Randy Nichols on Why Concert Tickets Cost So Much

In this week's episode of Behind the Scene, we go from old-school radio stories and record store nostalgia to the ugly math of concert tickets. Randy Nichols joins us to explain how the ticketing machine actually works, why scalpers win, and what fans can do to push lawmakers toward real fixes.

• defining primary sales versus secondary resale marketplaces
• explaining how bots and “short sellers” game the system
• breaking down who the ticketing company’s real customer is
• outlining state and federal efforts including the Ticket Act
• sharing a practical way to get informed and apply pressure

To learn more go to fixthetic.org.

Transcript

Radio Legends And Local History

SPEAKER_03 0:46

That's 40% of the band Sullivan. Good. Strong percentage. Did you hear that? Did you hear that Dickie got to meet uh legendary uh radio DJ uh shotgun Tom King? I was thrilled, yeah. Wasn't that amazing?

SPEAKER_04 1:02

It was exciting, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:03

He was he he started right here in San Diego. Okay, yeah. KCBQ radio. He was a huge icon here with everything from I remember uh I was singing Sweating of the Oldies, but that was Richard Simmons. He had something like Disco 10 on channel 10. And he and he was the guy that that uh premiered in the entire country, George, uh I'm sorry, John Lennon's song, Imagine. Right, but mistitled it Imaging.

SPEAKER_04 1:25

Imaging, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:26

Oh my god. That's what he said. It's crazy stuff.

SPEAKER_02 1:28

Probably the one song that you can never miss.

SPEAKER_03 1:32

Yeah, and he was talking about Imagine doing that to imagine. Yeah, they flew it in. I've heard the story a million times, but they flew it in on the old PSA Airlines into San Diego. Okay. And then they took it there from some guard truck, and then it was back in there where they had a big stick up in there, and there was before consolidation. So they had all these little radio stations on these little prairies. And uh here in the city of San Diego, there's a there's a place called Santee, which is out kind of East County, which is a great city, but at the time there was nothing there, but there's a little building with a stick. That's where that's where Imagine was was was uh debuted in this country, and it was debuted as that hit single, Imogene. Oh my god by Shotgun.

SPEAKER_04 2:05

By Shotgun Tom Kelvin. And this was back in the day when calling yourself shotgun or gun, gun, using that as a name was cool. When you guys when you what do you mean? What do you mean there, Jacob? I'm sorry, guys.

How Music Promotion Used To Work

SPEAKER_04 2:19

But here's my question. I apologize, guns.

SPEAKER_03 2:20

When the Mighty Mighty Bostones had hit number one on Billboard with the impression that I came. Okay, you were all over the country in radio stuff. You were in front of those guys all the time. That was a big deal back then. Okay. But what I'm saying is it doesn't, it's not so much these days. You don't see that, you don't see that as much now.

SPEAKER_04 2:33

You know what? And to be fair, yeah, probably things are definitely different. But at the time, when it's happening and you're in the middle of that storm, you don't really you kind of just go about life and you don't really think of it. But when I look back and say, oh my God, I was I miss seeing artists like that talk of the show.

SPEAKER_03 2:51

Like that's which is why your show is important so important, does it?

SPEAKER_02 2:53

Yeah, no, exactly. I mean, you're right. Going to those radio shows and those radio dates or whatnot is pretty much how you built it out. It was all that it started as a DIY movement into being able to get radio support when radio was actually radio.

SPEAKER_03 3:05

Because you're doing what what the gun show does, your other, your other, your your daytime job.

SPEAKER_02 3:10

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 3:10

The gun show does that. Like back in the day when they used to just interview and talk about music.

SPEAKER_02 3:14

Talk about music, bringing the best of the old, the best of the new, and the best of what's to come. You're able to break those artists, but also get that direct feedback rather than people calling in, you're getting live tweets from people. You know what I mean? So rather, you know, you take listener calls, no, it's like now you're getting them via social media. And also you can talk to anybody at any point in the whole entire globe, pretty much, which is also very cool.

SPEAKER_04 3:34

Well, I think you do it excellently. I think I want you to stop bragging, but let me brag for you. Okay.

unknown 3:39

I think you do it.

SPEAKER_04 3:40

Thanks, man. I think you do a really good job.

SPEAKER_02 3:42

Thank you. And there's also a reason why you've never been a guest on yet. You know what I mean?

