RIDICULOUS!

[pinkpawprints]

This didn't just happen with precious Leonard Cohen tickets. Check out what happened with Bruce Springstein's tickets on TicketMaster...

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090204/ap_ ... t_glitch_5

I for one will be writing to U.S. Rep. Bill Pascrell who is asking the Federal Trade Commission and the Justice Department to investigate Ticketmaster, letting him know the same happened when Leonard Cohen tickets went on sale!

[MarieM]

PinkPaw, thank you for the suggestion.

This is from Pascrell's website:

For Immediate Release
February 3, 2009 For Information Contact
Caley Gray (973) 523-5152

PASCRELL SEEKS INVESTIGATION INTO TICKETMASTER BUSINESS PRACTICE


WASHINGTON— U.S. Rep. Bill Pascrell, Jr. (D-NJ-08) today requested that the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and the Department of Justice (DOJ) Antitrust Division investigate Ticketmaster’s relationship with its subsidiary company, TicketsNow, following the company’s handling of ticket sales for the Bruce Springsteen tour that became available on Monday February 2.



Dear Chairman Kovacic:

I am writing today to direct your attention to a potential conflict of interest regarding Ticketmaster and its affiliate company, TicketsNow. This issue has been brought to my attention through constituent complaints and press reports regarding the online sale of Bruce Springsteen concerts tickets at the IZOD Center in New Jersey and other locations all across the country.

As you know, Ticketmaster is a large ticket sales and distribution company that often serves as a venue’s sole ticketing agent. A large percentage of their sales are made online through Ticketmaster.com. In a recent effort expand its business Ticketmaster acquired TicketsNow, a website which specializes in the secondary, resale market for tickets.

When tickets for Bruce Springsteen’s new tour went on sale exclusively through Ticketmaster at 9:00 a.m. on Monday, February 2, 2009, scores of fans in New Jersey were met with technical difficulty on Ticketmaster.com that impaired them from making a purchase. Thousands of others who were fortunate enough to get beyond the technical problems were informed that the shows were sold out. Conspicuously placed on the same screen that informed fans of ticket unavailability was an alternative purchasing option from TicketsNow.com. It offered the same tickets at a value marked up hundreds of dollars beyond their original face value.

I am troubled by how quickly tickets priced exponentially higher became available on the secondary market to thousands of rejected fans, many who also endured unfortunate technical problems on Ticketmaster.com.

I am concerned that the business affiliation between Ticketmaster and TicketsNow may represent a conflict of interest that is detrimental to the average fan. There is a significant potential for abuse when one company is able to monopolize the primary market for a product and also directly manipulate, and profit from, the secondary market. Additionally, the speed with which tickets were made available on Ticketmaster’s official resale affiliate site raises questions about whether TicketsNow brokers were given preferential treatment instead of competing on a level playing field with average consumers to purchase the tickets.

With so many families struggling in this economy, I am outraged by how expensive tickets to ball games, concerts and other shows have become. I understand the economic principles that have driven up the cost of entertainment, but will not tolerate unjust business practices that put regular Americans at a disadvantage.

I respectfully request that your office investigate the relationship between Ticketmaster and TicketsNow to ensure that the procedure for purchasing tickets remains fair to the average consumer. If you require any additional information or have any questions, please contact Arthur Mandel on my staff at (202) 225-5751. I look forward to the favor of your reply.

Sincerely,

Bill Pascrell, Jr.
Member of Congress

And here is the page to write Rep. Pascrell to tell them your Ticketmaster/Cohen experience:

http://pascrell.house.gov/contact/index.shtml

[pinkpawprints]

Megan2c2b: Thank you for the info!

[hmur4356]

I am extremely pleased that Congressman Pascrell is looking into this matter and I will contact his office as well.

On a personal note, I attended Fordham University in NY with Pascrell's twin sons back in the '80s when their father was the mayor of Paterson. I have reconnected with the twins via Facebook and will also make them aware of the fact that I have contacted his father about this very serious conflict of interest. Pascrell has always been 'one of the good ones' and I'm proud to have have him representing NJ in the US Congress.

Harry

[pinkpawprints]

Sent my complaints to: Better Business Bureau, Federal Trade Commission, Congressman Pascrell, Beacon Theatre New York, AEG, and Secretary of State in Illinois (Ticketsnow is governed by Illinois). Made it clear this happened to Leonard Cohen tickets as well as Bruce Springstein's tickets. This "glitch" is more like FRAUD!

