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Role Playing (Games) Games

A D&D Actual Play Show Is Going To Sell Out Madison Square Garden (techcrunch.com) 44

Posted by BeauHD from the would-you-look-at-that dept.
An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: Dropout's Dungeons & Dragons actual play show, Dimension 20, is getting pretty close to selling out a 19,000-seat venue just hours after ticket sales opened to the general public. To the uninitiated, it may seem absurd to go to a massive sports arena and watch people play D&D. As one Redditor commented, "This boggles my mind. When I was playing D&D in the early eighties, I would have never believed that there was a future where people would watch live D&D at Madison Square Garden. It's incomprehensible to me." It is indeed bizarre, albeit fun. But in this monumental moment for the actual play genre, the triumph is eclipsed by the biggest frustration that links sports, music and now D&D fans: Ticketmaster. As Federal Trade Commission chair Lina Khan said amid the Taylor Swift-Ticketmaster scandal, the company's failures "ended up converting more Gen Zers into anti-monopolists overnight than anything [she] could have done."

In the case of Taylor Swift's Eras tour, fans were upset because demand was so high that Ticketmaster's system couldn't handle the traffic. For Dimension 20, the culprit is Ticketmaster's dynamic pricing. As more people try to buy tickets, the price of the tickets increase. About an hour after the Madison Square Garden tickets went on sale, the few dozen upper bowl tickets left were $800. Three hours after, these tickets are around $330, which is still very inflated. "Went onto the presale, tickets were $500+ for the worst ones, we assumed they were scalpers and that the actual sale today would have normal priced tickets $2000 for the lower bowl!? I know it's not dropout setting the price but wow is that a LOT of cash," a Redditor posted. And as a commenter astutely pointed out, thanks to dynamic pricing, Ticketmaster itself is actually the scalper. Of course, Dimension 20 fans are frustrated, especially since the show's content is overtly anti-capitalist. Despite the pricing debacle, the demand for the show is a great sign for both actual play shows and the creator economy at large.
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A D&D Actual Play Show Is Going To Sell Out Madison Square Garden More

A D&D Actual Play Show Is Going To Sell Out Madison Square Garden

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  • All Ticketmaster did was digitize scalping and cut out the middle man. They bought government representatives with all their ill-gotten gains.
    . Welcome to America!

    • An authorized ticket vendor selling tickets at maximum customer-acceptable-pricing is basic capitalism and there is nothing wrong with it.

      It's a luxury good/service and and should absolutely be sold for maximum value.

      Not everyone can afford everything, despite all the hippy-dippy attitude that "it's about the music, not the money, man!". It's about the money. It's always about the money. You don't become a billionaire if it isn't about the money.

      • The problem is Ticketmaster is making the $$ but doing essentially none of the work. I'm fine paying the crazy prices of tickets for events if I know that money is going to support the artist / team / presenters I am paying to see. But I have no interest in my hard-earned money going to a bunch of middle-men who bribe, cajole, and force their way into the revenue stream and provide essentially no added value.

        Artists can't even take cash at the door because the contract with the venue requires them to use

        • Why is it a problem? Is it YOUR problem? If it is, how so?

          If anything, it's a problem for "the artist". Let them worry about it.

          Personally, if I pay money to see an act, I don't care if it goes to the venue, the act, the homeless guy out front, Hunter Biden's whores, Trump's whores, or if they simply burn it in some weird Satanic ritual. No latter where it goes, I'm out the same $X. Frankly, I don't see what they do with it as being any of my business.

  • Ticketmaster is now self scalping and keep 100% of the profit!

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by kenh ( 9056 )

      Why do you think Ticketmaster is keeping "100% of the profit!"? It's more likely that Ticketmaster collects a fixed percentage of ticket price plus a fixed per ticket "fee" - I truly believe the organizers of this D&D themed Improv show get the lions share of the ticket price.

      The issue isn't Ticketmaster for charging the high ticket prices, it's that people are willing to pay that much for a ticket in the first place. I suspect the event organizers could have chosen to sell the tickets at a fixed price

      • the venue that is managed by live nation gets must of the ticket and live nation is the owner of ticket master.

  • Is WotC getting any of the gate fees? Also as much as people might generally enjoy D&D, it seems wrong to promote a company that has become so openly hostile to its own Open Gaming License.

  • "Ticketmaster is the bad guy" is part of what Ticketmaster's sales pitch is, at least according to someone familiar with the industry I saw talking about it. They take all the blame for high ticket prices, while still passing on everything but their standard cut to whoever is doing the show. Hey if scalpers are going to drive prices that high anyway might as well go to the actual artists putting the show on.

  • Artists and performers can turn off resale if they want. MSG does not have a contractual agreement to force it.
    Ironic that Dimension 20/Dropout creators say they are Anti-Capitalist, or at least have that theme for the show but they went with 'allow scalpers so we get more money' feature turned on.
    You also -can- hard set prices or go without dynamic pricing. All these things are negotiable to an extent.

    • Yeah, if they were TRULY anti-capitalist, shouldn't the event be like $5 to cover the hall rental??
      (I mean, they're playing D&D what are the other 'expenses' could there possibly be?)