SPEAKER_03 3:47

But that's rough. That's not true. That's not true. But I'll tell you though, for a band like Sullivan, who is known what you did for a small nobody band. I mean, the the power Sully's been on.

SPEAKER_02 3:57

I had Sully on. We write one of my highest-rated episodes ever. But not you.

SPEAKER_03 4:02

But the point is, is what is I think that's what's needed for artists because there's because we consume music differently these days. We don't go to the record store anymore. We don't listen to the radio as much anymore. We're downloading everything. And we need more of that. I think that's what speaking of that.

Record Store Nostalgia And Deep Tracks

SPEAKER_03 4:15

Do you miss it? When I did radio radio? No, music as you used to know it. I miss going to record stores. I'm for Shermis Tower Records.

SPEAKER_04 4:22

Right.

SPEAKER_03 4:22

I'm for Surmis. I remember it's so funny because your song when I was doing talk radio was my rejoiner music when you come back from commercial break. Yeah. I remember having that, what do they call that? The gem cover, whatever they call it. But that's jewel case. I remember that. I do I and I remember how cool it was.

SPEAKER_04 4:38

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 4:38

And every time you got a new one, you had to reslot them when you got home. There was a whole thing that you did. Yeah. And then before then it was records, uh the albums and stuff like that.

SPEAKER_04 4:45

Just going home, like carrying the actual physical product and going home and thinking, you know, like I know this one I heard on the radio, but what are all these other songs and that's well that's the other two is the deep track stuff.

SPEAKER_03 4:56

And then also, oh, that's what these guys look like. Because look at even um before video, all we had is lyric sheets. I mean, I can't go that far back. I can go, but I go I can go back to the point where I can say this. I didn't know, uh I know what Dave Grohl's living room looks like. Right. Yeah, yeah. Honestly. Right. I mean, because we're so inserted because the way we consume music these years. Yeah. Speaking of consuming music, Randy Nichols is a guest he's got coming up.

SPEAKER_02 5:18

Yeah, Randy Nichols, absolute star. He's um, he's a star artist manager. We can ask him about hey, does radio still matter as much as it used to? He's been in the radio, uh, you know, he's brought plenty of bands to there, but he's also the big thing, especially for fans out there, I'm sure the audience out there, I don't know about you, but ticket prices are out of control. I don't care if it's for musicians, bands, sporting events. He's actually the head of the National Independent Town Organization. He's one of the members there. And he's gonna talk about what is actually happening within the ticket, ticketing lobby, the ticketing industry. He's been sp he spoke on Capitol Hill about it. We're gonna get to the bottom

Randy Nichols Joins To Talk Tickets

SPEAKER_02 5:52

of that too.

SPEAKER_03 5:52

Randy, Randy joins us right now. I think is Randy. Oh, there he is, right there.

SPEAKER_02 5:55

I thought we were shooting too before we go. Randy, what's up, buddy? How are you? What's up, guns? How do you think you're my former intern? Good. It's myself, yeah. Myself, Dickie Bear from the My Boss and Board Sully. And yes, I was Randy Nichols' intern back in the day.

SPEAKER_03 6:07

You know what's interesting? I can't remember. Well, look, I'm in this business, I haven't had to pay for a ticket for a while because I always go backstage. By the way, if you ever get the chance to go backstage and watch a concert, don't. Because it's horrible, it's not, it's it sounds horrible. Yeah, it looks crappy. There's picnic tables and bad food. All the run into people like me. Which is not a bad thing, but I tell people the music industry is highly unimpressive. All the fun's happening out front, I promise. But but I I can tell you, when's the last time somebody bought a ticket like from a Stub Hub or from a Ticketmaster and actually paid what it actually said on the ticket? Right. Randy, talk about what you're what's your.

SPEAKER_02 6:38

Yeah, Randy, what's the deal, man?

Resale Sites Bots And Price Inflation

SPEAKER_02 6:40

Why is everything so expensive these days when all we want to do is enjoy our favorite artists?

SPEAKER_01 6:44

Yeah, well, you know, the first thing is you said something interesting, Sully. You said StubHub or Ticketmaster. And both those companies are very different. Stubhub is a secondary market platform. That's where scalpers are listing all their tickets. Ticketmaster or other sites like Access or CTickets, these other companies, these are the event holders selling the tickets. So anytime you go to Stub Hub, you have a much higher higher likelihood of overpaying for the ticket.

