Booking Fees

[melv16]

Why do concert venues charge a booking fee when you've got the tickets from the box office in person?

[Buenchico]

The way the venue would probably argue their case is this:
"We're not the promoter of this concert. The promoter has simply hired the venue and that's all he's paid us for. However that promoter then requires people to sell tickets for him, with those ticket sellers making their money by adding on a booking fee. So Ticketmaster are selling tickets for the concert and getting paid for doing so by adding on their own fee. Similarly Ticketline are selling tickets and getting paid for it by adding on booking fees. We're doing exactly the same thing and we don't see why we should be expected to do it for free when everyone else gets paid for doing it".

Whether that's a valid argument is, of course, a debatable point but the practice is neither uncommon nor illegal:
https://conversation.which.co.uk/travel-leisure/ticket-booking-fee-ask-which-concert/

[melv16]

I wouldn't mind if I'd bought them from an internet ticket site. But I got them from Sheffield city hall box office and payed cash.

[Buenchico]

Some of us are old enough to remember when the only way to buy tickets for Sheffield City Hall was to go down into the basement of Wilson Peck's music store on Leopold Street ;-)

[melv16]

I've never heard of Wilson Peck's ;-)

[Buenchico]

Tha' must be nowt but a lad then, Melv! ;-)

https://www.sheffieldhistory.co.uk/forums/uploads/monthly_2017_09/s22934.jpg.29c1302f2899e4f5ddd1106209c99f9a.jpg

https://st33.wordpress.com/record-shops/closed/wilson-peck/

[melv16]

I remember that shop well, Chris. I must have spent a small fortune in there on records and concert tickets. And getting kicked out of the listening booths for staying too long.