Live Nation Voids Scalped Tickets via Pollstar.com

The Dutch wing of Live Nation has canceled more than 1,000 tickets it deemed invalid because they’d been bought from sites known to be run by touts.

What’s wrong with this?

1. Pollstar doesn’t report the hypocrisy of Live Nation doing this
2. Live Nation owns Getmein! one of the largest ticket resale sites in Europe
3. Live Nation owns TicketsNow.com the 4th largest Ticket Reseller in the United States according to TicketNews.com
4. Live Nation scalps their own tickets via their season seat programs where they aim to double the revenue of the best seats in the house, which the artist gets no part of.

euticketnews.com notes that the cancelled Mika tickets had a face value of €42.90 and were selling on Viagogo.com for €61.74.  What do we know about supply and demand?  If tickets are selling for not even €20 over face before fees, the market is likely crashing.  By cancelling over 1,000 tickets Live Nation is protecting themselves from a slow selling show.  Instead of people being able to buy Mika Tickets for under face value, fans are going to be forced to help Live Nation cover their ass for a slow selling show

News has just been released that the Red Sox have agreed to work with StubHub.  What does that mean for the ticket buying public?

• For season seat holders it will be much easier to list and sell your tickets on StubHub
• For single game resellers, the Red Sox will now know who you are.
• The Red Sox are now getting 7.5% of every sale on StubHub.
• TheRed Sox will know the true value of all their tickets.  This is likely to hurt the single game ticket buyers in good years and everyone in losing years as box office prices will now be the “face” when demand is high and while “face” goes up, does it ever go down?
• The Red Sox get to keep Ace Ticket and their sponsorship money and any revenue sharing money they have agreed to.

Makes you wonder why the Red Sox didn’t have this in their original Ace Ticket sponsorship deal doesn’t it?

The main benefit this will have for the ticket buying consumer is most likely more tickets on the market.  If you can just list your tickets on StubHub and have them transferred automatically when they sell, the owner is more likely to sell, than to just give the tickets away or bring them to a broker.  With more tickets on the market you may not have to pay as much from StubHub.  Also the seller may be willing to take less if StubHub’s 15% is less than a broker has been taking from them in the past.

In regards to the Wise Guys operation: One of the lawyers defending them complained to The Star-Ledger, “…the feds have decided to criminalize that.” Well, yeah…if you did that, you’d be allowed to purchase maybe eight tickets, not thousands.

• Wise Guys were using other peoples credit cards and charging those people if they were able to purchase tickets using their cards.  Ticketmaster is very good at cancelling orders if a billing address goes over the stated limit on ticket purchases.

• Yes they show up at those prices the day they go on sale but Bruce adds so many shows that no one purchases the tickets at those prices except those who think they can make money.  Did you happen to check how much they were selling for the day of the event? The real fans know if they wait, they will be rewarded

• So you want to steal money from people but prosecute others who stole?  If stealing is wrong, there is no way to justify it at all.
• If Bruce had cancelled any of his shows at the Meadowlands he would have been saving thousands of dollars for everyone who bought tickets.  The best tickets for those shows were selling under face and everyone would have received a refund.  Bruce Springsteen has probably cost ticket resellers more money than any other artist over the past 5-7 years.  It is rare, except for the occasional arena show in Jersey for the common person to have to pay more than $50 for a $115 face ticket to see Bruce.  When Bruce goes paperless the fans are forced to pay $115 for floor tickets.  When Bruce uses tickets the fans can often buy tickets on the secondary market for half that price.

Since you like to quote the Star Ledger I suggest you read all their articles, not just ones you can show your indignation to.   Born too cheap: How I saw Bruce Springsteen at Giants Stadium for $15

Going back to the article refered to in Monday’s posting regarding Wilco tickets, I want to visit the comments section of the article.

Simply put, no!  You see the guys outside the stadiums, arenas and various other venues?  What are they doing on Saturday mornings when the tickets are going on sale? Nothing.  Guess where they will be if ticket sales are in person only?  Thats right, right in front of you.  How will they get in front of you?  Greasing the person handing out numbers to make sure they and all their buddies get the best numbers to buy all the good tickets.

No, online marketing is too valuable to the promoter, venue and artist to go back to the old days.  The less they have to pay for advertising the more money is going in their pocket.  Everyone would be incredibly happy if they could just send out emails to all the fans and never have to pay another dime for an ad.  Your email address that you give for the presale password is worth a lot to the promoter, venue and artist.  When you sign up for an account on Ticketmaster you agree that they can share all your purchase info for each event you purchase with the artist, venue and promoter.  This is why you’ll end up getting Neil Sedaka emails when you have only purchased Vampire Weekend tickets in the past.

NIN and their manager Jim Guerinot definitely thwart the secondary market as well as any team in music, but by doing that, they basically say if you don’t know how to use a computer quickly, you’re screwed.  Those who can afford to pay $200-$300 a ticket and are willing to, are left out in the cold under their ticket schemes also.  The youngest and most computer savvy fans benefit the most with their method of ticket selling.