SPEAKER_03 7:11

Okay, so that's a resale, that's a resale market then.

SPEAKER_01 7:14

Exactly. Stub hub, vivid seats, seat geek, those are all resale marketplaces. So when you go to a resale marketplace, you know you're overpaying.

SPEAKER_03 7:23

So if we so if I go to a ticket master and I want to go see the guns, you know, little guns and the three crickets over at the baseball. Yes, perfect. Um, on tour soon. Am I able to these days, as the concert's being announced, wherever it's being announced, go buy the front row seats if I wanted to, or do I still do I not have a chance because of those ticket brokers?

SPEAKER_01 7:45

So it's tough to get a shot at it because these guys are using all kinds of bots to cut the lines. And then there's there's other things that artists are doing which then drive up the price. And the artists, like I'm a lifelong artist defender, but the artists are seeing these outsiders come in and jack up the prices and buy them all and make literally billions of dollars. So but the ticket scalper industry's over $10 billion a year private equity back business. So these people, the artists are pissed off. So the artists now are raising the prices sometimes, so that at least if a fan is gonna overspend, that the artist makes the money and reinvests it in the show. So it's it's good for the you know, the community of live music, but it sucks for the fan that we're raising the prices to stop the scalpers from making an arbitrage opportunity.

SPEAKER_03 8:35

The you know what's interesting about that is if you talk about arbitrage opportunity, you're talking about scalpers. I thought scalpers were the guys that were selling counterfeit tickets. That's not the case. Scalpers are overcharging uh and doing onerous you know fees for for something that I could literally go in the aftermarket on a legitimate site. Is that correct?

SPEAKER_01 8:54

It's correct, but what I will say is these scalpers both are selling real and fake tickets. There's a whole set of scalpers that call themselves short sellers, and they're exactly what you think they are. They they sell the tickets high, sometimes before the show is even on sale, because Subhub will list tickets before the show is even on sale to the general public on Ticketmaster. So they sell high, and then as you get closer to the show date, people's plans change and they want to dump their tickets, and they use bots to pick up all those tickets that people list, and then they they buy them low after selling them high. I mean, you got you gotta give them credit, it's brilliant, but it takes advantage of the fans.

SPEAKER_03 9:37

Randy, stay there for a second. I want to talk about what they're doing in Congress about it. I want to talk about what they're doing to protect the consumer. It's gone all the way to the top. Donald Trump's involved now. We got a lot happening. It's behind the scenes. Woo!

SPEAKER_02 9:47

Everything you didn't know about the music business, apparently it's stuff great place for Behind the Scenes.

Congress Steps Into Ticketing Battles

SPEAKER_02 10:04

Everything you didn't know about the music business, I'm guns. We're joined by, of course, my many man Scully over there, and the legend himself, Dickie Bear from the Money Money Boston's having absolute blast at the Love 100 Studios here in City Money Good in front of a lot of my friends. Right speaking here with Randy Nichols, longtime band manager. He's been part of the starting line, say anything, Undereath, has been able to build bands from literally living rooms to sold-out arenas all across the globe. And he's also part of the National Talent Um Organization, which is the National Independent Talent Organization. And he's actually been taking the fr uh the fight for why ticket pricers are so expensive and what the fan can do about it all the way down to Capitol Hill. And there's been a lot going on down here. And Randy, I know you can uh explain a little bit more about this, about the fact that even President Trump has been against some of the uh the scalpers out there. So I'm with Kid Rock in the Oval Office. Talk to us about this and what Congress is doing, and will anything change in the near future, my friend?

SPEAKER_01 11:14

Yeah, so I think things may actually change, which is hard to believe, but it it still feels really positive. And we've got things going on both at the state level as well as federally. Federally, it's tough to get things through, but we've got a bunch of states like Maine, Maryland, Washington, DC, who have tomorrow in New Jersey, we have a bill that we're fighting that the scalpers are trying to actually pass to make it worse for fans, which you have both going on all the time. But what happened, which is interesting, is during COVID, thankfully, the Congress granted some money to music venues to keep them alive and not all go out of business due to being closed for a year and a half. And through that moment, a lot of people in Congress got to meet the real people in the music business. When they met them versus the scalpers that had been lobbying them for years, they're learning that they made a bunch of laws that are hurting the fans. And there's a true desire from these legislators to undo a lot of the bad work they've done over the past two decades.

