Slave to Ticketmaster

Dear Ticketmaster:

Hey Ticketmaster, how's it going? Pretty good, I bet. It's almost summer and music fans across the country are getting ready to shell out big bucks for outdoor festivals, U2 concerts, and, of course, all the big reunion tours. Can you believe Phish is finally back together after five longs years? I know! But despite being in the midst of a rapidly worsening economic depression, concert tickets are more expensive than ever. The average price for nose bleed seats to see a big name artist is $65, double what it was ten years ago. You guys must be stoked.

Unfortunately, a lot of fans aren't as excited about all of this as you are. Once upon a time, attending a big rock concert was a rite of passage for America's youth. It wasn't just the show that was special, it was the whole ordeal. People saved up their minimum wage salary for weeks to buy tickets, camped out in front of the box office to get primo seats, and then handfuls of young entrepreneurs bought more tickets than they needed so they could make a little cash scalping. It wasn't legal, but it allowed fans to get into those sold out shows for a few extra dollars.

Now that ritual is gone. Fans are forced to rapidly click reload on your website, then watch with horror when "SOLD OUT" pops up a mere fifteen minutes after the tickets went on sale. I guess it was inevitable. You saw those sleazy denim clad burnouts hawking tickets in the parking lot and said, "Hey, we should be making that money," and now you are, in the most suspicious way possible.

You're the number one ticket retailer in America, but apparently that wasn't good enough, so last year you bought Ticketsnow.com. Ticketsnow is what is known as a secondary ticketer, formerly called a scalper. They let folks with tickets for popular concerts and events auction them off for several times the price, then charge additional service fees that can exceed $100 per ticket. It might seem like there would be a conflict of interest when the legit ticket retailer is in cahoots with the black market, but you've promised repeatedly that there is no funny business going on. Which makes it so weird that when Bruce Springsteen fans tried to buy tickets from Ticketmaster last February, they were rerouted to the Ticketsnow site, despite the fact that unscalped tickets were still available.

Those shenanigans not only irked the fans, but the Boss himself, who wrote a letter on his website that said the "abuse of our fans and our trust by Ticketmaster has made us... furious." You swore up and down that it was a computer glitch, but then did the same thing with Leonard Cohen tickets in Canada. And now Canada is pissed! You currently face three class-action lawsuits north of the border. Your legal woes don't end there. For some reason, a US Senate Anti-trust committee is a little suspicious of your proposed merger with LiveNation, the third largest ticket retailer. If this merger goes through, you will own three out of four of the top ticket sellers. That looks an awful lot like a monopoly.

So what are us fans to do? Prince fought back and refused to allow his tickets to be sold far in advance, cutting down on the time in which tickets can be resold for exorbitant prices. Another idea being bandied about is to get rid of paper tickets all together. Since all of these transactions are taking place online, why not have fans just line up at will call the day of the show and pick up their tickets with a credit card and a photo ID? It would cut the scalpers right out of the equation. Getting rid of paper tickets would also mean we could get rid of some of these ridiculous fees. When I bought Morrissey tickets last week I was charged $15 for shipping, despite the fact that I received my tickets by e-mail. Where are you coming up with these fees anyway? Convenience fees are over $10 per ticket. After you consider the scalpers, quick sell outs, jacked up prices, computer glitches, and class-action law suits, it sounds pretty inconvenient to me.

Sincerely,

Devon Tincknell