Four charts that explain why it’s impossible to get concert tickets

This makes it harder for fans to unload tickets late in a bad season and, in turn, makes it more expensive for some fans to ever get in to see a game.

Announcing he “regularly receives complaints from New Yorkers frustrated by their inability to purchase tickets to concerts”, Eric Schneiderman, the state’s attorney general, launched a scathing report Thursday, ripping the ticket-resale business as a “fixed game”.

Investigators found abuses and practices that prevent consumers from buying tickets at affordable prices or sometimes even getting them at all.

Schneiderman also wants to force sites like StubHub to disclose the original face value of the ticket – a rule he said is already required by NY law.

According to a lengthy report released Thursday, fewer than half of all tickets up for sale are reserved for the public.

A New York Yankees spokesperson said its voluntary program Yankees Ticket Exchange was set up, in part, because of fraud by principle entities in the secondary market and added that they wondered why the report had no mention of where most significant frauds in the marketplace occurs. Also, 38 percent of available tickets were held for “pre-sales”, usually through credit-card-company promotions by American Express, Citibank and others; Fleetwood Mac held back 61 percent of tickets for a 2013 MSG show this way, as did Jay Z and Justin Timberlake with 71 percent of tickets for a 2013 concert at Yankee Stadium.

Many NFL teams encourage or even require ticket holders to use Ticketmaster’s NFL Ticket Exchange platform, where the seller is prohibited from cutting the price.

This only matters if you’re lucky enough to get a ticket in the first place: many shows hold huge percentages of their tickets for presales to corporate vendors or rich people with fancy credit cards-artists like Kanye West and Fleetwood Mac have held as much as 29% of their tickets for these privileged buyers, while Steely Dan and Coldplay withheld as much as 70%.

Yet the AG’s office “found an average surcharge of 21% of the face value of a ticket, which amounts to nearly $8 in fees on average”.

“I’ve been in the live music and events business for twenty years and over that time I’ve seen technology have a positive impact on our industry”.

“Overall, (Schneiderman) believes there is little to say in favor of price floors”, the report says.

Debra Cresanti of Cheektowaga shared her frustration with the scarcity and inflated ticket prices to the Paul McCartney Concert, last October. “We applaud Attorney General Eric Schneiderman’s effort to combat this issue, and we support a system that is more equitable for those who wish to experience the arts”.