SPEAKER_03 12:18

I think what's interesting here is it got to the point where we actually had to bring Congress in to do to do just what's right in terms of in terms of ticket prices. And and what I mean by that, and this is no diss on artists, but you started hearing about artists about 15 years ago saying, look, you're not gonna charge $300 for a ticket when we're only charging $55 for a ticket. What changed there? Why aren't more artists getting involved? Is it just because they really just don't have any say?

SPEAKER_01 12:43

You know, it's it's tough because one, the artists aren't as educated as you think on this problem. And the artists are busy trying to be artists. Now they have to run social media, they're leading their marketing campaigns, there's more and more put on the artist to do, and now they need to fix the ticketing problem. And the ticketing problem is incredibly difficult because technically a ticketing contract for a concert is between the venue and the ticketing company. The artist is just caught in the crossfire. So whether you're Taylor Swift or Guns Band or Dickey's Band, the Bostones, we're all stuck in the same spot where the ticketing company isn't our decision. So if it's not our decision, we can't really force change that easily.

SPEAKER_03 13:30

So wait, wait, so I have a question. So just for folks who don't understand the business, talk about how the transaction's done. You've got an event promoter, you've got Bansy wants to bring into the event, you've got people that are gonna sell tickets to the event, and then you've got obviously the artists that are gonna get paid to be at the event. How does how does all that work together? What what what does the landscape look like for the normal Johnny Lunchbucket, Cindy CEO that's just buying a ticket and going to the front gate? I'm just thinking of buying a ticket and it's all coming up because there's pixie dust in the air. But what but what's what's the what's what's the real mechanics of

Who Gets Fees And Why

SPEAKER_03 14:00

it all?

SPEAKER_01 14:00

Yeah, so the the best way to explain this is everybody thinks that as a fan, they're the customer of Ticketmaster or Access. And at the end of the day, the customer is the venue who signs a contract with them. These venues actually get paid a huge advance by the ticketing company to be their partners. Then that ticket fee that we all pay, which is some exorbitant fee where we're angry we're paying the ticket master, three-quarters of that is going to the venue, even though it says ticket master fee. And through all of that, it's it's an entire system built to make Ticketmaster the bad guy. And not that I'm trying to defend them, it's just how the system's been developed. They're the bad guy. We as a fan aren't mad at the venue for all these expenses. We blame Ticketmaster, but a lot of these fees are honestly keeping these venues, these small venues that we all go to in business. But at the end of the day, the key point for what you asked is the fan is not actually the customer of the ticketing company. So the ticketing company is not thinking about them in every part of the purchase relationship, and the fan kind of is is hurt in that process because of it.

SPEAKER_02 15:13

You know, what I thought was interesting is everyone remembers the Taylor Swift situation. Taylor Swift tickets go on sale and it was a disaster. Ticketmaster fell, you know, kept crashing. You had kids crying. And I joke that it was the first time that both Republicans and Democrats could agree on something within Congress. Because you literally had Marco or Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio and then AOC were all coming, everyone just started with going after Ticketmaster. That doesn't happen, but that just shows that everybody is affected by these outlandish and outrageous uh ticketing prices. So, Randy, if you were gonna say if there was a big bad wolf character here, who should, who would that be in your eyes?

Why Scalpers Hurt Whole Communities

SPEAKER_01 15:59

Yeah, in my eyes, the big bad wolf is the multi-billion dollar ticket scalping industry. These are people who are siphoning money out of local communities as well as artists' pockets and fans' pockets and taking this money to buy yachts and private jets. They are the worst of the worst. You know, you've got Ticketmaster and Live Nation, we've all got our varying issues with them, but they reinvest that money in producing events. Scalpers do not put a dime of the money they make into producing live events. So if I've got to pick the worst of the worst, it is always gonna be the person who is just, you know, sucking our money out from everyone in the system and hurting them. And this stuff hurts everyone all the way down to the local restaurant owner in a neighborhood. If Dickie, you know, for his old hometown throwdown shows was selling tickets for 20 bucks and scalpers were selling them for a hundred bucks, and fans bought them all, they may not be able to go out to dinner upstairs at the Middle East before the show because they spent so much money on the ticket. So it hurts everyone in the whole ecosystem. As you can tell Dickie on the fanny.

