Ticketmaster and scalpers

[honeyrose]

I really don't like having to deal with Ticketmaster but for big venues and tours have little choice. So I do have a Ticketmaster account and I have to put my hand up and say I logged on last week at 8:59 and got allocated 2 seats in 02 Block A1 Row 9. So it was possible to log on and get tickets in the best seats. Sadly I had forgotten my Visa card expired at the end of February and as you don't a reminder from TM, it was of course rejected for payment. I hastily input the new details but too late by then and all the best seats at o2 had gone. (I did manage to get 2 in the rear stalls at Manchester on Tuesday Praise the Lord.)

Then I went and looked at Ticket Exchange and saw that nearly all the seats in the block around where I had first been allocated in 02 were up for sale on there. This was less than 10 minutes after sales started.

And I must say I wondered if TM had come up with some new algorithm where if a shows starts selling out very fast, it moves blocks of seats to Ticket xchange automatically. Could TM be scalping its own seats? Makes sense from a business viewpoint I suppose. Then those who lose out are the fans and the artist - the fans from the high prices and the artist from not getting the true value of the tickets.

Well I did some research and the answer is not necessarily. TM can only use TE with the approval of the artists management and the promoters, etc Then hey share the extra profit out between them. So actually only the fans lose out, Betcha didn't know that.

Another option if there is very big demand is to hold an auction of all the seats and again TM will do this if agreed with promoter. This was used for example for Tim McGraw and Faith Hill. The one thing I don't understand is why music and rock concerts don't heavily discount the seats in the gods, like they do for opera. A seat miles away from the stage is not really justified to charge a high price.

Read the following article about TM practices which I find on a business website on Ebay, to find out more.

Honeyrose


"Ticketmaster also is pushing its own resale program. Launched in 2002, "TicketExchange" has proven most popular for sporting events, letting season-ticket holders unload seats they won't use. Ticketmaster allows reselling on TicketExchange only when its clients agree. (Don't see where reselling season ticket holders fits in 02?)

In 2005, Ticketmaster customers resold 329,000 tickets this way, up from 83,000 the year before. Ticketmaster and the promoter, venue or team share an undisclosed percentage of the sale price, while the seller keeps the rest.

Ticketmaster also now makes auctions available as an option to concert promoters, venues, performers and sports teams. For any given show, clients decide how many seats to put up for auction -- and set the opening bid prices. The bidding process is similar to that of Web auctioneer eBay. A fan enters the maximum he or she is willing to pay, along with a credit-card number, and can follow competing bids online.

In 2006 when country stars Tim McGraw and Faith Hill played a concert last month at Phoenix's U.S. Airways Center arena, ticket prices ranged from $49 to $125. Marcus Ridgway, a 36-year-old real-estate developer from Mesa, Ariz., paid $700 on a Ticketmaster auction for a pair of seats close enough to touch the country stars as they strutted on a catwalk.

Performers also argue that they -- not brokers -- should participate in any windfall from resold tickets. Mr. McGraw spent the summer on the road with his wife and fellow star, Ms. Hill. The duo largely financed the tour, which required a staff of 122 traveling with 22 trucks and 13 buses. After watching scalpers resell $125 seats online for $1,000 or more, manager Scott Siman declares: "We would like to tap into that profit instead of somebody else."

Ticketmaster's early efforts suggest even limited auctions can help offset scalping activity. Jim Guerinot, a manager, says his client Nine Inch Nails auctioned fewer than 10% of the tickets on a tour last summer but saw a significant decrease in online reselling. "We watched eBay and [scalping activity] was way down," he says."