Thomas Oriti:
If you don’t know the band BTS, they’re massive. They are, I guess, arguably the giants of K‑pop and they’re coming to Australia, including a concert at Sydney Olympic Park in February next year. Two concerts I should say, in February 2027. But the race to get tickets is proving a bit controversial. Australian fans are accusing the ticketing giant, Ticketmaster of deploying predatory and crazy tactics. And they’ve urged people to lodge formal complaints with the ACCC.
Now they’re annoyed because Ticketmaster hasn’t detailed the pricing of the tickets ahead of the sale next week. They’re not on sale yet, but fans want to know now. They have no idea about the pricing category. So, the different tiers of tickets you can buy and how much it is all going to cost. And they say that’s unfair – it’s manipulative. Why not just tell us the price now? Ticketmaster says the prices will be made available once the online waiting room as it’s called, opens and those prices will not change. There won’t be any of that dynamic pricing that we’ve heard about in the past. The Assistant Minister for Competition, Andrew Leigh is with us now to discuss this. Assistant Minister, good afternoon.
Andrew Leigh:
Good afternoon Thomas, great to be with you.
Oriti:
What’s the big deal here? I mean, people are going to know how much a ticket is before they choose to pay the money. Why do they need to know the price so far in advance?
Leigh:
Well if you’re going to a concert and you’re paying hundreds of dollars, then there might be some of your mates who are willing to go for that price and others who aren’t and you want to be able to make your plans beforehand. Look, it’s up to the ACCC to enforce the law but this looks pretty shonky to me. I’d like to see Ticketek providing prices well in advance. One of the things we’ve just done is introduced into parliament a ban on unfair trading practices that outlaws practices that manipulate or unreasonably distort decision‑making. So that’s an additional protection in addition to the significant increases in fines for anti‑competitive conduct that we’ve already legislated.
Oriti:
Okay. So under Australian Consumer Law – let’s just clear this up. There’s consumer law in Australia. Under that law, businesses must display clear and accurate prices and must not mislead consumers about the prices for goods or services. So clear and accurate listings and not misleading consumers. So, if they’re not displaying the price at all ahead of sale, is that a breach of consumer law?
Leigh:
Well that’ll be up to the regulator. It’s not appropriate for me as a policy maker to step on their toes and indeed I can only cause them trouble if I go into that level of detail. But I want to be clear with what we’ve got and what’s in parliament. So right now, misleading and deceptive is banned. We have a bill in parliament which will prevent unfair trading practices. So that’s if you manipulate consumers or unreasonably distort decision‑making. If that isn’t enough, we’re willing to go further and put in further prohibitions that ensure that consumers are looked after.
Oriti:
Sure. But if you’ve put this before the parliament, surely you can give me an example of where it might be enforced, like the anecdote I have just given to you.
Leigh:
These are practices that confuse people, create false urgency, wear them down, interfere with genuine choice or harmfully use dynamic pricing – they’re the sort of things that our unfair trading practices law will catch. It also separately catches subscription traps which are banned and drip pricing which is also banned. So, you’ll have to allow people to easily get out of subscriptions. You have to tell them the whole cost of a purchase up front.
Oriti:
Okay. This idea of misleading consumers, right. So is the idea and what you’re concerned about, is that once you are in that online waiting room, you’re in a panic. You’ve got to make quick decisions to get your hands on tickets. It’s this high‑pressure sales funnel. Are you saying, well given that high pressure, you should be allowed to plan your tactics, I guess, before that sale opens?
Leigh:
A lot of the reports that I’m reading – and you and I are reading the same reports here Thomas – show that people feel pretty pressured by this and I think that’s not the sort of environment that a good ticket reseller or a good band want to be encouraging. You want people to be able to plan well in advance. And you know, if these were $5 tickets then that would be one thing. But if these are tickets costing hundreds of dollars, people need to be able to factor that into their budgets. We’ve been the most pro‑consumer government in my lifetime, putting in place a whole lot of significant reforms which have backed consumers; crackdown on shrinkflation, ban price gouging by supermarkets and increase the penalty for anti‑competitive conduct. We’ve got laws in the parliament. We’ll toughen them up if we need to.
Oriti:
Okay. Realistically though, this show will be massive. It’ll sell out. In the end, fans of BTS are going to pay the money for a ticket anyway, right? They’re not going to decide not to attend, I hazard a guess. I wonder what this approach from Ticketmaster would actually do. Does it make a difference in reality?
Leigh:
Again, I need to be quite careful speaking about this particular case Thomas, but it does sound like an instance in which people are making decisions, only having gotten the information right at the last minute. And ideally, I would like people to have prices well in advance. If the retailer knows what the prices will be, then good corporate conduct would suggest you let your customers know as well.
Oriti:
It’s quite a common practice by the ticketing giants though, right? It’s not just BTS. It happened to me recently. Has Ticketmaster or any of the ticketing giants, have they given you a justification for not providing the pricing and that ticketing information ahead of time? Why are they doing it? If they know the price, why not make it clear?
Leigh:
Well they don’t answer to me, they answer to the regulator. The regulator is in charge. The ACCC does the enforcement of the consumer laws, working in concept with the state and territory consumer bodies. But we do watch this conduct quite carefully. We know the ticketing space has a high degree of market concentration. Just a couple of big players. Anytime you’ve got market concentration, you’ve got to look out for what happens to consumers. And that’s why our competition consumer reforms are interlinked. We want more competition in the economy because that gets a better deal for consumers.
Oriti:
Okay. I know you’ve got to dash, but a text has made me think here, Andrew Leigh. ‘I don’t know why we’re worried about ticket prices, when you go to an auction for a house, no one knows what it’ll cost either’. Maybe tongue-in-cheek, right? But it’s a fair enough point. Why do you need more than half an hour before the sale opens to decide whether you’re going to go to a gig or not based on the price? Surely it’s enough time?
Leigh:
Well if the argument being made is that we’re going to now turn the purchase of concert tickets into the sort of high stress situation that people face in the once or twice in a lifetime moment of buying a house, that doesn’t seem a very strong argument to me. If a retailer knows what the price is going to be, it is good corporate behaviour to let your customers know beforehand. I don’t enforce the laws just as the police enforce the laws rather than the Attorney‑General. But as a policy maker, I do look at this with at least one eyebrow raised.
Oriti:
Okay. Thanks for joining us. Appreciate your time.
Leigh:
Thanks Thomas.
Oriti:
That is the Assistant Minister for Competition, Andrew Leigh there. Obviously this is not just about tickets to BTS. This is about a broader tactic that these ticketing giants seem to be using to not disclose the ticketing tiers or the prices for a concert ahead of time. It’s far from BTS. It happened to me at a number of concerts recently. How do you feel about that? Do you need more time? Do you need to know how much the ticket is before you decide to purchase one?