It seems like the perfect concept: Dimension 20’s Unsleeping City, an actual play Dungeons & Dragons campaign about the secret magical underbelly of New York City, played live in front of a paying audience at the Big Apple’s hall of halls, Madison Square Garden, for one epic night of adventure — an event dubbed “Gauntlet at the Garden.”
But maybe it’s just too perfect to exist in a world with Ticketmaster, as many prospective show-goers discovered this week when the conglomerate’s dynamic pricing kicked in, sending the cost of some single tickets skyrocketing past $2,000. The Dimension 20 crew and parent company Dropout issued a statement on Sunday, writing that they had requested that Ticketmaster cease dynamic pricing for Gauntlet tickets, and outlining measures to address fan frustration.
Here is confirmation of exactly what I was afraid of.
I entered yesterday 21 in the cue, in the first batch. Every ticket was available to me. Front row on the floor VIP was ~$250. They all disappeared immediately.
Those same seats back today at a staggering $2361.20 pic.twitter.com/chykGJZK9m
— Liz Duff @producerliz (@producerlizz) April 11, 2024
Ticketmaster, a company whose Wikipedia page has a “Criticism and controversies” section with no fewer than 13 sub-sections at the time of this writing and a “See also” section that includes the concept of monopoly itself, merged with events promoter Live Nation in 2010. Its dynamic pricing system employs an algorithm to raise prices on tickets for “Official Platinum Seats” in real time as demand for them rises (and lowers them when demand decreases) without a clear ceiling, resulting in ticket prices multiple times greater than prices set by the artist or performer.
In a statement shared on the Dimension 20 X and Instagram accounts, the Dimension 20 cast explained that dynamic pricing and platinum tickets “had not been something explained to us, nor something presented as something we had the ability to opt out of – once we had a better understanding of the situation as a group, we communicated to Live Nation that it was our desire to opt out of all dynamic pricing tickets for this event & for all events going forward.”
Overall, Dimension 20’s statement noted, of the more than 15 thousand “Gauntlet in the Garden” tickets sold so far, the average cost per ticket was $119. “Gauntlet” will also be filmed and made available to stream on Dropout.tv at a later date. You can read the full statement here.
Dynamic pricing has drawn the ire of Ticketmaster’s customers since its implementation in 2022, particularly around concert tours for the likes of Bink-182, Bruce Springsteen, Coldplay, Harry Styles, and Taylor Swift — and has even received pushback from performers themselves, like the Cure’s Robert Smith. Ticketmaster avers that dynamic pricing is a deterrence to the behavior of ticket scalpers: It’s difficult to buy tickets at base price and resell them at a markup if, when demand is hot, tickets already cost much more than base price. “Dynamic pricing is about capturing more value for the artist,” a spokesperson told the New Statesman in 2022.
But it’s no wonder that many ticket-buyers feel that these Platinum Seats are simply incorporating a mercenary practice into a mandatory system. This is compounded for customers and artists by how difficult it is to avoid working with Ticketmaster entirely. A 2023 study by the American Economic Liberties Project showed that Live Nation “uses its promoter and artist management business lines as bargaining chips to gain exclusive contracts with venues.” Its position in the marketplace is further enhanced by the fact that Ticketmaster/Live Nation handles ticket sales for “78% of the top grossing arenas” in the United States, including Madison Square Garden.
In addition to opting out of dynamic pricing going forward, Dimension 20’s statement outlined an upcoming lottery system for fans, dubbed “Dimensioneer Tickets,” “where selected individuals will have the opportunity to buy up to two tickets for $35/each (for seats placed all over the event space, including the best seats in the house),” saying more information on the lottery would be released “soon.”
Fans should watch Dimension 20 and Dropout socials for that info, and in the meantime we’ll be watching to see exactly what happens in the live D&D scene now that a D&D live-show sold more than 15 thousand tickets to one of the most storied US arena venues in less than a week.
