Obey Your Master, Ticketmaster!

Summary

Podcast Summary: The Commercial Break – Episode: "Obey Your Master, Ticketmaster!"

Release Date: April 10, 2025

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Introduction

In this episode of The Commercial Break, hosts Bryan Green and Krissy Hoadley delve deep into the convoluted and often frustrating world of live event ticketing. Titled "Obey Your Master, Ticketmaster!", the episode explores the escalating costs of concert and event tickets, the monopolistic practices of major ticketing companies, and the detrimental impact on both consumers and artists.

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1. The Dominance of Ticketmaster and Live Nation

Bryan and Krissy begin by examining the stranglehold that Ticketmaster and Live Nation have over the ticketing industry. They highlight how these corporations have merged, consolidating power and marginalizing competition.

Bryan Green [43:54]: "Ticketmaster gives most of those fees back to the venue. It's how Ticketmaster gets the business of the venue... They become the fall guy because they're set up to be the fall guy."

They reference Pearl Jam's failed attempt to break free from this system, emphasizing the challenges artists face when trying to escape the monopolistic practices of these giants.

Krissy Hoadley [45:37]: "It's set up for that purpose. And they're okay with that because it's such a lucrative business."

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2. Impact on Consumers and Artists

The conversation shifts to the soaring prices of tickets and the cascading effect on both fans and musicians. The hosts discuss how fees and resales have inflated costs, making live events less accessible.

Chris Joy Odley [04:23]: "It's basic economics, supply and demand."

Bryan shares personal anecdotes about purchasing expensive tickets, such as paying thousands for a Taylor Swift concert, and questions the fairness of such pricing structures.

Bryan Green [05:46]: "I went and saw her at her last concert in LA... It was the most expensive ticket I have ever paid for."

They breakdown the revenue splits, revealing that after venue costs, management fees, and other expenses, artists often receive a meager portion of each ticket sale.

Deborah Duddles [34:33]: "Something Corporate's actual profit from that $70 ticket is about $10."

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3. The Role of Scalpers and Brokers

A significant portion of the episode is dedicated to understanding the role of scalpers and ticket brokers in exacerbating the problem. The hosts discuss how these intermediaries use advanced tools and tactics to hoard tickets, driving prices astronomically high.

Bryan Green [25:33]: "This has become an MLM, essentially. It's an MLM."

They recount experiences with brokers like Elite, who utilize bots and multiple accounts to secure large quantities of tickets, leaving genuine fans at a disadvantage.

Deborah Duddles [62:44]: "They buy tickets and then they resell them, and then they buy some more tickets and they resell them..."

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4. Regulatory Attempts and Challenges

The hosts touch upon legislative efforts aimed at curbing the misuse of bots in ticket purchasing, such as the Bots Act. However, they point out the ineffective enforcement of these laws, noting that violations remain rampant.

Deborah Duddles [65:15]: "The Federal Trade Commission has enforced the actual just once. Even his brokers seem to violate it daily."

Despite these challenges, there is a growing call for more stringent regulations to dismantle the monopolistic practices entrenched in the industry.

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5. Potential Solutions and Industry Dynamics

Bryan and Krissy explore possible remedies to the ticketing crisis. They debate whether breaking up Ticketmaster and Live Nation could restore fairness or if alternative models for ticket sales might offer relief.

Bryan Green [25:33]: "This has become an MLM, essentially. It's an MLM. And even though there are, there's a real product involved, the independent ticket brokers can charge whatever they want and they do."

They also discuss the idea of platforms like StubHub partnering more transparently with artists to ensure fairer ticket distribution and pricing.

Deborah Duddles [70:51]: "StubHub is offering to share their profits from resold tickets with musicians like Andrew McMahon."

However, the hosts remain skeptical about the feasibility of these solutions without significant systemic changes.

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6. Personal Stories and Anecdotes

Throughout the episode, Bryan shares his personal encounters with ticket scalpers and the moral dilemmas they pose, such as choosing between reselling tickets for profit or allowing genuine fans to attend events.

Bryan Green [61:59]: "I'm screwing you. I sure am."

These stories underscore the emotional and financial toll that the current ticketing system imposes on both artists and fans alike.

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Conclusion

Bryan and Krissy conclude the episode by acknowledging the complexity of the ticketing industry's issues. While they express frustration with the status quo, they also recognize the challenges in enacting meaningful change. The hosts emphasize the need for ongoing dialogue and awareness to push towards a more equitable system for all stakeholders involved.

Bryan Green [75:53]: "We just have some ideas. But one of those ideas was to start the commercial break, so don't trust me on anything, okay?"

They wrap up by inviting listeners to engage with their upcoming events and continue supporting The Commercial Break in its mission to navigate and critique the chaotic landscape of modern entertainment.

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This episode of The Commercial Break provides a comprehensive and critical look at the current state of live event ticketing, highlighting the systemic issues and personal impacts of monopolistic practices within the industry. Bryan and Krissy successfully blend humor with insightful analysis, offering listeners a nuanced perspective on a pervasive modern dilemma.

Transcript

[Brian Green]

This episode is sponsored by Discover. If there's one thing we've learned from the entertainment industry, it's just how easy it is to earn a reputation, even if it doesn't reflect who you really are. For example, everyone thinks that Discover is a card that isn't widely accepted, but in reality, it's accepted at 99% of places that take credit cards nationwide. Yeah, 99%. So maybe now you'll think twice before judging a book by its cover. Unless it's a celebrity cookbook. In that case, judge away. Based on the February 2024 Nelson Report. Learn more at discover dot slash credit card. This episode is sponsored in part by Liquid IV. I love a beach trip and I'm going on one. Can you hear in my voice just how excited I am to get out of this studio? That family beach trip is right around the corner and there will be no rest for the weary there either. We will be running around fun in the sun and I will be bringing along some Liquid IV to help get the most out of these old bones. On warm beach days, Liquid IV helps me stay hydrated so I can take on the activities and feel better for longer. Liquid IV is easy to use, it's convenient and it tastes great and I'll certainly have some in my bag that I'm taking to the beach. There's true to fruit flavors to keep me hydrated. Flavors like lemon, lime or pina colada with their hydration multiplier. Or if I want to keep my beach body slim and trim, I'll use a sugar free flavor like raspberry lemonade, white peach or rainbow sherbet. It's got an optimized ratio of electrolytes, essential vitamins and clinically tested nutrients that turn ordinary water into extraordinary hydration. Get ready for the summer with extraordinary hydration from Liquid IV. Get 20 off your first order of Liquid IV when you go to LiquidIV.com and use the code COMMERCIAL at checkout. That's 20% off your first order with code COMMERCIAL@Liquid IV.com get that bathing suit out, pack a bag, throw in some Liquid IV and take on the summer with extraordinary hydration. Liquid IV.com and use the code commercial. Thanks to Liquid IV for being a sponsor of the commercial break and welcome back to WSH continuing coverage of Spamageddon 2025. Tens upon tens of people have fallen victim to an email and telephone scammer simply known as Spam Crabapple. Residents are reminded not to answer any phone calls from Spam. Do not respond to Spam and don't click on links. In a message from spam. Due to the ongoing emergency in Crabapple, the Mayor has called for township wide martial. The emergency sirens have been going off non stop for 47 hours. And in a bit of schadenfreude, many Krab applians are receiving spam text messages from emergency services. The mayor reminds everyone these are not spam messages. And now an emergency broadcast communication from the director of Information Technology and Communication Services, Deborah Duddles.

[Deborah Duddles]

I just wanted to update real quick on the scammer situation because there's more. Please remember I don't talk to people in email unless it's a business deal and I haven't had any of those for a while. I don't talk to people in email. If they're circulating emails where they're telling you that it's me talking, they're fake. Please do not fall for these scams. There are now apparently phone calls going around that are supposed to be me. I don't talk on the phone either. I don't talk to anybody on the phone. I don't do phone calls. I actually hate phone calls. I'm warning you all to stay safe. Do not let them scam you. Do not give them money. And I'm here to protect you all and warn you that that's not me. Please be safe.

[Brian Green]

Tried and true advice from your IT and communications director Deborah Duddles. Do not use email. Do not use phones. Stay safe. Crabapple will be back after this commercial break.

[Deborah Duddles]

On this episode of the commercial break.

[Brian Green]

When people are selling Taylor Swift sixth row tickets for 15, 20, $25,000 and there's lots of people willing to pay it, why wouldn't you?

[Chris Joy Odley]

It's basic economics, supply and demand.

[Brian Green]

It really is now. So I want you to imagine yourself in a situation. I think I know the answer for this for me. But I want to ask you. You're lucky enough to get in quick and you get $350 seats, front row or second row, third row, really close to the stage and then someone falls sick a couple weeks ahead of time and unfortunately you're unable to go travel. The commercial break needs an extra episode like we always do, whatever the situation is, right? And now you've, and now you've got these extraordinarily valuable tickets that you can't use.

[Deborah Duddles]

The next episode of the commercial break starts now.

[Brian Green]

Oh yeah. Cats and kittens, welcome back to the commercial break. I'm Brian Green. This is the dear friend and co host of the show, Chris Joy Odley. Best to you, Chris.

[Chris Joy Odley]

Best to you, Brian.

[Brian Green]

Best to you out there on the podcast. Universe, how the hell are you? Thanks for joining us. I am watching reels from the recent Florida Gators win of the National NCAA March Madness Tournament, if you will. Chrissy, who would have thunk it? The one year Brian decides not to do the brackets and pick all the number ones to go all the way to the Final Four is the one year that all the number ones go to the Final Four.

[Chris Joy Odley]

I know I picked all four of the Final Fours.