I will send a complaint to Ticketmaster tomorrow. Yesterday, a Ticketmaster spokesman said only a few fans reported problems. Well now they will have "a few" reported problems PLUS ONE!

[hmur4356]

This issue is not limited to Springsteen and Cohen, that's for sure. The same thing happened with the Grateful Dead tickets that went on sale recently. The only difference is that the Dead still allow their fans to mail order for tickets before they go on sale to the general public. But amazingly enough TicketMaster was out of Dead tix 10 minutes after they went on sale. Impossible? Maybe not. But how does TicketsNow have them on sale before they are 'sold out'? I smell a rat.

My question is this: What is to prevent TicketMaster from putting their agents on their phones on their network, have them buys up as many tickets as they can for events, and in turn have a built in supply for the secondary market which they also own?? A big WTF is called for here!!

[dick]

Bravo!

[MarieM]

Springsteen condemns 'abuse' by Ticketmaster
by Peggy McGlone/The Star-Ledger
Wednesday February 04, 2009, 8:22 PM
Bruce Springsteen announced today he is "furious" over the handling of tickets sales for his upcoming concert tour, saying his fans were abused by the ticket agent's practice of directing consumers to a subsidiary offering tickets at more than four times their face value.

A storm of complaints by fans about how Ticketmaster handled Monday's sale for two Springsteen concerts in the Meadowlands led lawmakers to call for an investigation, and the musician added to the criticism with a message on his website.

"We condemn this practice. We have asked this redirection from Ticketmaster to TicketsNow to cease and desist immediately," Springsteen wrote in a letter addressed "To our fans" that was posted on brucespringsteen.net. "The abuse of our fans and our trust by Ticketmaster has made us as furious as it has made many of you."

Springsteen also said Ticketmaster agreed to stop the practice, and as of today potential customers were no longer being connected to its subsidiary TicketsNow, a resale operation. Instead, they received an on-screen message that stated: "No exact matches were found, but other tickets may still be available."

Fans say that minutes after tickets went on sale for the May 21 and May 23 Springsteen concerts at the Izod Center in East Rutherford, Ticketmaster, the primary sales agent, directed fans from its website to TicketsNow.

The ticket controversy widened on several other fronts today:

-- New Jersey Attorney General Anne Milgram said she will investigate Monday's sale because of the continuing flood of complaints against Ticketmaster, a national ticket service that has a virtual lock on the sale of entertainment and sports tickets.

"Consumers are questioning what transpired and if they had an equal opportunity to purchase these concert tickets. We share these concerns and are investigating this matter," Milgram said.

Ticketmaster did not return calls for comment.

-- The state Division of Consumer Affairs placed an icon labeled "Bruce Springsteen/Ticketmaster Complaints" on its main webpage (http://www.njconsumeraffairs.gov) for consumers to reach an online complaint form.

More than 250 complaints have been received.

-- State Senate President Richard Codey (D-Essex) called for the Izod Center to refuse to use Ticketmaster unless its contract prevents the service from linking directly to its resale site.

"This is the worst case of self-referral that I've ever heard of," Codey said. "It should not be done at any government facility."

About 30,000 tickets to Springsteen's two Izod Center concerts went on sale at 9 a.m. Monday and sold out in about 65 minutes. According to many New Jersey fans, they received an error message saying Ticketmaster's service was down for routine maintenance. After signing back onto the Ticketmaster site, they were directed to TicketsNow, where hundreds of tickets were available but at prices much higher than the face value of $65 and $95.

The May concerts are part of the first leg of Springsteen's tour in support of his new album, "Working on a Dream." Springsteen performed the Super Bowl halftime show the night before the tour tickets went on sale through Ticketmaster. "Working on a Dream" was No. 1 on this week's Billboard charts, Springsteen's ninth album to top the charts.

TOUCHING A NERVE
The uproar touched a nerve with fans across the country, who said problems with ticket sales have become commonplace. They reported recent similar experiences: being directed to TicketsNow within minutes of the start of ticket sales to concerts by Leonard Cohen, the Dead and the Allman Brothers.

On Monday, Ticketmaster spokesman Albert Lopez said the error message affected only a "teeny" number of consumers using the website. He added that customers had been directed to the TicketsNow as a courtesy.

Lopez did not return repeated calls to his office and cell phones.