There was an article published in the News & Observer of the Triangle area in North Carolina over the weekend.  It is article about people complaining about not being able to purchase tickets, this time to Wilco at the Durham Performing Arts Center.  The author does a pretty good job of giving an overview of the situation for the upcoming Wilco show.  The biggest number left out is how many tickets are actually on the secondary market and does this show have more tickets than normal for a concert on the secondary market?  The generally accepted number for tickets appearing on the secondary market is that 10%-15% of a venues capacity shows up on the secondary market.  As of this writing there are 214 Wilco tickets on Stubhub.  Over the past month 47 tickets have sold on Stubhub.  This puts us at 271 tickets which is basically 10% and after accounting for previous sales on Stubhub, eBay, and Craigslist, we should be right at 15%.

Brent complains in the article that he tried for 30 minutes to get tickets.  Why wasn’t he able to get any?  Let’s look at the numbers:

• 2700 capacity
• 1050 pre sale tickets to member’s of the venue and/or the promoters mailing list
• 300 fan club tickets (Ticketmaster’s venue contracts do not allow for more than 10% of a venue’s capacity to be sold off TM site, Wilco Fan Club handled by Front Gate Ticketing)
• 250 students tickets only available at the box office
• 100 likely holds for the venue that will be sold to friends/workers/local luminaries

That leaves 1000 tickets available for the public on sale.  Of that 1000 tickets 10% were bought by the “evil” resellers leaving us with 900 tickets. So let’s dig a little deeper.  900 tickets for sale and there are people trying to buy 2, 3, 4 or maybe more but let’s put the average at 3.  From that we get that only 300 people were able to buy tickets for the “public” on sale.  How many people do you think were trying to buy tickets?

• signed up for Wilco’s mailing list and tried to buy the fan club tickets. (Those most likely sold out in 30 seconds)
• signed up for the venues’ mailing list for a pre sale tickets password
• searched blogs, forums, twitter for the password (shameless self promotion, ask me on twitter @ticketanalyst I’ll give it to you for freeeeeee)
• paid a student to buy tickets for him (would you prefer giving a starving student $20 or the “evil” reseller $100)

Brent needs to scour Craigslist.  There are currently over 200 tickets left for a show in a smaller metropolitan area which is a sizable supply.  Fan Club tickets should be arriving now that it is about 2 weeks before the show.  Setup an RSS feed (if you don’t know how, it is a great help to keep tabs on Craigslist postings, so you should learn to make it work for you) for “Wilco Tickets” on the local and regional Craigslist sites.  The tickets posted by brokers on StubHub and other secondary sites will show up on Craigslist with a phone number.  Don’t be scared if it is a broker they will soon be happy just getting their money back, or less.  Use a credit card and get the address of their business and Google them to double-check legitimacy before purchasing.  If dealing with someone local meet up with them somewhere safe and vet the tickets.  I predict that you should be able to buy tickets at or under face the week of the concert.

The economy is tough and oftentimes we don’t have enough money to attend every show that we want to see.  The call of the live show doesn’t stop though.  How is it possible to get into shows for free?  You need to work for it.  The longer you work the less you are going to have to pay.

You need to pound the pavement.  Free tickets don’t just show up in your hand.  You see how the ticket  scalpers at a show work?  They are asking EVERYONE if they have tickets.  Follow their lead, but ask for “just 1″ or “1 complimentary ticket”. Offer to walk in the door with the people you are asking, so they know you aren’t trying to re sell the ticket.  Almost every show, even most sold out shows, you will be able to get into.  The trick is to be persistent and not shy.  If the doors to the venue open at 7 it pays to get there at 6:30.  Your band may not even go on till 10:30 but it may take you three and a half hours to find that ticket.  It may get discouraging, but there are always people who have a friend bail on them, or a radio station winner that can’t find anyone to go with last-minute.  You may get lucky and get one in 5 minutes but you may end up working a good three hours.  Believe and you will most likely get in, for free, or next to nothing.

There are two likely scenarios in which you may get a free ticket.  One is from someone who got free tickets from the band, label, radio or press and have to pick them up at will call.  In this scenario it pays to be next to will call and politely ask everyone who walks up to the box office if they have an extra ticket and then explain your situation.  The second situation is large GA shows and festivals.  The more GA tickets there are the more likely people have been given tickets that won’t be worth much to ticket scalpers and more likely to give them to you.  Second is large festivals not near cities.  If you go to a large festival away from civilization there will be fewer people who are willing to drive the 2 hours without tickets.  Therefore most everyone who shows up has a ticket.  This is to your advantage as all those people who had friends bail on them now have no one to sell their extra tickets.

Finally, please don’t go on Craigslist and beg for tickets, or tell me about your great screenplay that is going to make you rich, but how poor you are in the mean time.  If you want something for free go and work for it.