演唱会的票太贵了

Have you ever been to a concert?

A concert is when many people go together to watch a singer sing.

In a very big place.

Thousands of people.

Even tens of thousands.

Everyone listens to music together.

Dances together.

Is happy together.

Going to a concert requires buying a ticket.

A ticket is a piece of paper.

Or something on your phone.

With a ticket you can go in.

Without a ticket you can't go in.

In America.

Most concert tickets are bought in one place.

This place is called Ticketmaster.

Ticketmaster is a company that sells tickets.

You want to go see Taylor Swift's concert.

You go to Ticketmaster to buy tickets.

You want to go see Justin Bieber.

You also go to Ticketmaster.

Almost all tickets are there.

Why?

Because Ticketmaster is too big.

It controls eighty percent of the market.

Eighty percent.

That means if there are a hundred tickets.

Eighty of them are sold by Ticketmaster.

Only twenty are sold by others.

In that case.

You have no other choice.

You can only buy from Ticketmaster.

Ticketmaster knows you have no choice.

So it charges a lot of money.

The ticket price is already expensive.

But Ticketmaster still adds more money.

What extra money?

A "service fee."

What is a service fee?

It's extra money you pay when buying a ticket.

The ticket is a hundred dollars.

But you actually have to pay a hundred and twenty.

The extra twenty is the service fee.

Many people think this isn't fair.

Tickets are already expensive.

Why add more money?

And the service fee isn't just a little bit.

Sometimes it's a lot.

Everyone is unhappy.

But there's no way around it.

Because you can only buy there.

There's no other place.

This is called a "monopoly."

What is a monopoly?

A monopoly means there's only one seller.

No competition.

You can only buy from them.

They can charge whatever they want.

You have no choice.

America has a law that says monopoly is not allowed.

Because monopoly is bad for people who buy things.

So the American government went to court.

The government said: Ticketmaster is a monopoly.

They overcharged people.

This isn't fair.

The court held a five-week trial.

Then twelve people discussed together.

They discussed for four days.

In the end they said: the government is right.

Ticketmaster is a monopoly.

They overcharged ticket buyers.

Each ticket was overcharged by one dollar and seventy-two cents.

One dollar seventy-two doesn't sound like much.

But think about it.

Every year there are hundreds of millions of tickets.

Hundreds of millions of tickets times one dollar seventy-two each.

Added together that's a lot of money.

What happens now?

The judge has to decide the punishment.

Some people say Ticketmaster should be split up.

Split up means divided into two companies.

One sells tickets.

One organizes concerts.

They can't be the same company.

That way there would be competition.

With competition, tickets would be cheaper.

Ticketmaster says they disagree.

They say they will appeal.

Appeal means asking a higher court to look again.

So this matter isn't over yet.

But for ticket buyers.

This is good news.

Because the court said: you were overcharged.

That's wrong.

Maybe in the future tickets will be a little cheaper.

Maybe in the future you'll have more choices.

You won't have to buy from just one place.

This is this story.

A story about "too expensive" and "not fair."

Next time you buy concert tickets.

You can think about this story.

Whether that service fee is really worth that much money.