SPEAKER_04 17:07

I'd like to think, Randy, this is great stuff, and and I'm really being educated by all of this, and you know, dumbly had no idea that it was going on, and to this extent, and I'd like to think that Congress has better, bigger fish to fry than Taylor Swift ticket prices. But here we are. What I would like to know is what can

What Fans And Artists Can Do

SPEAKER_04 17:29

we do? What can what can we do as artists, and what can we do as as people that are buying as consumers as well? Like what what what's the answer here?

SPEAKER_01 17:40

You know, the answer is to apply pressure on both your state and federal legislators when you hear of laws coming up to support them. And you know, the the we'll be doing a bunch of press later in the year when hopefully the ticket act or the main event act, these are two bills that have been floating around in the Senate, hopefully get put back on the docket. The Ticket Act we got passed in the House, but is sitting in the Senate waiting to get through. State level, we you know, we're we're trying to rally people state by state. And what I can say for you as an artist and many other artists is there's one big organization called Fix the Ticks. So the Fix the Ticks Coalition, we're 20 plus different organizations that represent everyone from agents to artist managers to club owners to performing art centers, and we're all working together to lobby to change these laws. So if anyone wants to go to fixthetic.org, you can find out a bunch more information there. And we want more people to understand this, get involved, and get vocal. And to go to what Sully was saying earlier, like, why aren't the artists involved? You know, I consider Dickie a very educated artist, but she doesn't understand the problem. And I've spent the last two years going deep in and researching to understand how the problem actually works, so that I could educate my fellow musicians and managers so that we could actually fix the problem. Because previously we were just kind of screaming at the sky, hoping it would change rather than understanding what the problem was.

SPEAKER_03 19:17

Hey Randy, one last one last question before before before we

How Sports And Theater Compare

SPEAKER_03 19:20

at least get out of here. You've got, we're talking about the music business, but is this the same in theater? Is this the same in sports? Is it is it just is it rampant all across? Is this one is this one argument, one problem?

SPEAKER_01 19:30

Yeah, it's honestly it's rampant everywhere. But the thing that I will say is in sports, it's a little bit different. Sports teams, when they build a new stadium, they sell something called a PSL, a physical seat license. So somebody buys a season ticket ownership and they sort of own their seat. So I believe that those people have a little bit more of a right to be able to sell their seat for whatever they want. If they had to pay, you know, the Buffalo Bills are one of the teams right now building a new stadium and they'll have this exorbitant price for the right to own your seat. And if you own your seat, I think you've you've got a little bit more right to sell these things. But overall, yes, this problem is across the board everywhere. And it's in the smallest clubs to the biggest arenas. A lot of people go, Oh, I'm a small band. It's not happening to us, it's happening to the bands playing 300 capacity venues all the way up to the biggest stadiums. Because an arbitrage opportunity is an arbitrage opportunity. And if you can automate the purchases and sales, it doesn't matter to you if it's a big show or a small show.

One Wish For The Music Industry

SPEAKER_02 20:36

Randy, I got a quick question for you outside of the whole entire ticket and thing. You've been great and really appreciate you coming on. Um, next year, if you had one wish for the music industry in general, whether it could be AI being involved or Spotify's got to share revenue, you know, change their revenue sharing model or more, what do you hope happens within the music industry, besides the rock and ska resurgence, of course, that we were all seeing right now? Damn, right? And the Mighty Mighty Bostones reuniting, goddamn it. What would one thing be that uh you hope to see that could actually come through next year, do you believe?

SPEAKER_01 21:09

Yeah, I won't wish for a Bostones reunion because things get complicated. I've been a manager for a long time, so I won't put that pressure on you. But um Thank you, Randy. I did book you in college at CW Post College in about 1991.

SPEAKER_05 21:24

Do I need to apologize for that show, or was it successful? We had kids crowd surfing on the crowd. I remember the CW Post show. That was you. Yeah, that was me. So I might need to apologize to you.

SPEAKER_04 21:39

Hey,

Final Plugs And Wrap Up

SPEAKER_04 21:40

you've been an excellent guest. Once again, fixhetics.org would be the place if you really want to get involved in this.

SPEAKER_02 21:48

Awesome. And there it is up there. There we go. Yeah, appreciate it. Awesome, guys. Brandy Nichols, right there, of course. NETO National Independent Palent Organization. Thank you very much. My night Voscos, my man Sully right there. I'm Guns from the Guns Show. This is behind the scene live from the Lafayette Studios in San Diego, baby.