Ticketmaster introduces new system
Ticketmaster introduces system to
trade its `paperless' tickets, cutting
out scalpers
By RYAN NAKASHIMA , Associated Press
Last update: September 17, 2009 - 2:53 PM
LOS ANGELES - Ticketmaster Entertainment
Inc. has developed a new way to resell
tickets that shuts out the brokers and
scalpers it has long scorned, and instead
keeps the profits for itself, musicians and
venue owners.
The system relies on Ticketmaster's
"paperless" ticketing platform, which makes
customers prove their purchase by showing
a credit card and ID when they arrive at an
event. Without paper tickets, there's nothing
for scalpers to resell.
Now with its new exchange system,
Ticketmaster has come up with a way to let
buyers resell a paperless ticket, while still
cutting out ticket-resale leader StubHub and
other brokers. That gives Ticketmaster a
chance to capture more of the so-called
secondary market, which generates greater
fees and profits per ticket, although fans
sometimes feel ripped off.
Paperless tickets still account for fewer than
1 percent of all ticket sales, said analyst
Brett Harriss of Gabelli & Co.
But that could be changing. Prominent
musicians, such as Miley Cyrus and even
former Ticketmaster critics Bruce
Springsteen and Nine Inch Nails' Trent
Reznor, have taken up Ticketmaster's
paperless tickets. Nine Inch Nails' Web site
called the move "an effort to keep tickets in
the hands of the fans and out of the hands
of brokers/scalpers."
The resale system debuted this month at
Penn State's college football season opener
and is likely headed for other collegiate
stadiums.
The university's trial of the system cut
reselling dramatically, partly because a cap
was put on the price for which tickets could
be resold.
The system involved 21,000 season tickets
for the Nittany Lions' eight home games,
which for years have been reserved for full-
time Penn State students. The tickets are
highly prized because they come at a big
discount and Beaver Stadium is usually
packed to its capacity of 108,000.
Students can buy season tickets for about
$240, or $30 per game (counting
Ticketmaster fees), and up until a couple
weeks ago, there had been a profitable
market for reselling that package to other
students for as much as $1,400.
Penn State capped the number of games
students could resell at six. It also limited
the resale price per game to $60, or about
twice the face value and fees on the original
tickets. That capped a reseller's potential
profit at $120, counting fees paid to
Ticketmaster, as opposed to nearly $1,200 in
the past.
Just 965 students chose to resell their tickets
for the season opener against Akron on Sept.
5, and the average resale price was just
$39.61, said associate athletic director Greg
Myford.
"The students seem to be grateful for that,"
Myford said. "They can get a ticket and they
don't have to worry about really being
gouged. We've largely eliminated those only
interested in scalping from the process."
The new limits helped Mike Elia, a Penn
State senior who was tossing around a
football in the student tent city of
"Paternoville," which honors coach Joe
Paterno, on the Friday before the game.
"I like it. I think it's a step in the right
direction," he said. "My sophomore year, I
didn't get student tickets, so I think this
system will better ensure that students will
be able to get tickets."
The online exchange also proved that it can
bring Ticketmaster higher fees per ticket
than the original sale.
For the initial sales run, fees amounted to a
little more than $4 per ticket, but on resales
the buyer was required to pay $1.95 and a
15 percent transaction fee — up to $10.95 a
pop. In the home opener, the total resale fee
averaged $7.89 and was shared between
Ticketmaster and the university.
The system required both the buyer and
seller to use their student IDs, so resellers
had to use Ticketmaster's online trading
system to transfer or trade. The buyer
couldn't then resell the paperless ticket.
Artists or venue owners will determine
whether an event with paperless ticketing
makes use of the new exchange system, said
Dave Scarborough, Ticketmaster's executive
vice president of technology. He said the
fees Ticketmaster will collect on the resales
are needed to "recoup our investment in the
technology."
StubHub, a subsidiary of eBay Inc., said the
setup limited options for fans.
"We don't think fans are excited about the
lack of choice and the lack of options
outside of the Ticketmaster wall," said
StubHub spokesman Andy Pray. "It limits
the choices for fans if they want to resell or
pass them along the chain."
It's also a shift in opinion for Ticketmaster.
Its CEO, Irving Azoff, told a Senate hearing
in February that "I don't believe there should
be a secondary market at all."