[Brian Green]

You did.

[Chris Joy Odley]

But then to actually go to the championship, that. My loss.

[Brian Green]

Who'd you pick?

[Chris Joy Odley]

Well, I had Duke winning it all.

[Brian Green]

Okay.

[Chris Joy Odley]

Yeah. And I. But I had Duke playing. No, no.

[Brian Green]

Florida.

[Chris Joy Odley]

No. Auburn.

[Brian Green]

Auburn. Okay. I would have. I also would have picked Duke to go all the way to the end if I had done a Final Four bracket or, I mean, a March Madness bracket. But like I told you a couple weeks ago, I don't do that because all I do is pick the number ones, and it never works out in my favor. There's always some Cinderella team that comes and wrecks it for me. And the one year that would have worked out in my favor. Unbelievable. But anyway, onward and upward. Masters week. I'm watching these reels.

[Chris Joy Odley]

Masters week.

[Brian Green]

These kids, I mean, they really have nothing better to do with their time. Jumping on light posts. And one kid falls off the light.

[Chris Joy Odley]

Post at the Masters.

[Brian Green]

No, this is at the. This is down in. Oh, Florida.

[Chris Joy Odley]

Florida. Yeah.

[Brian Green]

Yeah. Down at the University of Florida. They went wild in Gainesville. Wild. And one kid on the top of a street sign, like on a top of a traffic light. In Florida, the traffic lights have big poles because of the hurricanes. They have poles. They don't have wires. They have poles. And they hang out into the middle of the street. He's on top of it, bouncing like an idiot. I don't know what he's proving to anybody. I don't know what you're doing. Why are people so excited about the guy on the traffic light? It's not like he won the national championship, but people are going crazy. Nothing better to do but be drunk. I mean, listen, I was a kid once, too. I get it. He falls off into the street, and as the ambulance is carrying him away, thousands of people watching this, he raises his arm. I got a broken clavicle. He raises his arm and the crowd goes wild. He's okay. All right, cool. Are his parents okay after they get that $38,000 hospital bill? I don't know. But you know, congratulations to Florida. Game well played. I did watch all of the Final Four and the national Championship. That Houston Duke game, that was. Was intense. It was intense. It was insane. For 99% of the game, Duke was clearly just gonna walk away with it. And then all of a sudden, the basketball gods had something else in mind with, with Houston. And ball bounces. That is the way the ball. That's the way the balls bounce, Chrissy, as they say. But congratulations to the University of Florida. I was looking at tip of the hat to the sec, who had a couple teams. They did, and there you go. But I was looking at ticket prices the other day. I like to do that when the big tournament games come and all the, you know, razzle dazzle, everyone gets excited. I like to see which teams are willing to pay, which teams, fans are willing to pay the most for the tickets. And I did find some reasonably priced championship Final Four, certainly, like in the, you know, $100 range or was. Did we have the elite. We had the elite eight. Yeah. And those you could find for 50 bucks. You could be in the nosebleeds for 50 bucks. What? Very reasonably priced. $100 for the final four, $150 for the championship game. Now you're way up there. You're not, you know, you probably won't even be able to see what's going on. But those are with the big ticket brokers, StubHub, Vivid Seats, Stuff like that. And reminded me of a CBS this Morning News piece that I had seen, which is probably the most detailed accounting of why concerts, sporting events and any live entertainment right now is so fucking expensive to get into. I'm going to show it to you here. We'll. We'll watch this. We'll listen to it here in a minute. And sorry, CBS News, but I think this is a really comprehensive piece and I. As many people need to hear it as possible so that we all have a better understanding of exactly why you can't get tickets to your fate to see your favorite band or artist or sporting event and how the mechanics actually work and how Live Nation and Ticketmaster play into this.

[Chris Joy Odley]

We all want to do the venues themselves.

[Brian Green]

It has a lot to do with a lot of things. Yeah, it's like everything in life, it's complicated and it. And while we all like to make Ticketmaster and Live Nation to out to be the bad guy, and I think in a lot of ways they certainly are the heel in this situation. It just, it's not just them.

[Chris Joy Odley]

I know it's.

[Brian Green]

It's every. It's every cog in the wheel that is taking their piece and making it more expensive. Not being transparent, employing tactics that are shitty, that don't benefit the consumer. So this may not be the funniest episode of the commercial break ever, but we're so interested in music and live events here, given that we've canceled, at least for ourselves.

[Chris Joy Odley]

Somebody asked me about that the other day. They're like, did you reschedule your event in Florida? And I laughed.

[Brian Green]

Yeah, yeah, we did, but we don't know what the date is yet. Yeah, we don't know what the date is yet. It's rescheduled. We just don't know what the date is. But what surprised Chrissy and I even about our short dip, our toe dip, our tasty teener into. Into the live.

[Chris Joy Odley]

Our fingernail.

[Brian Green]

Yeah, our fingernail tip. And then pulled it back out. Just the tip we gave you. Just the tip. We told you there was going to be a live event. Some of you bought to get to the live event. Then we yanked. That was a rug poll. They call that a rug poll in the business. We even in our small experience, we found that the ticket brokering sites were selling tickets for $800, face value, $38, not $58. But they were selling tickets for 8, $800. Now, I am sure no one bought $800 tickets because if they did, they got royally fucked. And I'm really sorry, but that's not exactly. That is the norm right now. It is not the exception. It's the norm. Even the smallest of events, even the most useless entertainment you could ever see is getting super high ticket prices because all of these people are trying to dip their fingers in the pot, so to speak. And this is causing a lot of problems all across the board. Let me give you an example, one that you were sharing with me the other day and I went and did some more research on it. Linkin park, the venerable alt rock. You know, I don't even know what. What do you. New rock, I guess would probably be the best new spelled nu rock, 90s 2000s band that had some hits. No doubt. Chester Benningfield, like no Doubt. Just like. No Doubt. That's right, just like no Doubt. They were like new ska or something, sky rock or something like that. But Linkin park was one of the first on the scene with this brand of kind of hip hop, hip hop, rock, heavy metal, you know, synthesized beats, rapping, if you could call it that. And really in your face hard rock, along with some Other melodic, kind of more. I would call more grungy stuff. They kind of mixed it all together, this mishmash rock. And they hit on something like a cultural zeitgeist. They had a moment where they were really popular. And Chester, the lead singer of the band, now they had. They had not been as popular for a number of years, but I think they were highly regarded with their fans. And Chester died. And I don't. What, did he die of? An overdose? Did he die of an overdose?

[Chris Joy Odley]

I think it was.

[Brian Green]

Oh, suicide. Yeah, maybe. Yeah. He unalived himself, as they like to say on the Internet. He unalived himself, I think. I don't want to. I don't want to misspeak about that because I don't want to be disrespectful to. To Chester. Chester Bennington. Death. Let me see here. Death, yes. Unalived by hanging. And the details aren't important. What's important is that he unalived himself in a moment when Linkin park was not at their zenith. They were not at their most powerful. They had seen their moment. Like oftentimes, this happens with every major musical act. They see their height, they fall from grace in the public's eyes. The public gets sick of hearing all about it, hearing the same song over and over again, whatever it is. And then they go away for a while, and then everything old becomes new again, and they see a resurgence in popularity. We're seeing that all over the board, all over the map right now with 80s bands. 80s bands and musical acts, 90s bands and musical acts. Some have stayed. Frankie valley, Frankie Valli, 50s acts. That guy is dead. I'm still not convinced he's alive. I still go Google Frankie Valli and tell me. And Google Frankie Valli live and look at any of the concert footage from the last three years and tell me you're not 100% convinced that's not a Boston Dynamics robot with Frankie Valli's actual skin pasted on it. It's amazing. Don't call me baby. But his mouth doesn't move. He's singing, but his mouth doesn't move. Or they claim he's singing. And it's so hard to tell. And I'm a. I consider myself a master lip sync like detector. Anyway, so right now, the concert business, especially the concert business, is just insane. And we all know this because we are seeing one of the. We are alive at a time. We are seeing one of the artists who is truly at the zenith of popularity. Taylor Swift. She just went on her World tour and you couldn't get a ticket. And if you could get a ticket, you were paying thousands of dollars even for the nosebleed seats or the standing on standing room only seats. Thousands of dollars. And if you went to a Taylor Swift concert during that period of time, you will know that every ticket was standing room only. Everybody was standing, screaming and singing the songs you could almost not hear. It almost made it unenjoyable. I went and saw her at her last concert in la, the one that's on Disney plus right now. And I. It was a gift to my wife and it was the most expensive ticket I have ever paid for. And it was insane, but worth it to see her face, to see the enjoyment in her face. Yeah, but it was just crazy to me that we were paying these kind of ticket prices. And Linkin park is not at the zenith of their their power. Chester passes away. Then years later, 6, 7, 8, 10 years later, they decide they're going to put the band back together, but with a new lead singer, as some would say a PR problematic singer. She has some ties to the Church of Scientology and some other cultish type behavior, but some people really like her voice in place of Chesters, and some people don't appreciate it. But they announced a tour where they were playing stadiums, 50, 60, 70,000 seats. And you told me the other day that they were having problems selling those tickets and they were downsizing the venues. Opening acts like Queens of the Stone Age were pulling out, probably because they couldn't be paid the same amount of money with a different sized venue, I would imagine. You know, I don't think they were like, oh, fuck Linkin Park. They were probably thinking to themselves, well, this isn't a good payday for us. And they're downsizing because they cannot sell the tickets at the price they need to sell them to in order to make the money they expected to make or to pay the crew or to fit those kind of arenas. They are even discounting tickets from $59 down to $39. The cheapest of seats, which is a today's day and age, is a pretty reasonable ticket. And there are still lots of seats available to these tickets. We heard this with who else? We've heard this about Katy Perry, we've heard this about who else just had to roll back her shows. Jennifer Lopez had to roll back, cancel her shows. Who are the two guys? The one that plays piano. Not White Stripes, but one plays piano, one plays bass. Do you know I'm talking about Black Keys. The Black Keys had to cancel all of their stadium dates and arena dates and go to smaller clubs. This is happening more frequently. The reason is because you and I have less money to spend on tickets right now. Because every ticket that we buy is exorbitantly expensive. Because you can't get them when they go on sale at the normal price. And even at the normal price, they're exorbitantly expensive. Comedy shows, entertainment, live show, all of it. And there's a complicated hodgepodge of reasons why that is. But the artist can no longer afford to go to a place like, say, Dodgers Stadium, like Lincoln park was scheduled to play and only sell two thirds of the seats. They need to sell 100% of the seats in order just to make the kind of money they need probably to cover the costs and get a little bit of money themselves. And so rather than take the chance that they won't even six months ahead of time and they can see it coming down the pike, they decide to go to an 18,000 seat venue rather than a 60,000 seat venue, so they have a chance of breaking even and making money themselves. It used to not be like that. There were lots of concerts that I used to go to when I was a teenager and in my 20s where the it wasn't sold out. But now you won't go to a not sold out concert because planes, same with planes. Because you cannot make money with a not sold out venue. The venue charges as much as possible to the band, the crew does, the equipment's expensive, the merch is expensive to make. And then you've got to deal with TicketMaster, Live Nation, StubHub, Vivid Seats. It is a complicated thing that is going on. It's not just one bad guy. There's many bad guys and then many people who are just trying to make a living doing this. I'm going to see a lot of concerts this summer. Already got a lot of concerts lined up. And I'm thinking about divesting of some of those concert tickets because quite frankly, it's expensive to travel to go see them. Like, I wanted to get Oasis tickets. I got Oasis tickets in Chicago. But now I'm realizing that everybody along the way is going to charge me an arm and a leg to get there, to stay there, to be there. And the tickets were. I bought. I had to buy them through Ticketmaster because Oasis put, like, put a stop to StubHub and places like that, selling them. Now I've noticed that StubHub does have the tickets and they're selling them.

