WTF - tickets for sale on coast2coast.com

Trent blogged about ticket brokers on 3/15/09. I truly hope that this is not the case with PJ and EV. It would break my heart.
Blog from 3/15/09 NIN.com

"As we approach on-sale dates for the upcoming tour, I've noticed lots of you are curious / concerned / outraged at the plethora of tickets that somehow appear on all these reseller sites at inflated prices - even before the pre-sale dates. I'll do my best to explain the situation as I see it, as well as clarify my organization's stance in the matter.

NIN decides to tour this summer. We arrive at the conclusion outdoor amphitheaters are the right venue for this outing, for a variety of reasons we've throughly considered*. In the past, NIN would sell the shows in each market to local promoters, who then "buy" the show from us to sell to you. Live Nation happens to own all the amphitheaters and bought most of the local promoters - so if you want to play those venues, you're being promoted by Live Nation. Live Nation has had an exclusive deal with TicketMaster that has just expired, so Live Nation launched their own ticketing service. Most of the dates on this tour are through Live Nation, some are through TicketMaster - this is determined by the promoter (Live Nation), not us.
Now we get into the issue of secondary markets for tickets, which is the hot issue here. The ticketing marketplace for rock concerts shows a real lack of sophistication, meaning this: the true market value of some tickets for some concerts is much higher than what the act wants to be perceived as charging. For example, there are some people who would be willing to pay $1,000 and up to be in the best seats for various shows, but MOST acts in the rock / pop world don't want to come off as greedy pricks asking that much, even though the market says its value is that high. The acts know this, the venue knows this, the promoters know this, the ticketing company knows this and the scalpers really know this. So...

The venue, the promoter, the ticketing agency and often the artist camp (artist, management and agent) take tickets from the pool of available seats and feed them directly to the re-seller (which from this point on will be referred to by their true name: SCALPER). I am not saying every one of the above entities all do this, nor am I saying they do it for all shows but this is a very common practice that happens more often than not. There is money to be made and they feel they should participate in it. There are a number of scams they employ to pull this off which is beyond the scope of this note.

StubHub.com is an example of a re-seller / scalper. So is TicketsNow.com.

Here's the rub: TicketMaster has essentially been a monopoly for many years - certainly up until Live Nation's exclusive deal ran out. They could have (and can right now) stop the secondary market dead in its tracks by doing the following: limit the amount of sales per customer, print names on the tickets and require ID / ticket matches at the venue. We know this works because we do it for our pre-sales. Why don't THEY do it? It's obvious - they make a lot of money fueling the secondary market. TicketMaster even bought a re-seller site and often bounces you over to that site to buy tickets (TicketsNow.com)!

NIN gets 10% of the available seats for our own pre-sale. We won a tough (and I mean TOUGH) battle to get the best seats. We require you to sign up at our site (for free) to get tickets. We limit the amount you can buy, we print your name on the tickets and we have our own person let you in a separate entrance where we check your ID to match the ticket. We charge you a surcharge that has been less than TicketMaster's or Live Nation's in all cases so far to pay for the costs of doing this - it's not a profit center for us. We have essentially stopped scalping by doing these things - because we want true fans to be able to get great seats and not get ripped off by these parasites.

I assure you nobody in the NIN camp supplies or supports the practice of supplying tickets to these re-sellers because it's not something we morally feel is the right thing to do. We are leaving money on the table here but it's not always about money.
Being completely honest, it IS something I've had to consider. If people are willing to pay a lot of money to sit up front AND ARE GOING TO ANYWAY thanks to the rigged system, why let that money go into the hands of the scalpers? I'm the one busting my ass up there every night. The conclusion really came down to it not feeling like the right thing to do - simple as that.

My guess as to what will eventually happen if / when Live Nation and TicketMaster merges is that they'll move to an auction or market-based pricing scheme - which will simply mean it will cost a lot more to get a good seat for a hot show. They will simply BECOME the scalper, eliminating them from the mix.

Nothing's going to change until the ticketing entity gets serious about stopping the problem - which of course they don't see as a problem. The ultimate way to hurt scalpers is to not support them. Leave them holding the merchandise. If this subject interests you, check out the following links. Don't buy from scalpers, and be suspect of artists singing the praises of the Live Nation / TicketMaster merger. What's in it for them?

* I fully realize by playing those venues we are getting into bed with all these guys. I've learned to choose my fights and at this point in time it would be logistically too difficult to attempt to circumvent the venues / promoter / ticketing infrastructure already in place for this type of tour. For those of you about to snipe "it's your fault for playing there, etc... " - I know it is."

Well that may explain how they get away with it in cities that prohibit reselling tickets for higher prices.

Rourke24 wrote:

http://www.coasttocoasttickets.com/concerts/eddie-vedder_tickets.shtml

Is this for real? they even list block & row number! and alot more then than $160 for 2 tix! Anyone complaining at the 10c price, feel lucky. Sadly this maybe my option.. along with ticketmaster.

Anyone used this site before?

if you are coming yourself - i would suggest just showing up and find yourself a room with internet ... last year - on the day of or close to it ... a lot of people were selling their second ticket because of various reasons and for the most part - real fans were all selling at face ...

i know it's risky but i think your odds are good if you can stay on the board leading up to a show ... pick a place with multiple shows ... worst case - you get scalper tix which i don't think will hit $500 ...

my 2 cents

ill repost from people complaining about $162.00 thread


"i wasnt in 10c last year..
had to buy tickets from ticketsnow or something cause it was impossible on ticketmaster
i wont even say how much i spent for nyc1 last summer
enjoy this price
i know i am"

i feel your pain sir

These are probably the tickets that are "going on sale" through Ticketmaster.

Get_Right wrote:

blackredyellow wrote:

People betting on the fact that they can get tickets... I hate brokers...

I agree, but there are probably some that have a standard agreement with the local promoters and venues and have a good idea what they will get for each show

did you read trents article?
"the venue, the promoter, the ticketing agency and often the artist camp (artist, management and agent) take tickets from the pool of available seats and feed them directly to the re-seller"

The public never sees these tickets unless they buy from the scalpers

I trust Trent knows what the heck he is talking about.
Nothing's going to change until the ticketing entity gets serious about stopping the problem - which of course they don't see as a problem.

TM/LN are the the heart of the problem I tell ya! The proliferation of auction sites has only made it easier for resales-everyones a scalper now-thats why it just gets harder and harder to get tix!

you are dead on, this will only get worse see you in AUSTIN ..

In addition to 'season tickets' there are also house tickets. If you work for a venue, depending on your job, you likely have one or a pair of seats. Sometimes there's a pool of them for all workers but there is a group of seats that venue staff has access to that are always precluded from public sale. These are also used for guest list screw-ups and by venue management for box office blunders.

So, say you're the food and beverage manager at a venue. You likely have a pair of house seats and if you're not a fan of EV, you can go out and sell them because you won't use them yourself. Deoending on the market value of the act, you could make a bit of money in the process.

Trent's blog was a great read, thanks for posting that LadyM. The root cause of all the resale sites, honestly, was the massive repeal of ticket scalping laws across the country. If the laws had not been repealed these sites would not be legal and someone (the artist, fans, state consumer affairs agencies) could DO something about it. Anyone else remember back to when eBay would max out an auction based on the venue state's scalping laws? First bidder to the scalping law max (usually 10-15% of the face value) was the winner, no matter how long the auction was set for.