Last Week Tonight did not ignore the Russian and Ukrainian elephant in the room during the conflict’s third-weekend running. However, John Oliver’s already taken on the subject twice (regarding the CNN-Applebee’s flub and the bizarre, premature Jeremy Renner dreamcasting), and this week, he acknowledged how rapidly the situation’s developing and moved onto skewering Disney’s delayed response to the Don’t Say Gay bill and then the deep dive subject: the annoying, bot-fueled game of high-dollar ticket buying.
Actually, the bots aren’t the whole beef that people have here. Oliver discusses how and why “Ticketmaster is one of the most hated companies on Earth.” He also takes aim at artists who (as Justin Bieber has reportedly done) essentially scalp their own tickets. To skewer this practice, Oliver begins the segment (at around the 0:45 mark) by reminding everyone of that time that Bieber landed (fortunately unharmed) in a hole onstage.
From there, Oliver dives into a rather fascinating exploration of Ticketmaster fees versus ticket-price face value and how, stunningly, some concerts actually only allow for 7% of tickets to be purchased by the consumer with others going to credit-card company client bases and the secondary market. And that leads to a discussion about Ticketmaster (and Bieber) starting the ticket-flipping thing while thinking no one will notice:
“A group of tickets held for Bieber’s tour ended up being released not to the box office but straight to the secondary market. And on one hand, I do get the impulse of “if someone is going to make $246 dollars off that ticket, shouldn’t it be be the person who is doing the performing? But it still doesn’t feel great, does it?”
From there, Oliver delighted in his next move: “And it’s also not going to stop me from showing you that clip of him falling down the hole again. Excellent. I mean, it gets better every time you see it.” That’s where Bieber falls into the hole (again) at the 16:00 min mark above before Oliver warns, “Bieber’s not unique in doing this.” Yup, Metallica and many other artists have been called out for doing the same. And as live performances roar back, those online queues are only going to grow longer.
