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| mac_daddy |
pardon my language, but these motherf*ckers are unbelievable...
thanks to all of you who paid exhorbanent prices on ebay, too...
Ticketmaster Auction Will Let Highest Bidder Set Concert Prices
September 1, 2003
By CHRIS NELSON
Three years after Ticketmaster introduced ticketFast, its online
print-at-home ticketing service, consumers have so embraced it that
the company now sells a half-million home-printed tickets for
sporting and entertainment events each month in North America. Where
ticketFast is available, 30 percent of tickets sold are now printed
at home, said the company, which is by far the nation's largest
ticket agency.
But consumers - many of whom have complained for years about climbing
ticket prices and Ticketmaster service charges - may be less eager
for the next phase of Ticketmaster's Internet evolution.
Late this year the company plans to begin auctioning the best seats
to concerts through ticketmaster.com.
With no official price ceiling on such tickets, Ticketmaster will be
able to compete with brokers and scalpers for the highest price a
market will bear.
"The tickets are worth what they're worth," said John Pleasants,
Ticketmaster's president and chief executive. "If somebody wants to
charge $50 for a ticket, but it's actually worth $1,000 on eBay, the
ticket's worth $1,000. I think more and more, our clients - the
promoters, the clients in the buildings and the bands themselves -
are saying to themselves, `Maybe that money should be coming to me
instead of Bob the Broker.' "
EBay has long been a busy marketplace for tickets auctioned by
brokers and others. Late last week, for example, it had more than
22,000 listings for ticket sales.
Venue operators, promoters and performers will decide whether to
participate in the Ticketmaster auctions, Mr. Pleasants said. In
June, the company tested the system for the Lennox Lewis-Vitali
Klitschko boxing match at the Staples Center in Los Angeles. The
minimum bid for the package - two ringside seats, a boxing glove
autographed by Mr. Lewis and access to workouts, among other
features - was $3,000, and the top payer spent about $7,000, a
Staples Center spokesman, Michael Roth, said.
Once the auction service goes live, Ticketmaster will receive flat
fees or a percentage of the winning bids, to be decided with the
operators of each event, said Sean Moriarty, Ticketmaster's
executive vice president for products, technology and operations.
Along with home printing, auctions are central to "a new age of the
ticket," Mr. Pleasants said. In the second quarter of this year,
tickets sold online, with or without home printing, represented 51
percent of Ticketmaster's ticket sales. The rest were sold by phone
or at walk-up locations.
Ticket Forwarding allows season ticket holders for several sports
teams (including the New York Knicks, Rangers and Giants) to e-mail
extra tickets to other users, with Ticketmaster charging the sender
$1.95 per transaction.
TicketExchange provides a forum for season ticket holders to auction
tickets online. The seller and buyer pay Ticketmaster 5 percent to
10 percent of the resale price, a fee the company splits with the
team.
In the case of the ticketFast home-printing service, buyers pay an
additional $1.75 to $2.50 per order, with the fee set by the event
operator. Home printing has won converts among people who want
tickets immediately, instead of receiving them by mail or a delivery
service or having to stand in line at a will-call window.
One satisfied customer is Brian Resnik, 29, of Tampa, Fla., who says
the home-printing fee is a bargain compared with the $19.50 that
Ticketmaster charges for two-day shipping through United Parcel
Service.
But some other users, who praised the convenience of home printing,
objected to being charged an extra fee.
"It's kind of mind-boggling to me," said Joe Guckin, 41, of
Philadelphia, who used ticketFast to buy tickets for a Baltimore
Orioles home game last season. "You're printing up the ticket, on
your printer at home, your paper, your ink, etc. - and you have to
pay for that?"
The company replies that home-printing consumers are helping to pay
for the technology that makes the service possible.
Ticketmaster has spent $15 million to $20 million to outfit almost
700 stadiums, arenas, theaters and concert halls in this country and
Canada with bar-code scanners that read and authenticate the tickets
and computers that capture information such as which seats are
filled and which doors have the most traffic, Mr. Moriarty said. In
2003, the company has sold 400,000 to 600,000 ticketFast tickets
each month.
Some ticketFast customers, like Diane DeRooy, 52, of Seattle,
complain that Ticketmaster assesses a lot of fees even before
levying the print-at-home charge. A ticket to see Crosby, Stills &
Nash on Friday at the PNC Bank Arts Center in Holmdel, N.J., for
example, carries $13.80 in venue, processing and convenience fees,
plus a $2.50 charge for the home-printing option. Without the fees,
a ticket costs $30.25 to $70.25.
Many of those customers are skeptical about Ticketmaster's plans to
auction the best seats to concerts.
"The band's biggest fans ought to have the best seats, not the band's
richest fans," said Tim Todd, 47, of Kansas City, Mo., who used
ticketFast recently to buy tickets for a concert by the rock group
Phish. Ticketmaster would be, in essence, official scalpers, Mr.
Guckin said, voicing a sentiment expressed by some other
customers.
Industry watchers agree that auctions will affect all concertgoers.
Prime seats are undervalued in the marketplace, said Alan B.
Krueger, a professor at Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School
of Public and International Affairs, who has studied ticket prices.
He predicts that once auctions begin revealing a ticket's market
value, prices as a whole will climb faster.
Gary Bongiovanni, editor of the concert industry trade magazine,
Pollstar, predicted that all ticket prices would become more fluid.
After a promoter assesses initial sales from an auction, remaining
ticket prices could be raised or lowered to meet goals.
The notion of ticket auctions is annoying, Mr. Resnik said, but he is
resigned to them.
"I guess the capitalist inside me would say, `Hey, if that's what
they can get for tickets, I guess that's just something I can't
afford, like a yacht and a Learjet.' "
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/09/01/technology/01TICK.html |
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| Sir Stonesalot |
Oh fuck.
Goodbye good seats.
I'll never be able to afford decent tickets after this bullshit. |
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| Hooked |
This is pathetic.
TM is now in the scalping business. Of course, if I try to sell tickets for a profit outside a venue (which i don't do), i'll get arrested.
It's one thing if the venues or artists want to charge a gazillion dollars for good seats (like the Stones), but now TM, the primary ticket sale system, is officially in on it.
And, of course, I'm sure TM will now arrange to hold back even more seats on first-day on-sales for their "resales". No conflict of interest there... |
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| fmk438j |
That is truly one fucked up concept.
If this becomes the norm it will be a huge kick in the teeth to any live music lover.
The rich win, again. |
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