The executive was addressing antitrust
concerns about Ticketmaster's pending
merger with concert promoter Live Nation
Inc.
He said he never would have bought resale
site TicketsNow, the No. 2 online broker for
paper tickets, if he had been in charge when
Ticketmaster's $279 million deal for
TicketsNow closed in February 2008.
In that Senate hearing, Azoff was also
dealing with the fallout from an online
"glitch" in which Ticketmaster routed
Springsteen fans to higher-priced concert
seats from TicketsNow even as face-value
tickets were still available.
Even last week, Azoff called Ticketmaster's
ownership of TicketsNow "an oxymoron,"
but said he couldn't manage to sell it off.
"It's hard to get rid of it," he told an investor
conference. Azoff was not available to be
interviewed for this story.
___
Associated Press contributor Jocelyn Syrstad
in State College, Pa., provided material for
this report.
:shock: :shock: :shock: :shock: :shock:
trade its `paperless' tickets, cutting
out scalpers
By RYAN NAKASHIMA , Associated Press
Last update: September 17, 2009 - 2:53 PM
LOS ANGELES - Ticketmaster Entertainment
Inc. has developed a new way to resell
tickets that shuts out the brokers and
scalpers it has long scorned, and instead
keeps the profits for itself, musicians and
venue owners.
The system relies on Ticketmaster's
"paperless" ticketing platform, which makes
customers prove their purchase by showing
a credit card and ID when they arrive at an
event. Without paper tickets, there's nothing
for scalpers to resell.
Now with its new exchange system,
Ticketmaster has come up with a way to let
buyers resell a paperless ticket, while still
cutting out ticket-resale leader StubHub and
other brokers. That gives Ticketmaster a
chance to capture more of the so-called
secondary market, which generates greater
fees and profits per ticket, although fans
sometimes feel ripped off.
Paperless tickets still account for fewer than
1 percent of all ticket sales, said analyst
Brett Harriss of Gabelli & Co.
But that could be changing. Prominent
musicians, such as Miley Cyrus and even
former Ticketmaster critics Bruce
Springsteen and Nine Inch Nails' Trent
Reznor, have taken up Ticketmaster's
paperless tickets. Nine Inch Nails' Web site
called the move "an effort to keep tickets in
the hands of the fans and out of the hands
of brokers/scalpers."
The resale system debuted this month at
Penn State's college football season opener
and is likely headed for other collegiate
stadiums.
The university's trial of the system cut
reselling dramatically, partly because a cap
was put on the price for which tickets could
be resold.
The system involved 21,000 season tickets
for the Nittany Lions' eight home games,
which for years have been reserved for full-
time Penn State students. The tickets are
highly prized because they come at a big
discount and Beaver Stadium is usually
packed to its capacity of 108,000.
Students can buy season tickets for about
$240, or $30 per game (counting
Ticketmaster fees), and up until a couple
weeks ago, there had been a profitable
market for reselling that package to other
students for as much as $1,400.
Penn State capped the number of games
students could resell at six. It also limited
the resale price per game to $60, or about
twice the face value and fees on the original
tickets. That capped a reseller's potential
profit at $120, counting fees paid to
Ticketmaster, as opposed to nearly $1,200 in
the past.
Just 965 students chose to resell their tickets
for the season opener against Akron on Sept.
5, and the average resale price was just
$39.61, said associate athletic director Greg
Myford.
"The students seem to be grateful for that,"
Myford said. "They can get a ticket and they
don't have to worry about really being
gouged. We've largely eliminated those only
interested in scalping from the process."
The new limits helped Mike Elia, a Penn
State senior who was tossing around a
football in the student tent city of
"Paternoville," which honors coach Joe
Paterno, on the Friday before the game.
"I like it. I think it's a step in the right
direction," he said. "My sophomore year, I
didn't get student tickets, so I think this
system will better ensure that students will
be able to get tickets."
The online exchange also proved that it can
bring Ticketmaster higher fees per ticket
than the original sale.
For the initial sales run, fees amounted to a
little more than $4 per ticket, but on resales
the buyer was required to pay $1.95 and a
15 percent transaction fee — up to $10.95 a
pop. In the home opener, the total resale fee
averaged $7.89 and was shared between
Ticketmaster and the university.
