say fuck it and not bother
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I do understand the frustration and SAFC have to do a lot more to help people with the transition.

They’ve chosen to rip the Elastoplast off and it’s caused problems
humbug said:
who's abused you and who's having a meltdown?

ps, your reply makes no sense to the post you quoted.
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They way it works mate is if you click back through the quoted posts you’ll see what the replies are to.
 
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tony_not_in_london said:
He does not give abuse

He is making a perfectly reasonable point that as a loyal and long term customer, he would expect the club to organise his entry to the ground in a way that suits him

Rather than creating some bogus nonsense that it is either expensive or technically impossible

Entry cards are simple and straightforward - it is the club who are being difficult here - almost certainly doing Ticketmaster’s dirty work imho
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He has
 
chunksafc said:
The whole digital / non digital frustrates me as I know the club lost at least 5 season cards last year from lads that had 50 plus years history supporting us to and down the country
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To be truthful, I have over 60yrs supporting the lads and I could not see me not getting a card/digital or what ever way they sold them.
 
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chunksafc said:
Strange your initial replies didn't give of that impression
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Really? I thought I’d been consistent that exceptions need to be handled exceptionally but if it came across as crass then apologies.

If you look back though I think I’ve been more sensitive than the folks hoying insults at me for disagreeing with them.
 
dred73 said:
To be truthful, I have over 60yrs supporting the lads and I could not see me not getting a card/digital or which ever way they sold them.
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These lads didn't want the hassle or feel a burden to others either getting their cards or getting into the ground
 
In the interests of trying to explain to Mr Sheep/Bear why I have such a problem with the Ticketmaster monopoly on SAFC seat distribution and the attempt to undermine non-phone based entry this is a commentary on the US litigation attempts to control TM/Live Nation’s alleged anti-competitive behaviour

It is a bit complex - so apologies but if you are interested in the issues (you should be) you can subscribe to a newsletter by a guy called Max Stoller called Big

Disclaimer: this article is Matt’s opinion. Because of my job employed by you “as a humble seeker after the truth” I am obviously not saying I agree with him. But it is an interesting question and it does make interesting reading I think ;)

Tony
(Not in London until after the Blackburn match)

—————————————————————————-
Extract from Big Newsletter Max Stoller

Earlier this month, antitrust attorney Dan Wall wrote a blog post on behalf of his client, Live Nation/Ticketmaster, trying to rebut the scrutiny on his firm. And the tack he took was a bit surprising. “Concert promotion,” he wrote, “is not a highly profitable business, even for Live Nation.” Sure, Live Nation charges charges consumers a lot of money, and doesn’t pay much to artists. But they don’t, he wrote, set the ticket price. And even worse, for Live Nation shareholders at least, it’s just not a very good business, with the middleman giant affecting at most 2% of the price.

It was a weird statement, considering Live Nation CEO Michael Rapino made $139 million in 2022. And according to new documents released by Congressman Bill Pascrell today from litigation in 2019, it’s flatly untrue. The allegations in the documents are “based upon Live Nation/Ticketmaster’s own financial data, documentation, and correspondence provided by Live Nation/Ticketmaster as part of discovery in a lawsuit that has been ongoing for well over a decade.” Live Nation, according to a lawyer facing the firm, “instituted a scheme which essentially defrauds everyone involved, from the artists to the ticket purchasers.


The story starts with a concert at the New Jersey state fair in 2011 when the head of the fair, Al Dorso, asked Live Nation to produce a music event. Live Nation, according to Dorso, ‘yawned’ at the offer, and declined. So Dorso turned to a corporation called Juice Entertainment, run by two experienced promoters of electronic dance music. Once Juice got traction in planning the event, Live Nation reversed course and demanded to co-produce the show. Dorso tried to get them to cooperate. As he later put it, "They were the 800-pound gorilla. I said, ‘Go see if you can work out a deal.’”

