&gt; <i>fans ALLOW it by paying ridiculous fucking prices to attend events</i><p>No, fans have no choice. Entertainers allow it by using Ticketmaster.<p>&gt; <i>We&#x27;re long past the days of needing an entity like Ticketmaster to be in the middle of ticket transactions</i><p>The greatest fear an event planner has is that they&#x27;ll plan the event and no one will show up. Ticketmaster aggressively markets the events they&#x27;re selling tickets for, which is why event planners continue to use them.<p>Sure, you could use a homegrown solution or a smaller company, but Ticketmaster unethically adds all purchasers to a bunch of mailing lists and makes it really difficult to unsubscribe, and then they can claim &quot;X million mailing list subscribers&quot; to the event marketers.