Ticketmaster Now Charges You To Look at Tickets — ticketmaster…

In a move that industry analysts are calling "basically inevitable at this point," Ticketmaster announced Tuesday that it will begin charging customers a small "Browse Browsing Fee" simply for looking at available tickets on its website. The fee, a modest $4.99 per page view, will be applied before you even get the chance to be disappointed by the nosebleed seats you can't afford. "We realized people were getting a tremendous amount of joy just *imagining* going to concerts," said a Ticketmaster spokesperson, speaking from a gold-plated hovercraft. "Why should that joy be free? Our servers don't run on hopes and dreams. They run on money. Your money, specifically." The new fee structure, which the company insists is "for your convenience," breaks down as follows: $4.99 to view the seating chart, $7.99 to zoom in on the seating chart, $12.99 to realize the only seats left are behind a concrete pillar, and a special $19.99 "Emotional Damage Surcharge" if the artist is Taylor Swift. There is also a $2.50 fee for the fee, a $1.75 fee for the fee's administrative assistant, and a $0.99 "Convenience Fee Convenience Fee" that Ticketmaster's legal team describes as "a little treat for us." Fans were, predictably, thrilled. "I love paying forty bucks just to find out that the concert I wanted to see sold out in four seconds to bots with better Wi-Fi than me," said Marcus, a 34-year-old from Ohio who has not been to a live event since 2019. "It really makes me feel like I'm part of the experience, you know? Like I'm *almost* there. Except I'm on my couch, and I'm crying." The announcement comes on the heels of Ticketmaster's previous innovations, which include dynamic pricing that makes airline surge charges look like charity, "Verified Fan" programs that verify you are, in fact, a fan and not a robot, but also not a fan wealthy enough to actually get tickets, and a virtual queue system that operates on the same principles as a broken escalator. Legal experts note that Ticketmaster's parent company, Live Nation, currently controls a staggering portion of the live entertainment market, which means your options for seeing your favorite band are roughly: (A) pay Ticketmaster, (B) pay Ticketmaster, or (C) drive to a dive bar and watch a cover band named "The Lawsuits." When reached for comment, the Department of Justice, which has been investigating Live Nation for antitrust violations, said it was "looking into it" and then went back to playing solitaire on a government-issued computer from 2008. Ticketmaster, for its part, has preemptively announced that the Browse Browsing Fee will be followed by a "Thinking About It Fee" ($3.99), a "Closing the Tab Fee" ($5.99), and a "Fee for Reading This Article Fee" ($8.99, automatically deducted from your checking account). The company is also reportedly developing a feature where you can pay $50 to have a Ticketmaster employee personally tell you "no" over the phone. At press time, Ticketmaster had unveiled its most ambitious plan yet: a subscription service called Ticketmaster Platinum Elite, which for just $99.99 a month, grants you the privilege of paying all the same fees as everyone else, but with a slightly larger font on your receipt. **Closing Opinion:** Look, we all know the real villain here isn't Ticketmaster — it's us, the people who keep paying. But until someone invents a time machine, a functioning monopoly-busting government, or a concert venue that doesn't require a second mortgage, we're stuck. So go ahead, click "best available." You know you want to. That'll be $4.99.