They couldn’t work out a deal, and Live Nation got Juice fired. The smaller firm sued Live Nation, claiming that the entertainment giant “coerced performers into not signing with Juice to appear at the fair and threatened to withhold its ticketing services to the venue — the state-owned Meadowlands sports complex — if it were not allowed to be a partner.” In other words, Live Nation used dominance in other lines of business - artist promotion and ticketing software - to thwart a rival.
In this purported arrangement, Live Nation and Juice would have split the costs of putting on the event, like renting the venue, the sound stage, and so forth. They would also share profits from ticket sales with artists and each other. That sounds good so far. The problem is what came next. Live Nation had secret side deals with vendors to inflate costs by overpaying venues, which meant any profit from the event would evaporate. Co-promoters and artists, who share in profits, would lose out, but would be told that the show just wasn’t profitable.

Here’s the chart Barnet included in his expert report describing Live Nation’s violation of its duty of care to musicians.

Logon or register to see this image
​
These kinds of secret kickbacks ensured what Juice’s lawyer called the ‘financial ruin’ of co-promoters. Of course, Live Nation claimed it was losing money or not making very much on any particular event, and it wasn’t. Because the profit was coming in through rebates, which according to Barnet, went onto a line in the accounting statement called ‘contribution margin.’


But there are hints of amounts. Live Nation executives and investor documents used to use the term ‘contribution margin’ quite frequently, but I can’t find the term much beyond Live Nation’s investor results in the third quarter of 2021 (which is around the time Democratic members of Congress began calling for antitrust investigations and the Antitrust Division amped up antitrust scrutiny.) Here’s what Live Nation said that quarter.

From July to September of 2021, ‘operational contribution margin’ for Live Nation was $747 million dollars. The net income of that quarter for the whole company for that same time was just $47 million, so these kickbacks represent a little over 15 times the profit of Live Nation. If you do it by cash flow, that’s 116% of the increase in cash balance for the quarter. Are these numbers correct? I don’t know. I’m sure Live Nation would say ‘operational contribution margin’ means something different, as they aren’t going to confirm they’ve been taking secret kickbacks by exploiting their market power. But rebates do probably represent a fair amount of cash.

It’s easy to believe the worst about Live Nation, they have a bad reputation.

But in addition, this scheme creates an incentive system for venues and third party vendors, not all of whom are owned by Live Nation. Basically, Live Nation can present venues with a choice. If you cooperate, you’ll get extra hidden revenue, but if you refuse to cooperate, Live Nation will work with your rival, or may just buy into the market to compete with you directly. At any point, Live Nation can dial up or down rebates, to reward or punish. And that’s increasingly true as Live Nation buys more and more corporations in and around the live event space, with each one presenting additional options for fees and rebates.

And that’s why Live Nation needs to be broken up, and more broadly, why we need to get rid of secret rebates throughout the economy.

cheers,

Matt Stoller
 
tony_not_in_london said:
In the interests of trying to explain to Mr Sheep/Bear why I have such a problem with the Ticketmaster monopoly on SAFC seat distribution and the attempt to undermine non-phone based entry this is a commentary on the US litigation attempts to control TM/Live Nation’s alleged anti-competitive behaviour

It is a bit complex - so apologies but if you are interested in the issues (you should be) you can subscribe to a newsletter by a guy called Max Stoller called Big

Disclaimer: this article is Matt’s opinion. Because of my job employed by you “as a humble seeker after the truth” I am obviously not saying I agree with him. But it is an interesting question and it does make interesting reading I think ;)

Tony
(Not in London until after the Blackburn match)

—————————————————————————-
Extract from Big Newsletter Max Stoller

Earlier this month, antitrust attorney Dan Wall wrote a blog post on behalf of his client, Live Nation/Ticketmaster, trying to rebut the scrutiny on his firm. And the tack he took was a bit surprising. “Concert promotion,” he wrote, “is not a highly profitable business, even for Live Nation.” Sure, Live Nation charges charges consumers a lot of money, and doesn’t pay much to artists. But they don’t, he wrote, set the ticket price. And even worse, for Live Nation shareholders at least, it’s just not a very good business, with the middleman giant affecting at most 2% of the price.