[Chris Joy Odley]

Okay, I know Someone who wants to buy those from you.

[Brian Green]

Okay, well, let me know. It might be one of the concerts I just have to let go.

[Chris Joy Odley]

Yeah.

[Brian Green]

Because it's so expensive. How did we get here? Why can't we go see a show for 40, 50, $60 even, like we used to? And I'm talking about inflation adjusted numbers. When I went, to give you an example, when I went to a fish when I was 17 years old. 16. 17 years old. I paid $20 for the ticket. That included the fees. 20 bucks. 20 bucks I would get in, I would sit on the lawn, I'd be able to see the band. It probably wasn't 100% sold out. The experience was good. If I wanted a fish shirt, I'd throw in an extra seven or ten dollars and that would be it. But now if I want to go see fish, I'm paying $150, if not $200 to sit anywhere in the building. And I'm gonna pay an extra $70 for a fish shirt, $15 for a beer, $30 for a hot dog and some French fries or whatever it is. I mean, honestly, it's just kind of like they're gonna rob you every bit of the way. It's not fish that's doing that. It's because that's where we are in this kind of experience. And it's really, I don't know, upsetting to me as an entertainment lover that we've. We've gotten here. How does Jeff deal with this? Do they sell out men fo or do they typically have some tickets available at the door?

[Chris Joy Odley]

They have tickets available.

[Brian Green]

Okay. So they don't really deal too much with the pressures of, like, the stubhubs and the Vivid.

[Chris Joy Odley]

I mean, they're independent, too.

[Brian Green]

Yeah, they don't. They don't. They don't use.

[Chris Joy Odley]

They. Well, I mean, they do have to. I mean, you have to use a ticket broker. So they use.

[Brian Green]

What's the access?

[Chris Joy Odley]

It's somebody that's Ticketmaster adjacent.

[Brian Green]

Okay.

[Chris Joy Odley]

Because there's, you know, Ticketmaster has all of these different.

[Brian Green]

Yeah, they do. Yeah. Yeah.

[Chris Joy Odley]

But. Yeah, but they have a great deal with, like, the venue that they have the show at.

[Brian Green]

Right.

[Chris Joy Odley]

And then they charge a reasonable price.

[Brian Green]

Yeah. I wish it could all be, like.

[Chris Joy Odley]

Because they're independent, I think.

[Brian Green]

Yeah. It can't be. They're the promoter, too, because Ticketmaster owns the ticketing business, Live Nation owns the venue business, and Ticketmaster owns Live Nation.

[Chris Joy Odley]

Yeah.

[Brian Green]

So when they put together a concert or even a comedy tour, they come and they say, don't Worry about it, Mr. Musician or Mrs. Musician. We're going to give you X amount of dollars per show. You X amount of dollars per show. Sometimes it works like this. If you're a big enough artist, we're going to give you X amount of dollars per show. We'll do the promoting, we'll sell the tickets, will manage everything else down, down the line. But the amount of money that they make is barely a living wage. In a lot of cases like these medium sized clubs these people are playing. It's really hard to be a musician, like a regionally successful music musician. It's really hard to be one of those these days. When I was in 33 penis and Chopper Johnson, both my phallic related bands, the music wasn't particularly good. But here's how it went. We would get booked at a club and we would be responsible for selling our own tickets, promoting our own show. And then the venue itself would do their own bit of promotion. Yeah, they'd say, these bands are going to be there this night. They'd advertise in the local rags, maybe they'd put a radio spot on or two, nothing dramatic. But you know, we're also talking about 300 seat, 300 people standing in a room. And then they would say, if you get to anything over a hundred people, we'll split the door with you. Right? And that door was 10 bucks. And if we were lucky, we'll give you 5% of the bar, right where they really make their money, 5% of the bar. And then it'll be the manager's responsibility to go figure all that stuff out to keep an eye on the door, to click the button to, you know, look at the bar tab at the end of the night of the bar roll or whatever it was. It doesn't work like that anymore. These people are getting paid peanuts by everybody along the line. Spotify, Ticketmaster, Live Nation. Live Nation owns the venue. Ticketmaster's charging a bunch of ticket fees that then they give most back to the venue, which I don't think a lot of people know that. And the venue is in bed with them because that's how they make money, they make money on the fees. It's not just Ticketmaster making money for themselves, it's Ticketmaster making money for the venue. But the venue then also charges the band for all of the services and just using the room or the musician or whoever it is. It's a terrible system that is set up for failure every single step of the way. And that's not even adding into the question about Whether or not StubHub, Vivid Seats and any number thousands of ticket brokers that are out there. And now the evil part about this is, and I say it's evil, I don't argue with anybody making their own money. But the evil part about this is, is that just like everything else in our life, it has become a coaching business. People are coaching other people how to be independent ticket brokers to take those tickets that you so desperately want to the band to see the band, the music, the comedy, whatever it is teaching individuals like you or me how to use bots and multiple computers and IP addresses and masking systems and all this and selling them that software and subscription services to be your own ticket broker so that you can get the ticket for Taylor Swift that my daughter so desperately wants and resell it to me for thousands of dollars more.

[Chris Joy Odley]

Yeah, crazy. The resale market's crazy.

[Brian Green]

Yes. This has become an mlm, essentially. It's an mlm. And even though there are, there's a real product involved, the independent ticket brokers can charge whatever they want and they do. So some people say free market, baby, free market. But are we getting to the point where you can only afford to go see one concert every two years because you're going to pay $3,000 to see even the shittiest of bands who normally you wouldn't even think twice about paying $50, let alone $2,000, but that's just the way it is now. Free market I agree with, and so does my phone. Free market I agree with. But sometimes I think it has its limitations. And so that's why the commercial break is now selling tickets.

[Chris Joy Odley]

We become a ticket.

[Brian Green]

We become a ticket broker. Welcome to the Commercial break Brokers, tcp, dcbb. Get your favorite concert tickets here at the. Gotta make money somehow on this stupid fucking show or my wife's gonna divorce me. So there you go. There it is. All right. I want to listen to this CBS this MORNING piece and talk about it because I think it's an interesting piece, interesting enough to carry us through an episode and we're on vacation right now while you're listening to this. So it's low hanging fruit, quite frankly. I'm being a ticket broker right now. I'm brokering off some bad content for you. All right, we'll be back. You make this rather snappy, won't you?

[Deborah Duddles]

I have some very heavy thinking to.

[Brian Green]

Do before 10 o'clock. Hi, cats and kittens. Rachel here. Do you ever get the urge to speak endlessly into the void like Brian. Well, I've got just the place for you to do that. 212-4333-TCB. That's 212-433-3822. Feel free to call and yell all you want. Tell Brian I need a raise. Compliment Chrissy's innate ability to put up with all his shenanigans, or tell us a little story. The juicier the better. By the way, we love to hear your voice because Lord knows we're done listening to ourselves. Also, give us a follow on your favorite socials at the commercial break on Insta TCB podcast on TikTok and for those of you who like to watch. Oh, that came out wrong. We put all the episodes out on video, YouTube.com thecommercialbreak and tcbpodcast.com for all the info on the show, your free sticker, or just to see how pretty we look. Okay, I gotta go now. I've got a date with my dog. No, seriously. Axel needs food. Today is pork chop day. When you think about businesses that are selling through the roof, like aloe, allbirds or Skims. Sure, you think about a great product, a cool brand and brilliant marketing. But an often overlooked secret is actually the businesses behind the business. Making, selling, and for shoppers, buying.