      • Yeah, if they were TRULY anti-capitalist, shouldn't the event be like $5 to cover the hall rental??
        (I mean, they're playing D&D what are the other 'expenses' could there possibly be?)

        Jokes aside. Having something like this is best for marketing and political taunting.
        You get exposure for being in headlines AND after you take your fat check, you go on to explain after the show how this is criminal and this is why we need changes (while laughing and counting your new stacks of money). It's the TM package.

        • Personally, I never really bought into the whole "We made a ton of money from this, isn't that subversive?" line.

          I can understand that line of thinking, and I'm not saying it's wrong or anything. It just always strikes me as an after-the-fact rationalization. Much like saying 'the end justifies the means' when your shitty actions have good ramifications out of pure happenstance.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by kenh ( 9056 )

        A 19,000 seat arena in Manhattan that rents for $5/ seat? Uh, no.

        Do you really imagine you can rent and staff Madison Square Garden for less than $100,000/night?

        • A hundred grand and only 19,00 seats? In that case they would have to charge five dollars and thirty cents a head to break even.

          No idea what I was thinking...

      • Yeah, if they were TRULY anti-capitalist, shouldn't the event be like $5 to cover the hall rental??

        But the Elks have a polka festival that night!

  • Incoming lawsuit (Score:3)

    by quonset ( 4839537 ) on Monday April 15, 2024 @05:59PM (#64396774)

    As soon as next month, Live Nation, Ticketmaster's parent company, could face an anti-trust lawsuit [businessinsider.com] by the Department of Justice.

    The department is prepared to file the antitrust suit alleging Live Nation leveraged is dominance in the market to suppress competition, The Journal reported, citing people familiar with the matter. Ticketmaster holds a whopping 80% of the market for event sales in the country's largest venues, holding exclusive contracts with multiple stadiums and arenas, per the outlet.
    . . .
    "Ticketmaster has more competition today than it has ever had, and the deal terms with venues show it has nothing close to monopoly power," a Ticketmaster spokeswoman said in response to the news of the anticipated suit, per the Journal.

    One can hope, but don't get your hopes up too much.

    • If only. Killing the merger would help but it wouldnâ(TM)t stop price gouging and resell. Even if MSG could ditch their 15+ years of custom tailored product codebase. Wouldnâ(TM)t they switch just switch to another provider that lets them do the same thing? Artist availability would skyrocket since they donâ(TM)t have to beg LNE for venues, but the prices would remain the same if not go up.

      Orâ¦make reselling illegal but muh freedoms

  • Don't go to Ticketmaster shows.

    I don't really get why people complain when they could just decide not to go. (Lol I'm kidding, we all know why they complain)

    • That is the problem with monopolies, not many alternatives.

      • There's tens of thousands of alternatives to Ticketmaster-controlled venues. The artists can also choose a different venue to play at, and different ticketing services. If you want to see the one artist who *chose* to use Ticketmaster, then yeah, there's no alternative, *because the artist chose Ticketmaster* when they could have chosen some other provider.

        That's not a monopoly, that's "wahhhhhh! I wanna see this *one* artist that chose the shitty provider, but I don't want to have to deal with the provider

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Himmy32 ( 650060 )

          What are the other opportunities for live events of famous D&D players in the area at a non Ticketmaster/LiveNation area? I feel like this is the counterexample to your argument. Because it's not like restaurants, the people can't just go to 50 other live D&D events in the area that night.

          Add to this the monopoly isn't only on the attendees, but the artists are getting limited choices when the big venues are Ticketmaster joints, then the options sure get limited.

  • It's not the ticket price; it's the idea of paying to watch other people play D&D.

    To enjoy someone else's game you listen to it being retold after the fact, which takes out hours of game mechanics and leaves you with the entertaining stories.

    It's a social game, cooperative storytelling... and people are paying to sit passively in an audience and watch professionals pretend to have fun at it. Just sad.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by skam240 ( 789197 )

      My thoughts as well. I've been playing table top RPGs since the early 90's and I'm baffled at the idea of paying to go to a pretty large arena to watch a group of people play them let alone pay hundreds of dollars to do so. In an arena of 19,000 people its pretty much assured most folks are going to be watching everything on big screens anyways, why pay hundreds of dollars for the privilege when you can get the same from YouTube, edited to take out all the boring parts? Just listening to the players seems s

    • Many people are already paying to watch other people pay games such as football, which is also pretty sad.

      • Definitely not my kind of thing, but at least they're paying to see people perform at a level most people can never hope to approach.

        D&D though? Maybe you don't have what it takes to be a DM, but anyone who can communicate can be a player.

  • Just watch the very first Episode: https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]

    Let's just say: Brennan Lee Mulligan isn't your grand-dad's DM.

    • Thanks for sharing that. No karma.

      Someone I work with just got back from a trip to the UK to play D&D in a castle. Sounded rather awesome (infinitely more so for people really into the game).

    • Holy crap. That Mulligan guy. What's the German word for punch-able face?

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by hawk ( 1151 )

        I dunno.

        but I suppose that, if you miss, you could take a mulligan . . . :)

        hawk

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