It was a weird statement, considering Live Nation CEO Michael Rapino made $139 million in 2022. And according to new documents released by Congressman Bill Pascrell today from litigation in 2019, it’s flatly untrue. The allegations in the documents are “based upon Live Nation/Ticketmaster’s own financial data, documentation, and correspondence provided by Live Nation/Ticketmaster as part of discovery in a lawsuit that has been ongoing for well over a decade.” Live Nation, according to a lawyer facing the firm, “instituted a scheme which essentially defrauds everyone involved, from the artists to the ticket purchasers.


The story starts with a concert at the New Jersey state fair in 2011 when the head of the fair, Al Dorso, asked Live Nation to produce a music event. Live Nation, according to Dorso, ‘yawned’ at the offer, and declined. So Dorso turned to a corporation called Juice Entertainment, run by two experienced promoters of electronic dance music. Once Juice got traction in planning the event, Live Nation reversed course and demanded to co-produce the show. Dorso tried to get them to cooperate. As he later put it, "They were the 800-pound gorilla. I said, ‘Go see if you can work out a deal.’”

They couldn’t work out a deal, and Live Nation got Juice fired. The smaller firm sued Live Nation, claiming that the entertainment giant “coerced performers into not signing with Juice to appear at the fair and threatened to withhold its ticketing services to the venue — the state-owned Meadowlands sports complex — if it were not allowed to be a partner.” In other words, Live Nation used dominance in other lines of business - artist promotion and ticketing software - to thwart a rival.
In this purported arrangement, Live Nation and Juice would have split the costs of putting on the event, like renting the venue, the sound stage, and so forth. They would also share profits from ticket sales with artists and each other. That sounds good so far. The problem is what came next. Live Nation had secret side deals with vendors to inflate costs by overpaying venues, which meant any profit from the event would evaporate. Co-promoters and artists, who share in profits, would lose out, but would be told that the show just wasn’t profitable.

Here’s the chart Barnet included in his expert report describing Live Nation’s violation of its duty of care to musicians.

Logon or register to see this image
​
These kinds of secret kickbacks ensured what Juice’s lawyer called the ‘financial ruin’ of co-promoters. Of course, Live Nation claimed it was losing money or not making very much on any particular event, and it wasn’t. Because the profit was coming in through rebates, which according to Barnet, went onto a line in the accounting statement called ‘contribution margin.’


But there are hints of amounts. Live Nation executives and investor documents used to use the term ‘contribution margin’ quite frequently, but I can’t find the term much beyond Live Nation’s investor results in the third quarter of 2021 (which is around the time Democratic members of Congress began calling for antitrust investigations and the Antitrust Division amped up antitrust scrutiny.) Here’s what Live Nation said that quarter.

From July to September of 2021, ‘operational contribution margin’ for Live Nation was $747 million dollars. The net income of that quarter for the whole company for that same time was just $47 million, so these kickbacks represent a little over 15 times the profit of Live Nation. If you do it by cash flow, that’s 116% of the increase in cash balance for the quarter. Are these numbers correct? I don’t know. I’m sure Live Nation would say ‘operational contribution margin’ means something different, as they aren’t going to confirm they’ve been taking secret kickbacks by exploiting their market power. But rebates do probably represent a fair amount of cash.

It’s easy to believe the worst about Live Nation, they have a bad reputation.

But in addition, this scheme creates an incentive system for venues and third party vendors, not all of whom are owned by Live Nation. Basically, Live Nation can present venues with a choice. If you cooperate, you’ll get extra hidden revenue, but if you refuse to cooperate, Live Nation will work with your rival, or may just buy into the market to compete with you directly. At any point, Live Nation can dial up or down rebates, to reward or punish. And that’s increasingly true as Live Nation buys more and more corporations in and around the live event space, with each one presenting additional options for fees and rebates.