[Chris Joy Odley]

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[Brian Green]

For millions of businesses, that business is Shopify. Nobody does selling better than Shopify, home of the number one checkout on the planet. And the not so secret secret with shop pay that boosts conversions up to 50%, meaning way less carts going abandoned and way more sales going. So if you're into growing your business, your commerce platform better be ready to sell whenever your customers are scrolling or strolling on the web, in your store, in their feed, and everywhere in between. Upgrade your business and get the same checkout experience as business powerhouses like aloe, allbirds and Skims. Sign up for your $1 per month trial [e-mail] Odysseypodcast all lowercase go to shopify.com Odyssey podcast to upgrade your selling today. Shopify.com Odysseypodcast hey all you cats and kittens out there in the podcast universe, I want to tell you about Rule breakers with Soraya. It's a new podcast from our partners at Odyssey that celebrates the rebels, the risk takers, and the ones who make their own way. It's these people who often change the lives of the people around them and the world at large. And while in the moment it may be hard to see the forest through the trees, those rule breakers often define what it means to be a success. Each week, former wrestling superstar Saraya sits down with the boldest voices in sports, entertainment and beyond to talk about breaking barriers, defying expectations and rewriting the rules. They're talking about it all the fights, the failures and the moments that changed everything. You can follow and listen. Listen to Rule breakers with Soraya on the free Odyssey app or wherever you get your podcasts. And here, here to the rule breakers for keeping life interesting. You just realized your business needed to hire someone yesterday. How can you find amazing candidates fast?

[Deborah Duddles]

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[Brian Green]

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[Deborah Duddles]

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[Brian Green]

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[Deborah Duddles]

To get your jobs more [e-mail] listen just go to indeed.com listen right now.

[Brian Green]

And support our show by saying you.

[Deborah Duddles]

Heard about Indeed on this podcast.

[Brian Green]

Indeed.com listen terms and conditions apply. Hiring Indeed is all you need. All right, back talking about the ticketing business when it comes to live entertainment and how it's just gotten out of hand, out of control. I don't have any solutions because I never do have any solutions. But I thought that I would just bring it to the attention. This is a really good piece that is done by CBS News this Morning.

[Chris Joy Odley]

And just to be clear, we didn't do the journalism.

[Brian Green]

No, there's no journalism here at the commercial break. We're just part other hard working journalists did this. So stop by the CBS News this Morning website or YouTube channel or whatever to watch this in its entirety. But we're going to listen to it because I think it's important and I believe that it needs a little bit more attention than I think CBS News this Morning can give it. So I don't know how many of our listeners are tuning into CBS News this morning, but here we go. It was a thousand eighty three for two tickets.

[Deborah Duddles]

The market is the market. The prices are the prices. Going to a concert has become an accomplishment.

[Brian Green]

It's one second you don't have any extra time.

[Deborah Duddles]

Tickets are more expensive than ever and seemingly harder to get.

[Brian Green]

I do know there's probably stuff out there that a retail fan has no shot at getting. This guy who's talking is basically talking in his garage. Yeah, right. And by the way, this is like.

[Chris Joy Odley]

A big air duct behind him.

[Brian Green]

Yeah. There's a. This is a Georgia ticket broker he's talking to. We'll get to that part.

[Deborah Duddles]

But we've spent the last year trying to understand how this happened.

[Brian Green]

Ticketmaster is kind of the fall guy.

[Deborah Duddles]

In this talking to artists. Here's an example of like a deal memo scalpers.

[Brian Green]

He made over 34,000 in one month.

[Deborah Duddles]

And executives Is Ticketmaster monopoly at the company's controlling concert ticketing. Why does Stubhub deserve the biggest share of that woman's purchase? This is the story of how the industry got here and how it might soon change.

[Brian Green]

We can get those Sundays hold off on Saturday. Still low.

[Deborah Duddles]

Ok. On a Friday night in la, the emo rock band Something Corporate is playing a reunion show at the Hollywood Palladium.

[Brian Green]

Hi, how are you?

[Deborah Duddles]

Fans have have been paying about $70 for tickets to the tour.

[Brian Green]

When I woke up in New York City from my sleep behind the wheel. But where I've never heard of this band. Have you heard of Something's Corporate?

[Chris Joy Odley]

I have heard of something Corporate, but yeah. Not about their uniting.

[Brian Green]

Yeah. I'm not informed about this band.

[Deborah Duddles]

Exactly. Do those $70 go something Corporate frontman Andrew McMahon agreed to share those usually secret details for a show.

[Brian Green]

Here's an example of like a deal memo.

[Deborah Duddles]

His team just blacked out. Exactly which show it was. What do we have here?

[Brian Green]

I noticed the name of the agency on the top of that.

[Deborah Duddles]

Start the band set a ticket price of $56.

[Brian Green]

There's a gross potential of a couple.

[Deborah Duddles]

Hundred thousand dollars being made. But out of that 200 grand in ticket sales, half is deducted for venue related show costs.

[Brian Green]

37 grand in stagehand. Jesus. $104,000 to rent the Palladium where they probably seat 3,000 people.

[Deborah Duddles]

4,000 people maybe leaving the band with $100,000 payday. But most of that goes to the band's own expenses.

[Brian Green]

Commissions and fees and payroll.

[Deborah Duddles]

Their management takes a quarter. Travel and crew costs. Take another.

[Brian Green]

Their management takes a quarter. They got to get a new management team. That's crazy.

[Deborah Duddles]

Quarter. Meanwhile that $56 ticket has had fees added though. Artists don't get that money. So once you take away the venue, show costs and the band's touring expenses, Something Corporate's actual profit from that $70 ticket is about 10 bucks.

[Brian Green]

Okay, so let's do the math there. Three, four thousand people sit at the Hollywood Palladium. I'm assuming I'm just making an educated, non educated guess. Making an educated, non educated guess. So they're going to make 30 to 40 thousand dollars. Looks like there's seven people in the band. So they're each gonna walk away with six or seven thousand dollars for a night's worth of work. But maybe they're only working a hundred nights a year, 110 nights a year if you're lucky. I mean, these guys look like they're a little bit older, right? So they're not. And I don't think they're fish. I don't think they're working 250 nights a year or I don't even think fish does that, but. So you're making 70, 80, $90,000 a year on touring. That's not. No, I'm sorry. That's $700,000. Oh, yeah, that's pretty good. Yeah, Nevermind. That's pretty good money. That's good money. And then we split that five ways.

[Deborah Duddles]

Yeah, McMahon isn't complaining. That's still seven grand each for a night's work.

[Brian Green]

Oh, wow. My math was right. Look at me. I did that all in my head. Except I. Except I didn't add a zero. We love you, Los Angeles. Thank you for a beautiful night.

[Deborah Duddles]

But the point here is each dollar fans pay to enjoy the show is fought over by artists, venues, ticket companies, and scalpers. And time and again, the industry's solution to these fights has been to just charge fans a bit more.

[Brian Green]

Yeah, see, I think that's really the issue is that at the end of the day, it comes down to how much is the consumer willing to pay. So the more that we feed the beast, the more that they continue to charge. When people are selling Taylor Swift sixth row tickets for 15, 20, $25,000 and there's lots of people willing to pay it, why wouldn't you?

[Chris Joy Odley]

It's basic economics. Supply and demand.

[Brian Green]

It really is now. So I want you to imagine yourself in a situation. I think I know the answer for this. For me. But I want to ask you. You get a. You pop on Ticketmaster, wait in the line to get the Taylor Swift tickets for the show here in Atlanta, and you're lucky enough to get in quick, and you get 350 seats front row or second row, third row, really close to the stage, and then someone falls sick a couple weeks ahead of time, and unfortunately you're unable to go travel. The commercial break needs an extra episode like we always do, whatever the situation is.

[Chris Joy Odley]

Right.

[Brian Green]

And now you've. And now you've got these extraordinarily valuable tickets that you can't use. And you look on the marketplace, StubHub, and StubHub says you can probably get $25,000 a piece for these tickets. We're going to take a 10% commission, $2,500 apiece or whatever the commission is. It's probably way more than that, but we're going to do that. But you can sell them on our marketplace or you can go to the Ticketmaster website and sell them for $350 like you bought them for.

[Chris Joy Odley]

Yeah.

[Brian Green]

What would be your choice?

[Chris Joy Odley]

Well, I mean.

[Brian Green]

I mean, come on.

[Chris Joy Odley]

Big difference.

[Brian Green]

Okay.

[Chris Joy Odley]

But normally I would say just as long as I can get my money back. Now, if somebody's going to pay 25,000.

[Brian Green]

$25,000, that's what those tickets were going. Some of them were going for not all of them, but some of them. The best of seats of shows in the more affluent areas. Miami, Louisiana, Chicago, at that point, too.

[Chris Joy Odley]

It's a lot of corporate stuff. You know, corporate people that are buying them or people that just have tons of money to.

[Brian Green]

People that have tons of money to buy them. And that's the problem is that just like Disney World has become a premium, only rich people can kind of afford it. Experience. Concerts are now becoming that way. A large amount of them are becoming that way. I'll tell you a little story before we move on here. I'll tell you a little story. When I was a bartender and I was giving myself Chianti Classico under the. Under the bar. Well, day old Brad bread. Not only day old bread, day old bread that had been on someone else's table. I mean, that's insane. But anyway, it's not open anymore, so don't call me about it. I don't want to hear about it. It's not open anymore.

[Chris Joy Odley]

I wonder why.

