N.J. Congressman seeks probe of Springsteen concert sales by Ticketmaster
Bruce Springsteen, Ticketmaster Ticket Scam
Congressman Wants Ticketmaster Investigated For 'TicketsNow' Website
This is blown out of proportion. A pile of people flooded TM site. The site broke. The site always breaks. Technology will do that with unexpected loads. Ok, fine. Their service sucks and is overpriced – we all agree. This is not news.
But for people to blow up over being directed to TicketsNow is stupid. So if the TM site just broke, and didn’t force people to TN, then they wouldn’t be angry? I believe that TM is doing that as an upsell courtesy for its fan base – nothing more.
The “writers” of these articles and blog posts assume that TM and TN are in cahoots. I’m not so quick to assume that, I find it entirely believable that everyone that bought tickets stuck them up on TN to try and make a quick 3x to 5x. I don’t think those are TN tickets that were somehow bought/transferred/provisioned by TM.
And all the politicians getting around it? Please, that’s show boating. I agree that TM charges way too much. The solution is to connect the producers of the shows with the fans themselves, increasing producers margin, decreasing fan cost. Cut TM out of the loop – the internet and digital distribution is making this all very real and possible. Politicians have better, bigger problems to deal with – pay attention boys.
As for the secondary market – I believe in free markets, and this is supply and demand at its finest. I don’t think it should be regulated, but I do think there should be a “priority” given to true fans that don’t participate in the secondary market. Print my name and SSN on the ticket, and check my ID on the way in – if I’m willing to do that give me the ticket at 1/2 price as a fan. If I don’t want that, I should have to pay full boat to get a “blank” ticket that I can sell to the secondary market. I’m not sure I like the privacy ramifications of this yet, but it is an idea in the right direction. NIN did something similar for their last tour, but I don’t think they checked IDs for those tickets.
Conclusion: TM sucks, always has always will until a competitor eats their lunch; these articles are blown out of proportion and taken out of context; I clearly want to be distracted at the moment...