And that’s why Live Nation needs to be broken up, and more broadly, why we need to get rid of secret rebates throughout the economy.

cheers,

Matt Stoller
Click to expand...

I think you're getting two things mixed up here. This is about promoting events, rather than the ticket sales and has nothing to do with Sunderland pretty much.

I work in ticketing, one of the big reasons that Ticketmaster has stuff like Sunderland is there's barely anyone who touches it. The market really isn't big (in terms of the number of customers rather than money) so as a smaller firm it makes absolutely no sense going anywhere near it. The price to get turnstyles etc and the systems behind it, for the potential you might and mean big might get 1 customer just isn't worse it especially when there's other people who can do it better.

Just looking at stadiums there's probably what 80, or so, across all sports in the whole country which are worth any money as having somewhere with 1k fans, for 20 weeks a year, there's not that much money there when you account for the systems etc.
 
Zimba said:
Just looking at stadiums there's probably what 80, or so, across all sports in the whole country which are worth any money as having somewhere with 1k fans, for 20 weeks a year, there's not that much money there when you account for the systems etc.
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So you are saying the club has no choice.

Why move into a clearly more expensive digital system, new hardware, software etc which the club plainly didn't understand ( all this BS that it would only be NFC) and making it more difficult for a substantial section of their supporters ( sorry meant customers )to attend, when the previous system of just updating season cards worked fine.
 
Zimba said:
I think you're getting two things mixed up here. This is about promoting events, rather than the ticket sales and has nothing to do with Sunderland pretty much.

I work in ticketing, one of the big reasons that Ticketmaster has stuff like Sunderland is there's barely anyone who touches it. The market really isn't big (in terms of the number of customers rather than money) so as a smaller firm it makes absolutely no sense going anywhere near it. The price to get turnstyles etc and the systems behind it, for the potential you might and mean big might get 1 customer just isn't worse it especially when there's other people who can do it better.

Just looking at stadiums there's probably what 80, or so, across all sports in the whole country which are worth any money as having somewhere with 1k fans, for 20 weeks a year, there's not that much money there when you account for the systems etc.
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He’s too wrapped up in conspiracy theory to listen to logic and reason
 
Boris Bear said:
He’s too wrapped up in conspiracy theory to listen to logic and reason
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Conspiracy theory 🤣?

You think the fact that competition authorities across the world - including the US, EU and UK are taking action against those seeking to monopolise markets is some sort of “conspiracy”?

Conspiracy against whom? The kindly billionaires cheerfully skinning you while you stand around and applaud?

In answer to the point made about the motive for TM interest in the SoL venue - the north east - population roughly 2.5 million - has arguably two mega venues that could put on the likes of Beyonce and Bruce Springsteen ie Sid James Park and the SoL

By handing over monopoly ticketing rights to the SoL to Ticketmaster the Chuckle Brothers handed over significant opportunities to earn monopoly rents

Do I trust the Chuckle Brothers to have negotiated a good deal for Sunderland and its supporters? A squadron of flying pigs has just passed my window

And so far as physical entry cards are concerned for matches we should be insisting they are a NO COST OPTION to anyone who wants one

And as soon as possible we should be dumping Ticketmaster
 
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Strikes me the club are shooting themselves in the foot here.

Go to any shop and you’ll see some people are using cards to pay and some are using devices so a physical card is obviously prefeed by some.

With loyalty cards, where they want maximum uptake, they will usually offer a physical card as well as a digital option- I have 10 loyalty cards in my Apple Wallet but never carry a physical card.

I’m not sure why this becomes such a big issue each year- the club should just offer an alternative and with the passage of time, as with payment cards etc., more and more people will use digital.

By turning this into such a big battle to be won every year, there will be an element of people who will just dig their heals in and will demand a physical card “for badness” as the Scots would say.
 

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