Groupon Can't Stop Ticketmaster Fee Gouging: Today's Outrage

NEW YORK (TheStreet) -- Live Nation(LYV) and Groupon announced a splashy joint venture on Monday about the online deal maker's first foray into concert tickets sales.

Rejoice Groupon members! It's one more way that the hip deal site is saving you money! We think. Well, maybe we better think twice before we group on to this one with the glee that we've gotten half-off yoga classes, hidden gems of Mediterranean restaurants and wine crates.

In fact, the wine crates might be a good place to make an analogy about the Live Nation Deal. Some $25 for $75 worth of wine (Groupon proclaims), before the shipping and handling charges on that deal make the $25 a little less than the unbelievable deal it seemed to be. I did the math on that one and the six free bottles of wine I thought I was getting turned out to be two free bottles in the end. OK, not a bad deal, but one where the devil was in the details ... and I'm still waiting 6 to 8 weeks for delivery.

Likewise, when it comes to the online deal maker's concert service, don't expect Groupon to save you much when it comes to the high service fees that Live Nation's primary concert ticket site, Ticketmaster, charges for online purchases. In the least, don't expect Groupon to tell you if you are saving on Ticketmaster service fees that can average as much as 15% of a single ticket price. They wouldn't tell us.

"Consumers will enjoy the Groupon experience they've come to know; whatever the price advertised is what you'll be charged. So, $40 tickets would be $40," said Groupon spokeswoman Julie Mossler in an email to TheStreet.

When asked to elaborate on how the typical Ticketmaster service fee of as much as 15% would be factored into the Groupon ticket deals, Mossler added, "If you click Buy, nothing else is added to the advertised purchase price. So, on GrouponLive, you'd click Buy on a $40 ticket and no other fees would be added."

Great! No other fees added -- though the response from Groupon doesn't exactly explain the ways in which the typical Ticketmaster service fee, or at least a portion of it, could be hidden within the "click to buy" Groupon price.

Live Nation media relations did not respond to a request for comment on how its service fees would be reflected in the Groupon ticket offers.

In search of clarity, we next reached out to Wall Street for some explanation for how the Groupon pricing model might work. The group of Wall Street analysts to whom we spoke gave us little reason to get excited about the Groupon concert ticket sales effort.