Archive for 23 June, 2009
Concert Tickets Get Set Aside, Marked Up by Artists, Managers
“Less than a minute after tickets for last August’s Neil Diamond concerts at New York’s Madison Square Garden went on sale, more than 100 seats were available for hundreds of dollars more than their normal face value on premium-ticket site TicketExchange.com. The seller? Neil Diamond.“
Ticketmaster Chief Executive Irving Azoff said last week that when ticket brokers resell tickets without permission from artists or promoters, it “drives up prices to fans, without putting any money in the pockets of artists or rights holders.“
“The vast majority of tickets are sold by the artists and their promoters with the cooperation of Ticketmaster.” In a strangely contradictory statement by Joseph Freeman, Ticketmaster’s senior vice president for legal affairs. So in this case it is fine to fleece the fans!
Tickets for a March 27 Britney Spears concert at Mellon Arena in Pittsburgh were priced earlier this week at $39.50 to $125 apiece on Ticketmaster.com. But some of those same classes of seats were being offered at the same time through the “TicketExchange Marketplace” for as much as $1,188.60. The link to the Marketplace page was marked, “Browse premium seats plus tickets posted by fans.“
Ms. Spears’ spokeswoman declined to comment.
The ticket listings are offered in small batches, each at a price, such as $1,164.01, that mimics prices set via online auctions. After inquiries from The Wall Street Journal, the “tickets posted by fans” message was removed from the TicketExchange Web site. Prices also fell, narrowing the gap between Ticketmaster and TicketExchange Marketplace.
23 June, 2009 at 4:49 pm Tim Roberts ARTS Australia Leave a comment