Rep. Bill Pascrell (D-8th Dist.) asked that the Federal Trade Commission and the Justice Department investigate Monday's sale. Pascrell asked the agencies "to investigate the relationship between Ticketmaster and TicketsNow to ensure that the procedure for purchasing tickets remains fair to the average consumer."

Phyllis Salowe-Kaye, executive director of New Jersey Citizen Action, a consumer advocacy organization, said the situation arises because the state long ago stopped trying to prevent ticket-scalping.

Her organization successfully sued ticket brokers in the 1990s, charging that they were breaking state laws against scalping.

But the state's ticket scalping laws have been changed, removing all limits on the resale of tickets.

"There are no controls; the law has to be changed," Salowe-Kaye said. "I don't think consumers have much they can do. It's a fact in New Jersey that when events happen, only people who can pay premium prices can go see them."

The easing of anti-scalping laws and a thaw in the cold war between brokers and primary ticket sellers has caused wide-spread changes in the secondary market, a phenomenon Springsteen addressed today.

"There are rumors that some artists or managers participate in Ticketmaster charges -- we do not," he wrote. "Some artists or manager may not perceive there to be a conflict between having the distributor of their tickets in effect 'scalping' those same tickets through a secondary company like TicketsNow -- we do."

http://www.nj.com/news/index.ssf/2009/0 ... se_by.html

[MarieM]

Now if all this doesn't get your fired up, there is this appearing in the NYTimes TODAY.


February 5, 2009
Ticketmaster Merger Plan Could Touch on Antitrust
By TIM ARANGO
If Ticketmaster Entertainment and Live Nation agree to merge, it would become a powerhouse in the music industry and an early test of the Obama administration’s views on concentrated corporate power, particularly in an area with potentially stark implications for consumers.

“For a couple of different reasons this is likely to have reasonably intense scrutiny,” said Bruce Sokler, a lawyer in the Washington office of Mintz Levin, who focuses on antitrust matters. “One is, it’s going to be an early, big spotlighted merger for the new administration. Second, it is a deal with great interest for consumers.”

While hurdles remain that could scuttle a deal, the two companies have been in merger talks and could announce a pact as early as Friday, although a likelier possibility is next week, according to two people briefed on the matter who spoke anonymously because they were not authorized to speak publicly.

The combination of the two companies would place under one corporate umbrella dominant players in all sides of the live concert business: the sale of tickets, the representation of artists and the control of concert halls. Of particular issue to regulators, say lawyers with expertise in antitrust law, would be Live Nation’s recent entry into the ticket-selling business — essentially a challenge to Ticketmaster on its own turf.

“That would definitely be something the government would want to look at,” said Joseph J. Simons, a partner at Paul Weiss Rifkin Wharton & Garrison, and a former chief antitrust enforcer at the Federal Trade Commission.

Regulators, Mr. Simons said — whether from the Department of Justice or the F.T.C., the two government bodies that review mergers — are often hesitant to approve deals that quash new competition in a historically concentrated business.

In the ticket business, Ticketmaster had 30 percent of the $21 billion events market last year, according to data from Forrester Research. But in the more narrow view of just concerts, Ticketmaster’s market share was closer to 70 percent, according to Scott W. Devitt, an analyst at Stifel Nicolaus. Mr. Devitt estimates that Live Nation, as a promoter of concerts, is three times the size of its next nearest competitor, the Anschutz Entertainment Group.

“I think it’s safe to say this will be reviewed aggressively,” Mr. Devitt said.

Robert W. Doyle Jr., a partner at Doyle Barlow & Mazard, a Washington law firm that specializes in antitrust litigation, said that the high market share in ticketing and event promotion made this “a problematic deal.”

“I think the Obama administration would be much more aggressive” than the prior administration in reviewing merger deals, he said.

A representative for Live Nation declined comment, and a spokesman for Ticketmaster was not immediately available for comment.

Ticketmaster has a long history of entanglement with regulators and plaintiffs over questions of anticompetitive practices, but has mainly escaped those complaints intact.

This week, a congressman sent a letter to the F.T.C. seeking an investigation into the company’s relationship with a subsidiary, TicketsNow.com, that sells tickets on the secondary market.