[Brian Green]

I. I can only imagine. When I was working there, I ended up meeting a guy at the end of the bar who would come in often. Older gentleman, probably in his late 50s, early 60s. Not the coke dealer. No. But that guy was sitting at the end of the bar, too, because he knew that every dime I made would go right into his pocket. It was like I was working for him. You do the work, I'll. You give it to me. How's that?

[Chris Joy Odley]

He was his own broker.

[Brian Green]

Yeah. So the guy and I became friendly over the course of a couple of months. And one day I asked him what he did because he always seemed to be he was, you know, driving around a nice Mercedes surrounded by younger, beautiful women. He was very eccentric, right? And you could just tell he was. You drank the best wine, champagne, you know, get this girl, whatever she might get there. Only the best for you. That's why I'm at Lestrade eating soft shell crabs and three day old bread. So I learned at the time that he was buying tickets. He was paying people to stand in line or doing it himself. Stand in line.

[Chris Joy Odley]

That used to be what you did.

[Brian Green]

At the box office, buying the tickets and then reselling them on this black market. That was very virgin ground at the time, very young. But he was making 2, 3, $400 sometimes on a ticket, on the most in demand of concerts. Most tickets he was making 50 or 60 or $100, but he was doing it in volume. And he was building an organization. He had four or five people working for him. He had an office down in Buckhead. He was doing it. And he was well connected in the music industry. A lot of times the bands would give him their tickets.

[Chris Joy Odley]

I've heard of that too. Yeah.

[Brian Green]

And we'll get to this in the story. But the bands would give him their tickets, let's say a bit. Let's say a guy like Ari Shafir comes into town. Ari Shafir comes into town and Ari has 20 tickets available per the contract to give away at his disposal. Not the best tickets, but good tickets, right? And he says, yeah, Brian, Chrissy and what other hangers on Brian wants to ask me to send to the show and maybe a couple of other strange, you know, people that I know in Atlanta, but I got 10 of those tickets left, not Ari. But a lot of times bands and musicians, when they, especially when the tickets are in demand, they will give those over to someone that they know that will then resell them maybe not directly to the ticket broker, but kind of directly, but to somebody who knows the ticket broker. And then that's a way that the band would make a little bit of extra cash for the night, especially the bands that were on a run. The hot band Linkin park not included in that. But you understand what I'm saying. Jen Lopez not selling her tickets to the ticket brokers.

[Chris Joy Odley]

Wasn't Justin Bieber, wasn't there a thing about him doing that?

[Brian Green]

He was doing it. I think they, I think that the Boss, Bruce Springsteen at one point had. There was mumblings that he was doing it. There was. And I don't know any of this to be true or not, and I like Bruce Springsteen. And I don't see why he needed to do that if he did that. But maybe he didn't, who knows? But it's not uncommon. It's not uncommon for your favorite football player, basketball player, baseball player to sell their tickets on the black market either because they have the best seats in the house. And who's going to go to 162 home games for the who? What family member? Maybe your wife or your husband, or maybe maybe your kids, but certainly not filling out 10 seats every single game. Why wouldn't you make a little extra cash? So this guy introduced me to the business and taught me how it worked. And on occasion I would go stand at a box office for him to get these tickets. I didn't think much of it at the time.

[Chris Joy Odley]

Is this before or after Jam Land production?

[Brian Green]

This was before Jam Land. But during my 13 year long bud Light and cocaine induced hates.

[Chris Joy Odley]

Yes, I.

[Brian Green]

Didn'T think much of it at the time. I really didn't. Because. Because there were so few people who even knew about ticket brokers that it wasn't like a thing. And he did sell a lot of tickets to corporations, to people, you know, people who could afford and put them on the corporate card, whatever. And at that time, when you saw when there was a $20 ticket and you sold it for 65 bucks, to me, even back then it was like, you know, whatever. It's an in demand ticket. This has been going on for time immorium. This is nothing new that these ticket brokers do this, but what they do is they suck up available tickets for fans who are really die hard, who are standing out there in the cold and the wet and the rain. Not anymore, you know, who are sitting at home in their pajamas, clicking on, clicking, clicking, clicking, clicking.

[Chris Joy Odley]

Yes.

[Brian Green]

All right, let's get fresh.

[Chris Joy Odley]

Refresh, refresh.

[Brian Green]

Tickets go for so high.

[Deborah Duddles]

Now consider the history of the infamous ticket fee. In the 80s, as artists demanded a bigger cut of the box office, venues scrambled for new revenue. Ticket fees, which cut out the artist were the answer, says New York Times music writer Ben Cesario.

[Brian Green]

There was a guy named Fred Rosen who became the CEO of Ticketmaster. And he's the person who really created the modern ticketing business as we know it. You know, it was field of Dreams. If you build it, they will come.

[Deborah Duddles]

And they did. What Rosen built was a network of ticket outlets and phone centers that made it easy for fans to buy. That was new seats 18 to 20. But for that convenience, there's a convenience charge of 120. They were charged higher and higher fees. Handling charge.

[Brian Green]

I mean, just to touch it. They charge you $3, fans, $3.

[Chris Joy Odley]

Three.

[Brian Green]

Oh, my God. Those were the days. $3 cleaned.

[Deborah Duddles]

But venues signed on because, and this was the key part, Ticketmaster let those venues keep most of the fee.

[Brian Green]

Yeah, Ticketmaster is kind of the fall guy in this. It's. It's set up for that purpose. Fred Rosen, that's a very interesting point that I think is important to hear. Ticketmaster gives most of those fees back to the venue. It's how Ticketmaster gets the business of the venue is they bribe them, essentially. They say, we'll do all the hard work as far as the ticketing is concerned.

[Chris Joy Odley]

Or they just buy the venue.

[Brian Green]

Yeah, or they just buy the venue through Live Nation. That's right. Or they manage it or whatever it is. But Ticketmaster becomes the fall guy because they're set up to be the fall guy. And they're okay with that because it's such a lucrative business. He used to say that his client is not the consumer, it's the venue.

[Chris Joy Odley]

Yeah.

[Brian Green]

He's there to take the heat for that venue.

[Deborah Duddles]

In exchange for taking that heat, Ticketmaster won control, the exclusive right to sell all the tickets. In the 90s, Pearl Jamie tried to escape this system, even taking their case to Congress. The issue at hand here is whether Ticketmaster is a monopoly, but that failed. And venues and other man.

[Brian Green]

A for effort. Pearl Jam. A for effort. Yes.

[Chris Joy Odley]

Of them to try.

[Brian Green]

They saw it coming and they knew what was going on, and they all of them valiantly fought that effort. It's so much so that for one whole tour, like one year, two years, I remember that, yeah, they would only sell tickets, tickets through their own, like, fan club or whatever it was. But they were losing money at a huge clip. When they were the biggest band in rock and roll, they were losing money. They weren't able to play the venues they wanted to. And it became, you can't set up your own Ticketmaster. And when you're Pearl Jam, how do you do that? It's a billion dollar corporation.

[Deborah Duddles]

Artists stuck with Ticketmaster in the UK.

[Brian Green]

And in Europe, they have a different ticketing system. And it's usually not these exclusive contracts. The cost of a ticket and the cost of a fee overseas tends to be a lot lower than in the us. But artists like touring in the US because they make more money here, because.

[Chris Joy Odley]

People are willing to pay it.

[Brian Green]

Yeah, that's right. Because we're the Dum Dums who are willing to pay the fee.

[Deborah Duddles]

The concert Scene is shaped by the combined power of Ticketmaster and Live Nation.

[Chris Joy Odley]

Or buy it and pay later on your credit card.

[Brian Green]

I mean, that's the craziest shit. I was seeing the New Orleans, not the Jazz Fest, but there's another major music festival that happens down in New Orleans. Do you know what I'm talking? But can't remember the name of it. It's like the. Under the bunch that go under the Derby Delay. I don't even remember what it was, but there are huge bands that are playing four days. It was like a lineup that I've never seen before, rivaling Jazz Fest. And they have tickets that go up into the $2,500 for super VIP experience and all this other stuff, you know, heated bathrooms and people that wipe your ass and all this other shit. All this premium shit. Put it on layaway.

[Chris Joy Odley]

Yeah, you can.

[Brian Green]

Yeah, pay. Put $500 down now pay US$50 a month forever and ever. And 15 interest. It's crazy. Yeah.

[Chris Joy Odley]

And plus, you, too, you get caught up, like, oh, my God, I really want to be there. I really want to see the experience. Yeah. And so the fact that you were able to actually buy tickets, like, say, for a Taylor Swift or, like Prince's last shows, I remember this, us doing this. Just like the fact that we could even just get them, just put them on the credit card quick, you know, and then, yeah, people get caught up with that.

[Deborah Duddles]

They merged in 2010, and now some venues say Ticketmaster isn't helping them out, but specifically supporting Live Nation, which owns their own venues and promotes their own artists.

[Brian Green]

We can't compete.

[Deborah Duddles]

Stephen Parker, executive director of the National Independent Venue association, says Live Nation uses its power across the industry to strangle competition, basically making it so that artists.

[Brian Green]

Have to play every single date at Live Nation venues or Live Nation operated venues or Live Nation partner venues. Yeah, that's. That's the problem is that the artist, if they want to be. Be in the big leagues and make that, you know, make a living doing this, they have to get in bed with Ticketmaster and Live Nation. Pearl Jam learned that lesson the hard way, but that's. It's the way that the system has been. It's by design.

[Deborah Duddles]

Last May, the Department of justice made a similar claim.

[Brian Green]

It is time to break it up.

[Deborah Duddles]

Saying Live Nation and Ticketmaster illegally use their power to push down competition and push up ticket prices. Is Ticketmaster monopoly? Well, obviously, there's a claim that we are. Dan Wall is the antitrust lawyer who helped get the.

