When being grilled by the senate during the Ticketmaster and LiveNation merger, an interesting bit of information came out regarding the outrageous service fees tacked on to every ticket. “Ticketmaster was set up as a system where they took the heat for everybody. Ticketmaster gets a minority percentage of that service charge. In that service charge are the credit-card fees, the rebates to the buildings, rebates sometimes to the artists, sometimes rebates to promoters.”
That's right, those fees aren't imposed to line Ticketmaster's pockets, their extra fees and rebates that the venues, artists, and promoters require to do their jobs. Ticketmaster signed on to be the fall guy to keep artists and venues from looking like greedy money-grabbers. Next time you get screwed over by those service fees, maybe give the site a break and skip the negative feedback.
