While I may not be able to tell you where most fees tacked on to tickets sold by Live Nation (or Ticketmaster, for that matter) end up, I can tell you exactly where the “charity fee” added to tickets at some of the company’s venues in Northern California goes.
First a little background though: A couple of weeks ago, in a story about “parking fees” being charged by Live Nation at the PNC Bank Arts Center in Holmdel, N.J., New York Daily News writer Jim Farber offhandedly raised the issue of a $.25 “charity fee” that was also being charged.
Since the story was about charging everyone the $6 parking fee whether they drove to the show or not, the “charity fee” barely registered on my radar. Then a reader named Wildthing alerted me to the fact Live Nation was adding a similar “charity fee” to tickets in California.
Wildthing wrote:
I contacted Live Nation about this added fee, [and] they stated it was the artist who chose to make the contribution. They stated some artists will list who the charity [is] they are contributing to and sometimes they do not.
When Wildthing asked about declining to pay the charity fee, the company said it wasn’t an option.
It turned out the shows that Wildthing was buying tickets for were Coldplay shows at Shoreline Amphitheatre near San Francisco and Sleep Train Amphitheatre near Sacramento. A look at the Live Nation web site revealed that there was indeed a $.50 “charity fee” listed as part of the price of the ticket.
I decided to do a little bit of research and see if the fee was being added to tickets for other artists. A search for tickets for The Fray uncovered a $1 fee being tacked onto the band’s show at Sleep Train Amphitheatre with no explanation.
It was time for a few emails and phone calls.
My first stop was The Fray’s manager Jason Rio, who told me the band was adding $.50 to the cost of its tickets and that the money was going to Reverb, an organization that helps artists green their tours and works for environmental causes. Okay, that’s great, but what about the other $.50? Rio said he had no idea what that was about and directed me to the band’s agent, Jonathan Adelman.
Adelman confirmed what Rio told me and directed me to Rick Mueller, president of Live Nation's California division, to find out about the other $.50. Rick, as it turned out, was on vacation at the time, so I decided to turn to the Coldplay team for some answers until he could get back to me.
A call to the band’s manager, Dave Holmes, resulted in not only a voicemail message from him, but an email from Marty Diamond, the band’s agent.
Both Holmes and Diamond explained that while Coldplay doesn’t add a “charity fee” to its tickets, the band does “donate 10 percent on earnings on ticket sales, records and publishing to a variety of charities.”
Really? That’s pretty cool and it makes me respect Chris Martin and company a little bit more. But there was still the question of the $.50 cents being added to the band’s tickets as a “charity fee.”
Finally, after a week or so of waiting, I was able to get in touch with Rick Mueller, who, like everyone else I contacted about this by the way, couldn’t have been nicer or more straight forward. And here, without further ado, is Rick’s answer:
For some time now, Live Nation San Francisco has added a charity fee of $.50 to every ticket sold to an event at a Live Nation venue in Northern California. $.25 goes to the Bill Graham Foundation, which was established at the time of Bill’s death to support a variety of music charities. The other $.25 goes to our continuing efforts to reduce the environmental impact of concerts held at our six owned and operated Bay Area venues.
Generally speaking, the $.50 cent charity fee is built into the price of the ticket, but there are times, as in the case with Coldplay at the Shoreline Amphitheatre, where we break it out.
So there you have it. The money is really going to charitable causes. I haven’t made much headway with regard to the fee being charged at the PNC Center, but I imagine it’s a similar deal.
A couple of things still puzzle me about all of this though. First, we all know Live Nation could certainly use a boost in its public image, so why not let fans know about what they’re doing? It would be as simple as adding a line to the checkout page on their web site explaining the “charity fee.”
Second, part of me has a problem with people being forced to donate to a charity. Granted, it happens all the time, especially with festivals. But usually the artist or company is up front about a portion of ticket sales going to one charity or another.
In the end, this is yet another P.R. goof on Live Nation’s part. When are companies going to learn that the public will tolerate a lot more from them if they’re honest and straightforward in the first place?