[Brian Green]

Ticketmaster is the antitrust lawyer who's making a billion dollars a year defending Ticketmaster.

[Deborah Duddles]

Live Nation merger approved in the first place. He calls the DOJ's case a performance.

[Brian Green]

Look at that guy's office. Look at that guy's office.

[Chris Joy Odley]

It's amazing.

[Brian Green]

Unbelievable. To be that guy for one day.

[Deborah Duddles]

They've lawsuit. That would have no impact on ticket prices. The Justice Department is trying to break you up. You have senators on both sides of the aisle saying you're a monopoly. There was a poll that said 60% of Americans think the two companies should be broken up. Why are they all wrong about this? We are obviously the leading company in this industry. There's no doubt about that.

[Brian Green]

And I think that's an interesting way of putting it.

[Deborah Duddles]

It creates a certain.

[Chris Joy Odley]

Yeah, what do you think this guy's gonna say?

[Brian Green]

We are the leading podcast on my street.

[Deborah Duddles]

Of jealousy. I think it creates a certain amount of rivalry, certain amount of fear, but we stand by what we do. It is the one ticket incompetent.

[Brian Green]

Well, of course you do. You have to. You're being paid by them to say that. I mean, take a look at it from the consumer point of view or the musician's point of view. But is there a better way? I don't know. I don't have the answer to that. Is the better way buying tickets by mailing Eddie Vedder? Please send me two tickets to your concert. Here's a check for $50. I don't know.

[Deborah Duddles]

In this country, that is 100% on the side of the artist and the fan. Not run for the benefit of ticket brokers and ticket scalpers and big resale prices and big resale fees.

[Chris Joy Odley]

It is complicated too, because these venues, you know, as a fan, you want to go to a venue that's a good venue. Of course you do nice offers. Things that you would like to purchase there, that has good lighting, has good stuff. And so these venues have to pay. You have to pay for it.

[Brian Green]

Exactly. Do you want to go see Brian fall off a stage in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, or do you want to go to, I don't know, wherever it is, to the Coca Cola Roxy? It's brand spanking new, beautiful, well run. You know, merch is in pretty places. I mean, even the Variety Playhouse. Now, that used to be a dive bar that was really big. Now it's a clean, sparkly, shiny place in the middle of little fucking Five Points. It lost a little bit of its luster because now it's got a lot of bluster, so to speak. I mean, I Hate to use the rhyme, but I do it all the time. And it is a complicated question about whether or not this is the right way or the wrong way to do it. It. Because it is the system we have. Like it or not, it is the system we have. And whether you like it or not, I bet you like sitting in your pajamas, pressing refresh, trying to get those tickets rather than standing out in the rain, going to the box office, calling somebody up and trying to have them walk you through getting tickets. Or better yet again, sending an envelope to your favorite band and hoping that you get tickets in some silly lottery that doesn't make sense. This is a complicated system. Now, he said. We are on the side of the musician and the consumer, not the big resale companies. Charging high prices. You're also charging high prices. It starts with you. You're charging $50 ticket fees on $70 tickets. That is insanity. How can you charge a $50 ticket fee? I agree what you do is valuable. I agree the service you offer is convenient. $50 convenient. I don't even make $7 an hour working here at the commercial break. And I think we can all agree that the commercial break has built something quite amazing.

[Chris Joy Odley]

We're independent.

[Brian Green]

It rivals Live Nation and Ticketmaster. We are independent. Yes. Thank you. No big corporations here. No big podcast here. All right, let's take a break. We'll get back to it. Let me do something Brian has never done. Be brief. Follow us on Instagram at the commercial break. Text or call us 212-4333, tcb. That's 212-433-3822. Visit our website tcbpodcast.com for all the audio, video and your free sticker. Then watch all the [e-mail] thecommercial break and finally share the show. It's the best gift you could give a few aging podcasters. See, Brian, that really wasn't that difficult, now, was it? You're welcome.

[Deborah Duddles]

There's a smarter way to spend and.

[Brian Green]

Earn while you do it. Meet Klarna, your everyday smarter spending partner. Break up purchases into four interest free payments or pay in full. The choice is yours. Whether you're using the Klarna card, earning cash back in the app, or comparing prices at your favorite stores, Klarna is here to help. Seamless, flexible, interest free. Look for Klarna at checkout or learn [e-mail] see Resident Loans Made or arranged pursuant to account California Finance Law License NMLS Number 1353190 Karna Balance Account required. Karna may get a commission. Limitations, terms and conditions apply. I've been counted out, dismissed, passed over, told I'd never be a golfer with just one arm. But the only thing that feels better than proving people wrong is out driving them. I'm 14 year old golfer Tommy Morrissey.

[Chris Joy Odley]

And I want to be remembered for.

[Brian Green]

My ability as a champion partner of the Master Masters. Bank of America supports everyone determined to find out what's possible in golf and in life. What would you like the power to do? Bank of America bank of America NA Member FDIC Copyright 2025 bank of America Corporation. All rights reserved. Okay, let's get back to the CBS Saturday MORNING report here. Want to have a good cue.

[Deborah Duddles]

The real problem with ticketing Wall says we can get those Sundays hold off on Saturday. Still low is caused by scalpers.

[Brian Green]

I mean, I do know there's probably stuff out there that a retail fan has no shot at getting. Well, thank you. Thank you for that. Thank you for that, Mr. Independent Ticket Broker.

[Deborah Duddles]

All Things Go is a two day music festival at the Merriweather Post Pavilion in Maryland. So just concert tickets, what do you think?

[Brian Green]

They're hard to get.

[Deborah Duddles]

Last summer, Leve Rene, Rapp and Hozier topped the bill.

[Chris Joy Odley]

It sold out so fast.

[Deborah Duddles]

Like so many on sales these days.

[Brian Green]

Is one second you don't have any extra time.

[Deborah Duddles]

Buying tickets was a kind of competition.

[Brian Green]

I was clicking on the website and it was all sold out. So then I started googling like, you know, resale tickets for All Things Go.

[Deborah Duddles]

The All Things Go ticket sale that froze out Melissa Santos had happened five months before.

[Brian Green]

Yeah.

[Deborah Duddles]

So all Things on an April morning we spent with Aaron Farah in a Georgia office park as he tried to get those very same tickets.

[Brian Green]

It's like, you know, the festival, it's in Maryland.

[Deborah Duddles]

Farrah used to be a teacher but has been buying and selling tickets.

[Brian Green]

He used to do good in the world and now he's screwing you over for the All Things Go festival, which I'd never heard of. But there's lots of festivals I've never.

[Deborah Duddles]

Heard of since 2008 when a poker.

[Brian Green]

Buddy, he was a pretty big hustler.

[Deborah Duddles]

Suggested scooping up seats.

[Brian Green]

He's a pretty big shithead. So I decided to go the way.

[Deborah Duddles]

Big Hustler to a Jonas Brothers show.

[Brian Green]

I think I made like three or four hundred bucks. And it was that thing came in on my phone. I was I like how Dwight Schrute, there's a picture of Dwight Schrute behind him.

[Chris Joy Odley]

That's true.

[Brian Green]

It's Classic. That's classic. I was hooked.

[Deborah Duddles]

His operation remained tiny. He was still teaching, scraping by until desperate for enough cash to score super lucrative tickets.

[Brian Green]

It was Van Morrison in Clearwater, Florida.

[Deborah Duddles]

He reached out to an acquaintance with deeper pockets.

[Brian Green]

So I called Kevin. I was like, I need $2,000 to get these. And he didn't even blink. He's like, sure. And I was like, who? Who was it he said, Van Morrison. I was like, never heard of him. What? What?

[Chris Joy Odley]

Who's never heard of Van Morrison?

[Brian Green]

Guys, this is the guy who's helping the guy defeat you on the ticket line is the guy who doesn't even know who fucking Van Morrison is. And he's too old not to know who Van Morrison is. I have to say, yes, you have.

[Deborah Duddles]

What Kevin McCurley lacked in musical knowledge, he made up for in business ambition.

[Brian Green]

9,500 in profit.

[Deborah Duddles]

Not just starting their own ticket company.

[Brian Green]

Called $9,500 in profit. Sounds great. Who's Michael Jackson?

[Deborah Duddles]

Elite. Hey, it's Kevin.

[Brian Green]

With smart scalpers.

[Deborah Duddles]

But packaging their ticket technique and franchising them to new brokers. Usher. We sold 105 tickets like this.

[Brian Green]

Oh my God. The world is being taken over by a bunch of guys in her mom's basement. Broker. Just last month he made over 34,000 in one month. Made like no. Get me signed up.

[Chris Joy Odley]

Well, I know.

[Brian Green]

Welcome to Brian's Scalpers Club. Elite 100, the commercial break brought to you by Scalpers.

[Chris Joy Odley]

Yeah, I like tcbb.

[Brian Green]

Yeah, tcbb. Screwing you every step of way. Profit. Profit. Yeah. I've learned a lot of stuff about the ticket business, Sean.

[Deborah Duddles]

Vin. I've learned a lot of stuff from making ticket business.

[Brian Green]

I've also learned how to wear gray shoes with black shorts and dark blue shirt.

[Deborah Duddles]

Gelder, a full time firefighter, started working with Elite.

[Brian Green]

Oh, well, God bless you, son.

[Deborah Duddles]

Part time three years ago, my biggest wins.

[Brian Green]

Probably Taylor Swift.

[Deborah Duddles]

You got Taylor?

[Brian Green]

Yes, I did.

[Deborah Duddles]

How many did you get?

[Brian Green]

I had four.

