Posted by: : Category: Uncategorized
On the morning of February 2, Bruce Springsteen fans looking for tickets to see The Boss on his latest tour faced a bitter disappointment, as tickets to shows across the country appeared to sell out in record time.
Those who sought out the tickets on Ticketmaster.com were told to try again or proceed to Ticketmaster’s sister company,
TicketsNow, to purchase tickets. There, prices per seat ranged in the hundreds of dollars and ran as high as $2,000 — a far cry from the original $95 (plus
fees) asking price.
Springsteen apologized for the situation, which he called a “bait and switch.” And Congressmen (Sen. Charles Schumer, D-New York and Rep. Bill Pascrell, Jr., D-New Jersey) have asked stern questions of Ticketmaster as the company hoped to avoid precisely this sort of scandal. It’s currently preparing for a merger with concert promoter extraordinaire Live Nation. As for fans, some of them are joining a class action suit that takes Ticketmaster to task for unfair business practices.
Ticketmaster head Barry Diller (pictured) blames the whole mess on a glitch with Visa’s credit card billing system.
“What really happened was that there was an actual glitch — a
little tech glitch in the system that had nothing to do with the
availability of tickets,” explained Barry Diller, who would chair the
combined Ticketmaster/Live Nation company, during a conference call
announcing that proposed merger. “It had to do with, I think
it was Visa that couldn’t process the data, so it kind of froze the
system for a bit.” Diller said Ticketmaster never meant to direct fans
looking for primary tickets to those resellers. Although he said the
situation was confusing, he said, “there was no real controversy.”
Timing of the Springsteen scandal was less than ideal from the perspective of Live Nation and Ticketmaster, as they prepare to merge. “It was, of course, timing-unfortunate,” he said. “That’s what happens in life, where you’re just getting ready to finish a transaction and then up comes a computer glitch that gets, uh, ‘promoted,’ let’s say.” He added that a combined Live Nation/Ticketmaster entity would not
make the injection of tickets directly into the secondary market a standard practice going forward.
How about music fans’ hatred of Ticketmaster? From whence does that
spring? Could it be those widely-reviled “convenience” fees?
Nope,
says Diller.
“Ticketmaster is never perceived to be on the side of the angels,
because in fact there only so many tickets. It’s got tickets to sell.
When they’re finished selling, people get angry that they can’t get
tickets — that’s understandable.”
As for the class action suit being levied by Ticketmaster by Springsteen fans? Diller said those fans are way off base: “What can I say about class action lawsuits that have no merit and are just chasing cars down the road?”
(Photo: jdlasica)
Source: Eliot Van Buskirk
