It is arguably also the case that, in trying to “fight” ticket brokers (called “scalpers” by many), Ticketmaster has done something that is very lucrative for itself and for artists, but also worse for the average fan: It has simply jacked up ticket prices for certain high-profile events to a level where all tickets are more-or-less priced at the maximum level that the secondary market would normally bear.Fans were confused, thinking they were still buying “face value” tickets from Ticketmaster, only now the prices for the best tickets—with a face value that maxed out at $98 in New Jersey, for example—were selling for hundreds of dollars.Now, with Springsteen’s cooperation, Ticketmaster has to a large extent cut out ticket resellers by simply using a “dynamic pricing” algorithm to increase prices—for everyone—to such astronomical levels that ticket reselling is largely not worth the risk and the price of going to a popular show is so high that many people are simply priced out.This is similar to how airline tickets and hotel rooms are sold and is commonly referred to as ‘Dynamic Pricing.’” Ticketmaster has not explained in detail how it determines the “market price” of any given show, but for many events, the Live Nation/Ticketmaster conglomerate controls the ticketing process, owns or operates the venues, and represents the artists (which often means that it is advising them on ticket prices and venue choice; Live Nation artists, for example, rarely play non-Live Nation venues).We can safely infer that ticket prices are calculated via some proprietary mix of: a band’s historical ticket sale performance in a specific venue (and nationwide), historical secondary market performance, ticket sales performance of similar artists, number of shows in a given market, performance during presales, etc., and can then be adjusted on the fly during an onsale based on the velocity of ticket searches and sell-through rates."