[Deborah Duddles]

Those seventh row floor seats to Swift's Miami show. So netted Van Gelder $10,000.

[Chris Joy Odley]

Four tickets. How are they getting? How are they getting? Like the really good seats?

[Brian Green]

They're so good. They have all the pre sale codes. They're so good with the box. They're so. They just. This is what they do for a living. You and I do this every couple of months. They do this every morning?

[Chris Joy Odley]

Yeah.

[Brian Green]

Very upset because they weren't going. So unfortunately I chose money over daughter. My daughters will never forgive me. Therapy. But at least I got a brand new Xbox. The market is the market.

[Deborah Duddles]

The prices are the prices. But the right to sell at those prices goes only to those who manage to snag tickets every day. Ordinary fans like Melissa Santos are pitted against pros like Elite.

[Brian Green]

You have those Sundays, we'll get those Sundays.

[Deborah Duddles]

Some of what Elite does is useful for any ticket buyer to copy.

[Brian Green]

There you go. Go.

[Deborah Duddles]

There's a code. Do your best to access a pre sale through your credit card or a fan club. Sign up. The public on sale often on Friday is often too late. Do you bother buying on Friday?

[Brian Green]

Very rarely.

[Deborah Duddles]

I mean won't even waste our time if the on sale start.

[Brian Green]

Wow. Well, they're trying to make a profit. So for them it might be a. The time they put in might not be worth it for the results that they get. But for most of us, that's how we get our tickets.

[Chris Joy Odley]

Yeah.

[Brian Green]

Friday morning.

[Deborah Duddles]

Morning it's at 10.

[Brian Green]

Get logged in well before I like to log in. Saturday at about 3:15pm Right.

[Chris Joy Odley]

Oh yeah, that's on sale.

[Brian Green]

Oh, go to stubhub.com let me hop on.

[Deborah Duddles]

And don't just click the first Google search result for a show that usually takes you to expensive resale tickets. Even if tickets aren't even on sale.

[Chris Joy Odley]

I'm the sake of buying something on those before.

[Brian Green]

Oh, I bought on StubHub.

[Chris Joy Odley]

No, just like googling the artist and then the first thing that pops up. Yeah, I was thinking it was. That was the site.

[Brian Green]

Well that's what was going on with TCB tickets too is the first 12 results were for ticket brokers and it wasn't until you got almost to the second page. Did you actually see the venue's website.

[Deborah Duddles]

Yeah. Instead go to the band or venue's official website and from there find the link to the primary on sale.

[Brian Green]

Anna, let's just get those by.

[Deborah Duddles]

But yes, brokers are also using techniques not available to the general public.

[Brian Green]

Sunday. Yeah, get those Anna, please.

[Deborah Duddles]

Once the sale started, we saw those.

[Brian Green]

Get those tickets.

[Chris Joy Odley]

He's talking to those techniques.

[Brian Green]

Oh, he shows you a few.

[Chris Joy Odley]

Okay. Okay.

[Brian Green]

But some of these you don't have access to even if you wanted to have access to them.

[Deborah Duddles]

Click a web plugin that showed how many seats were still available in each section.

[Brian Green]

500 tickets left. Oh, okay. How does the plugin get into the system? Have a open API. What they call an open API or an open call that allows them to constantly monitor how many tickets are being sold and which ones are available. That can only be done if first up there's a back door Somewhere on the website of Ticketmaster. To the venue or to the venue. Or someone is feeding them that information on purpose.

[Deborah Duddles]

That's nifty. You can see the. See the count.

[Brian Green]

Yep.

[Deborah Duddles]

Based on that number.

[Brian Green]

Yep. Yeah.

[Chris Joy Odley]

That's nifty.

[Brian Green]

Yep. I'm screwing you.

[Chris Joy Odley]

Yep.

[Brian Green]

I'm screwing you. I sure am.

[Deborah Duddles]

He decided whether to buy.

[Brian Green]

Let's pass on Saturdays. Okay.

[Deborah Duddles]

Because so many were still remaining. Yeah.

[Brian Green]

Just not worth it.

[Deborah Duddles]

And while Farrah and McCurley told us.

[Brian Green]

This is the most irritated interview I've ever seen. This guy's so irritated with the fact that CBS is there also.

[Chris Joy Odley]

They're literally set up in a garage. There's a vacuum, a water heater there. There's four air ducts.

[Brian Green]

Yeah.

[Chris Joy Odley]

There's four mismatched desks.

[Brian Green]

Yeah. Doesn't make it sound like a very attractive business to be in.

[Deborah Duddles]

Don't use bots to buy tickets. The definition of a bot is a squishy thing. We had noticed one of their YouTube videos.

[Brian Green]

Now all these tools are out there.

[Deborah Duddles]

Touted Stub tools and Primo Brat.

[Brian Green]

So that is a multi session browser.

[Deborah Duddles]

Which help brokers mask their IP address and log into many Ticketmaster accounts, letting them avoid caps on how many tickets they can buy.

[Brian Green]

Really?

[Chris Joy Odley]

The sky's the limit in number of tickets you can buy.

[Deborah Duddles]

The services cost 250amonth and are only available to ticket brokers. When you're.

[Brian Green]

That's the problem.

[Chris Joy Odley]

Yeah.

[Brian Green]

Yeah. Is that even though they're saying they're democratizing the buy the purchase and sale of tickets, there's. There's still a hurdle to get in that door to really democratize it. If everybody had these tools available to them, then I would see how you could make that claim. But when you are essentially gating those tools that make it very easy for you to get the best tickets and not for me to get the best tickets, then you're not democratizing it. What you're doing is you're essentially, you know, making a hierarchy where you sit on top, collecting the most amount of money.

[Deborah Duddles]

Use something like stub tools that allows you to have so many sessions. Do you think the average fan has a fair shot to get these tickets? I think so.

[Brian Green]

Because they're. Again, they're just trying to buy two or four tickets. Yeah. But you.

[Deborah Duddles]

But that's harder to get.

[Brian Green]

When I'm gonna let him talk, he makes the point for me. I'm sorry, I'm getting ahead of someone else.

[Deborah Duddles]

Just bought 24.

[Brian Green]

Not necessarily.

[Deborah Duddles]

If so, well, how's that? If someone buys 24. That's 24 fewer than other people can get.

[Brian Green]

Yeah, but they, if they want to buy four tickets, they can get their spouse, their kid, their parents. So they can also have the same amount of opportunity as we do. That guy is as dumb as he looks. He really is as dumb as he looks. This is the guy who's funding the independent broker in Georgia, by the way, who started this MLM for ticket brokers, where you can buy a course and become a broker. It doesn't make any. What you said is the dumbest thing in the world. It doesn't hurt the consumer that you're taking 380 tickets out of the pool available to the real fan or to the person that just wants to go to the concert. And you're telling us that we have to get like a whole, like battalion of human people. Of people, which is what we have been doing, by the way. We have been getting as many people as we can to all get on at the same time so that one of us hopefully can hit on it and buy as many tickets as possible.

[Deborah Duddles]

Okay, so people should assemble a team. It's possible. 959, sure. Okay. So you think it's fair? You think the current landscape is fair?

[Brian Green]

I'm not saying it's fair, but I'm not saying it's unfair. Okay, what are you saying?

[Chris Joy Odley]

You are such a moron or the other.

[Brian Green]

Oh, what a moron.

[Deborah Duddles]

Whether it's legal has also been a bit vague. The 2016 Bots act makes it illegal to circumvent a security measure used by the ticket issuer to enforce posted event ticket purchasing limits. But the Federal Trade Commission has enforced the actual just once. Even his brokers seem to violate it daily.

[Brian Green]

So this is an executive order.

[Deborah Duddles]

President Trump has now called on the FTC to rigorously enforce the Bots act, giving them six months to make a plan.

[Chris Joy Odley]

Who was that guy next to him?

[Brian Green]

Kid Rock.

[Chris Joy Odley]

Oh, God. Yeah.

[Brian Green]

Kid Rock was in the Oval Office with Trump. And by the way, why does Trump have to sign everything with a signature that's one page big, like the whole page?

[Chris Joy Odley]

Yeah, he does a little sharpie.

[Brian Green]

I know. He only signs with sharpies.

[Deborah Duddles]

Going to carry out the law. Stopping brokers has been the job of ticket companies. We get to help people get to these magical moments, mostly Ticketmaster. Is it your goal to get tickets in the hands of people who intend to go to the show rather than people who just are buying the ticket to resell it? Oh, 100%. Dan Wall is a long Time. Top lawyer for Ticketmaster. And what kind of grade would you give yourself on how that's going at the moment? Well, we're tough graders. You can get it 99.9% right, and you give yourself an F. But do you think you're.

[Brian Green]

Well, we grade ourselves awful tough. Yeah, you can get it right five and a half percent of the time and we're still going to give ourselves an F. Dave. Wow. Are you getting it even that much?

[Deborah Duddles]

Anywhere near 99.9% when millions and millions of tickets are being sold by scalpers in a large on sale, we regularly knock down and defeat millions of bots. We're in an arms race with the people who are trying to figure out how to intercept these tickets. We've met people doing this, I'm sure you have. And they buy tickets and then they. They resell them, and then they buy some more tickets and they resell them, but their Ticketmaster account doesn't get closed. Why aren't you able to spot the folks doing this and close those accounts? We spot a lot of them.

[Brian Green]

That's bullshit.

[Deborah Duddles]

And. And honestly, we don't spot them all. But you feel like you're doing an okay job of this. This isn't going to be abated until we get to the root cause of this, which is the extraordinary profitability of the resale market. Market, the biggest resale platform.