The congressman, Representative Bill Pascrell Jr., Democrat of New Jersey, wrote in a letter that he was responding to concerns that fans of Bruce Springsteen had technical problems when trying to buy concert tickets on Ticketmaster’s Web site. But an ad on the same page could direct them to buy tickets on TicketsNow.com at a “value marked up hundreds of dollars beyond their original value,” according to Mr. Pascrell.

In the letter, he wrote, “there is significant potential for abuse when one company is able to monopolize the primary market for a product and also directly manipulate, and profit from, the secondary market.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/05/busin ... nted=print

[hmur4356]

Again, I am pleased to see three NJ public servants (who I actually believe are respectable politicians if you can imagine that ) taking up this cause in the greater interest of the consumer. Three cheers for Milgram, Codey, and Pascrell. It takes a lot of sand to stand up to the leviathan TicketMaster. Springsteen should also be commended for publicly expressing his outrage as well. Sadly we live in times where the big boys rule and the barrier to entry for competition has been thrown up by legitmising scalping and the homegenisation of all media outlets. Where's Ron Delesner when you need him?!

[Diane]

Ticketmaster have issued an apology to Springsteen fans and offered to refund the difference in price for tickets that were bought as re-sale but assumed to be at initial sale prices. They will surely have to apply that concession to LC and other fans also.

AN OPEN LETTER OF APOLOGY TO BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN, JON LANDAU AND THE ENTIRE SPRINGSTEEN TOUR TEAM:
While we were genuinely trying to do the right thing for fans in providing more choices when the tickets they requested from the primary on-sale were not available, we clearly missed the mark. Fans are confused and angry, which is the opposite of what we hoped to accomplish. We sincerely apologize to Bruce, his organization and, above all, his fans.

We recognize that we need to change our course. We have committed to Bruce and state publicly here that we have taken down all links for Bruce's shows directing fans from Ticketmaster to TicketsNow. This redirection only occurred as a choice when we could not satisfy fans' specific search request for primary ticket inventory, but to make sure there is no misunderstanding in the future, we also publicly state that we will never again link to TicketsNow in a manner that can possibly create any confusion during a high-demand on-sale. Specifically, we will not present an option to go to TicketsNow from Ticketmaster without the consent of the artist and the venue, both of whom work together to bring the joy of live entertainment to millions of fans.

If any fans inadvertently purchased tickets in the resale marketplace believing in error they were purchasing from the initial on-sale, we will refund the difference between the actual purchase price and the face price of the ticket. (Please don't abuse this good faith gesture - we did not give brokers any preferential access to tickets.)

We are committed to helping deliver the most transparent and best live entertainment experience to fans. We will do better going forward.

Sincerely,
Irving Azoff, CEO, Ticketmaster Entertainment

[ladydi]

Of course, I'm sure this has nothing to do with the fact that Bruce has "connections" with the present administration and Ticketmaster would not like to see their possible merger with Live Nation affected. Hope this opens up some reasonably priced tickets for Springsteen fans; and hopefully some tickets for Leonard's concert may miraculously slide back to Ticketmaster from TicketsNow...at the original prices.

[lightning]

The same thing is now going on with Paul Simon tickets. And this statement, "we did not give brokers any preferential access to tickets" is untrue according the scalpers I heard from through Ebay.

[sue7]

Thanks, pinkpawprints, for all of those ideas! In addition to writing to Rep. Pascrell, which I did last night, I laid a complaint with the New York City Department of Consumer Affairs. Although Ticketsnow is registered in Illinois (is that correct?) the NYC DCA rules say that they will investigate complaints of companies doing business in New York City.

[mirka]

I also wrote to Rep. Pascrell, I'm amazed and very encouraged that he is willing to look into this issue.

As far as I remember the practice of selling tickets by TicketMaster for scalper's price is not limited to US only -- they had similar ideas during European leg of LC tour, the difference is the websites set up for this purpose were different in Europe:
viewtopic.php?f=26&t=10697
viewtopic.php?f=26&t=11049

I remember logging into Ticketmaster website just before firts Manchester concert tickets were supposed to go on sale, only to discover they are not available, and I was directed to check another site with ticket's available for "auctions".
Now I understand this is TicketMaster global policy to sell high demand tickets at the scalper's price.

I wish LC tour management, similarly to Bruce Springsteen, would issue clear explanation of their position regarding this issue, as so far it's not 100% clear if all this is happening with or without LC and his tour management knowledge.
I hope it's without, but clarification would really help to get the whole picture.


mirka
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