The system required both the buyer and
seller to use their student IDs, so resellers
had to use Ticketmaster's online trading
system to transfer or trade. The buyer
couldn't then resell the paperless ticket.
Artists or venue owners will determine
whether an event with paperless ticketing
makes use of the new exchange system, said
Dave Scarborough, Ticketmaster's executive
vice president of technology. He said the
fees Ticketmaster will collect on the resales
are needed to "recoup our investment in the
technology."
StubHub, a subsidiary of eBay Inc., said the
setup limited options for fans.
"We don't think fans are excited about the
lack of choice and the lack of options
outside of the Ticketmaster wall," said
StubHub spokesman Andy Pray. "It limits
the choices for fans if they want to resell or
pass them along the chain."
It's also a shift in opinion for Ticketmaster.
Its CEO, Irving Azoff, told a Senate hearing
in February that "I don't believe there should
be a secondary market at all."
The executive was addressing antitrust
concerns about Ticketmaster's pending
merger with concert promoter Live Nation
Inc.
He said he never would have bought resale
site TicketsNow, the No. 2 online broker for
paper tickets, if he had been in charge when
Ticketmaster's $279 million deal for
TicketsNow closed in February 2008.
In that Senate hearing, Azoff was also
dealing with the fallout from an online
"glitch" in which Ticketmaster routed
Springsteen fans to higher-priced concert
seats from TicketsNow even as face-value
tickets were still available.
Even last week, Azoff called Ticketmaster's
ownership of TicketsNow "an oxymoron,"
but said he couldn't manage to sell it off.
"It's hard to get rid of it," he told an investor
conference. Azoff was not available to be
interviewed for this story.
___
Associated Press contributor Jocelyn Syrstad
in State College, Pa., provided material for
this report.
:shock: :shock: :shock: :shock: :shock: Post edited by Unknown User on
0
Comments
But, there has to be a catch, right? Another "convenience fee" to handle the credit card swipe system? Wouldn't be surprised.
Putting caps on the ticket prices in a resale market helps out a little, definitely. Hell, if they just prevented people from buying and reselling within a week from the ticket sales date, maybe it would prevent some people from trying to make an easy flip.
*although I would've liked to add another ticket stub to my collection
What You Giving
I suggest you step out on your Porch.
Run away my son. See it all. Oh, See the World!
Missoula 6/20/98
Alpine Valley 6/26/98 & 6/27/98
Alpine Valley 10/8/00
Champaign 4/23/03
Alpine Valley 6/21/03
Missoula 8/29/05
Chicago 5/16 & 17/06
Grand Rapids 5/19/06
Summerfest 6/29/06 & 6/30/06
Tampa 6/12/08
Chicago 8/23/09
Indy 5/7/10
Alpine Valley x2 2011
Wrigley 2013
Milwaukee 14
Telluride 16
...I swear I never took it for granted. Just thought of it now.
Plus then how do you prove what seat is yours once inside the venue. Would seem to only work for GA.
We are......
Well it would *seem* to me that, for this very reason, this system would have to involve both hard tickets AND credit card/ID verification. That is, you arrive at the gate, but in order to get in with the hard ticket in hand (after it is scanned as normal), you must prove that you were the one who purchased it, and in order to do so, you swipe your credit card/ID. Once everything matches up, you are allowed entry. THEN, you'll be able to have the hard ticket in hand to prove your seating location. So the point remains, that you can't just sell/purchase the hard tickets by themselves (as in scalping) since you can't verify you were the original purchaser when you arrive at the gate. This is just my guess, as I agree I can't see it working any other way.
People....all opinions of course are welcome, BUT......
I love the stub's from show's I've attended as much as the next person. Actually I still have all of my stub's from Lalla back in the 96, Horde fest, etc. BUT, if the choice is between complete paperless tickets plus no scalping, versus a stub, plus a 12000% mark up to be in the lower level at a given venue, I will gladly take the later.
Plus, I believe if there was enough interest, PJ and other artists would continue to print tickets at least for fan club seats.
I literally thought there would be hundreds of comments on this thread to the effect of "the wiked witch is dead...."
I know this is only a small step, but to me, it makes having access to a lot of different venues/artists/events much better!!!!