[Brian Green]

Well, you get to the root of that by not making the tickets so expensive in the first place and making them more accessible. Feel me out on this one. If I don't have to pay $180 face value for every ticket that I go see, I will go see more concerts. Making more tickets available because more musicians will be able to make a living on the road making more tickets generally out there in the open. The cheaper that it is, the more people that get in on it, the more people that get in on it, the more people can make a living doing it. The more people that make a living doing on it, the more these events take place all around the world. We also on the same. At the same time that we're hearing about tour cancellations and all this stuff, we're also hearing about festival closures all over the place. Festivals that can't do this anymore because they're getting charged an arm and a leg all along the way. They can't find profitability. Be profitability and people can't buy the tickets, so they can't sustain the model.

[Deborah Duddles]

Period form is StubHub, which sold 40 million tickets last year. Forty, like five years ago, what would that have been? Millions. And now we're in the tens of millions. We spoke to Chris Miller before he stepped down as StubHub's chief business officer. When you look at what before this came out, yeah, the secondary market has done, it's sort of democratizing access. Brokers aren't villains, he says, but part of a free market that sites like StubHub have made more efficient, giving everyone an equal chance to buy or sell at transparent prices. When demand is low, fans can get great deals. All right, this is StubHub. But yes, StubHub builds that market by partnering with brokers like Elite. StubHub charges brokers lower fees to sell on the site than ordinary fans pay when they sell. And what happens to a ticket when a broker scoops it up? Well, remember Melissa Santos at All Things Go when she was shut out of face value tickets? She went to StubHub just a couple hours later.

[Brian Green]

It was 1083 for two tickets and.

[Deborah Duddles]

Paid more than $540 each.

[Brian Green]

A thousand dollars to see Hoser, I think. Come on, that's crazy.

[Deborah Duddles]

I met a woman sitting on the lawn at all things go, paid $540 on stuff.

[Chris Joy Odley]

But the fact is she paid it.

[Brian Green]

She did.

[Chris Joy Odley]

That is the thing.

[Brian Green]

She did pay it. So she likes that music. That's all I gotta say.

[Chris Joy Odley]

As long as people are willing to pay it, this is gonna be.

[Brian Green]

This is gonna be a problem.

[Deborah Duddles]

So once all the fees and expenses and costs of the show come out of the wash, the artists made about $100, the promoter in the venue made about 70, the broker made 110 and StubHub made 180. Why does StubHub deserve the biggest share of that woman's purchase? Well, I would first start with saying that All Things Go should be working directly with StubHub to participate in the market dynamics. There's a way to collaborate here that everyone can participate in.

[Brian Green]

So yeah, that's what he's suggesting is that they give a portion of the tickets to StubHub so that they can allow their free market willy nilly. However much you want to pay, you get to pay. You know, essentially supply and demand way of looking at the marketplace dynamics that.

[Deborah Duddles]

The promoters get more of. The promoter can take a.

[Brian Green]

That's what everyone has been up in arms about with Ticketmaster this last year and a half, two years. Is this surge pricing, demand pricing? Just like airline tickets. The more the, the less that are available, the more that you will pay. I don't disagree with Supply and demand. But I'm not sure this is the right way to look at it.

[Deborah Duddles]

The artist can take a participation. We do this in sports all the time. What?

[Brian Green]

Miller suggesting a participation. That's a. Yeah, that's a nice way of saying a huge fee is nothing.

[Deborah Duddles]

Less than the fork in the road ticketing now stands at. StubHub is offering to share their profits from resold tickets with musicians like Andrew McMahon. And if StubHub is also allowed to handle the original on sale, the part Ticketmaster now does exclusively. If artists accept scalping, they can get in on the action.

[Brian Green]

I don't want anything to do with it. I would turn down every check that got sent to me by a StubHub.

[Deborah Duddles]

Or Vivid Seats or any of these guys because I think what they're doing is.

[Brian Green]

I mean, I think it's disgusting.

[Deborah Duddles]

McMahon wants to take the other side.

[Chris Joy Odley]

I want to go see this band now.

[Brian Green]

Yeah. Something corporate is not so corporate.

[Deborah Duddles]

Fork in the road and end scalping, which might finally be possible. Since tickets are digital. McMahon now only allows resale on Ticketmaster's Face Value Exchange. Billie Eilish, Foo Fighters and Pearl Jam do that too.

[Brian Green]

We want to make it easy. If you decide you need to get.

[Deborah Duddles]

Rid of your ticket to get rid of it, but you're going to sell it back for the same price you bought it for, I think it's misguided. Miller.

[Chris Joy Odley]

I'm so shocked.

[Brian Green]

He said, I don't think I'm making so much money. I really want to get at those Pearl Jam tickets. I think it's misguided. I think you're misguided.

[Deborah Duddles]

Was Face Value Exchange a power grab that can trap fans with high priced tickets they aren't allowed to sell for less? We don't believe that artists can control the pricing on the in the aftermarket. No, it's their show. It's not the scalper show. To get master. Even though they have their own resale site told us they support laws to cap resale prices. There's nothing socially beneficial about scalping. It's just a ripoff and it's taking that money from the fans.

[Brian Green]

Yeah, okay, I understand what this guy, what he's saying, but that's not how Ticketmaster acts because they are in fact surge pricing now themselves and adding exorbitant fees onto what is a pretty simple piece of the puzzle. Find the right ticket, make sure that seat is available, and hand that to the customer willing to pay it. I think that should be a cap at like a 5% fee of the ticket value or something along those lines. And that starts the conversation about the band or the musician or the agent or whoever's putting the deal memo together to look at the actual costs. Give the band a fair cut of the ticket. Ticket. And then price it out based on how close or how. How far you are from seeing the actual musician, and then also how much you're willing to pay the. The fair market value for that particular musical act. StubHub shouldn't. No one should get in bed with StubHubHub. That's a ridiculous idea. And if we could, we shouldn't get in bed with Ticketmaster or Live Nation either. Although I think that door has already been closed. But there is a better way to look at this. Somehow, some way, some shape, some form. And I'm telling you, if the ticket prices were lower, more people, more musicians would be on the road, more people would go see more shows, solving some of this problem. And there will always be the Taylor Swifts of the world. There'll always be this cultural zeitgeist where everybody has to go and they're willing to look at Cabbage Patch Kids. Those things were selling for $3,000 in 1984. Beanie Babies, $3,000 in 1984. And now they're back at $3,000, and I threw them away. Where's the Dick Tracy nostalgia when you need it?

[Chris Joy Odley]

The Dick Tracy market.

[Brian Green]

Yes. Where's the Dick Tracy market? I would have made a killing on that. All right, well, there you go. Very interesting look at the ticketing business in general and the reason why we're all paying so much money to go see these live shows, sporting events, comedy, and all things in between. You know, I don't have any of the great answers. I just have some ideas. But one of those ideas was to start the commercial break, so don't trust me on anything, okay? I'm not here for answers. I'm just here to ask more questions. I'm here to muddy the waters, not clear them up. What do you want from me? I'm just a guy. Just a guy doing a podcast. But I will tell you what.

[Chris Joy Odley]

Thanks for keeping us informed.

[Brian Green]

The guy who's funding the Georgia ticket brokers and making the MLM out of it, he's a pretty dumb human being. Yeah, yeah, he's pretty dumb. I hope I see him at the Kroger.

[Chris Joy Odley]

What was that name of that company?

[Brian Green]

Elite. Elite. Elite. So original Elite. Elite. Okay, don't use Elite. Okay, But. But they're probably wrapped into StubHub anyway. You wouldn't even know it. Yeah. Okay. May 31, the 12 hours of TCB. Speaking of lowering ticket prices. Yeah, speaking. Speaking of doing more shows, 12 hours of TCB May 31, all to raise awareness about mental health. Awareness and your mental health. And my mental health. And so we're all going to be out of mental health by the end of the day and celebrating five years of the commercial break in coordinations with our partners at Odyssey, CTB New York, Covert Creative. And we plash we're super excited. It's gonna be a great time, I think. Are we super excited? I don't know. Talk to me on the morning of the 31st.

[Chris Joy Odley]

It's gonna be exciting. It's gonna be fun.

[Brian Green]

It'll be fun.

[Chris Joy Odley]

We're doing it.

[Brian Green]

We'll be recording earlier than we ever had have. And be happy about it. Yeah, just be happy about it. Okay. Stop texting me. Yes, we're doing it. It's going to happen. Will we make it through all 12? I don't know. That's another question.

[Chris Joy Odley]

That's the experiment.

[Brian Green]

Yeah, that's the experiment. That's right. TCBpodcast.com your free swag audio and video at the commercial break on Instagram 212-4333, tcb and YouTube.com the commercial break for all the episodes same day to air here on the audio. Okay, Chrissy, that's all I can do for today.

[Chris Joy Odley]

I think.

[Brian Green]

So I'll tell you that I love you. Best to you and best you out there in the podcast universe. Until next time, Chrissy and I will say we do say and we must say goodbye. If you're a parent or share a fridge with someone. Instacart is about to make grocery shopping so much easier because with family carts, you can share a cart with your partner and each add the items you want. Since between the two of you, odds are you'll both remember everything you need. And this way, you'll never have to eat milkless cereal again. So minimize the stress of the weekly shop with family carts. Download the Instacart app and get delivery in as fast as 30 minutes. Plus enjoy. $0 delivery fees on your first three orders. Service fees apply for three orders in 14 days. Excludes restaurants.

[Chris Joy Odley]

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[Deborah Duddles]

App.

[Chris Joy Odley]

Nourish accepts hundreds of insurance plans 94% of patients pay $0 out of pocket. Find your personal [e-mail] that's usenourish.com As.

[Brian Green]

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