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I think we should start some kind of petition to send to our Congressmen. TicketB****** should not be allowed to sell tickets if they only in turn sell them to brokers before the event is made available to the public. If you looked at any broker sites the week before the tickets went on sale they all had Buffett tickets. There is no way the all have season subscriptions. Lets stand up to these a$$hole$.

noble idea, but it's call free enterprise. Ticketmaster is a business and can do as they please. They are not breaking any sort of law...YET

jbfinscj wrote:They are not breaking any sort of law...YET

I think that's the point PHN is making. Lobby congress to make it against the law.

If tickets to events at a certain venue are all distributed through a third party such as Ticketmaster, an attorney might be able to make the argument that they have a monopoly.

If there was an alternative source for fans to purchase tickets when they become available from the venue, then free enterprise would protect the consumer.

Ticketmaster chairman Terry Barnes has not contributed to a congressional campaign since the 1998 elections according to the FEC, but other executives have donated quite a bit of money through Interactive Corp Political Action Committee, aka IACPAC. Susan Bracey, David Henderson, Albert Leffler, Sean Moriarty, Christopher Neimeth, John Pleasants, Victoria Rishwain, Daniel Teree, Michael Walthius. IACPAC contributes to candidates on both sides of the aisle.

You can bet that they are also spending a lot of money on lobbyists to keep their business "legal."

In IL the lobbiest (?) paid major$$ to sell tickets at higher prices. The only way we can make anybody listen is with Your pocketbooks. If I can't score tickets for Jimmy without useing a scalper then I don't go or buy his product that year. One phan dosen't mean much. It's just my way of protesting what I think is wrong with this product.

One phan making a difference Ebay #Item number: 6612848074

I honestly don't think Ticketmaster cares who they sell tickets to (it's an open market), as long as they can do it efficiently (inexpensively) because they are basically in the distribution business. The issue is when Ticketmaster's systems enable a buyer to gain an unfair advantage -- e.g. broker software programs to hit the site multiple times per second or go around the code word protection mechanisms. TM makes efforts with this but I'm not convinced their technology is staying ahead of the brokers'.

I'd like to see a pre-sale online auction system put in place for the highest value seats (e.g. pit, A, B, C -- because I believe most of those tickets move through brokers today anyway) and fixed prices for the other tickets. If you remove the brokers' incentive on the highest profit tickets, they won't have nearly the interest in playing the game, and overall access to tickets should improve. And, the extra money would go to the one adding the value (Jimmy & co) and perhaps he'd put more money to Singing For Change, hurricane reconstruction, or other good causes (vs. it going into brokers' pockets).

Ticketmaster pretty much has a monopoly on selling tickets for most of the popular venues. Congress looked into this a few years ago but dropped it.

aeroparrot wrote:Ticketmaster pretty much has a monopoly on selling tickets for most of the popular venues. Congress looked into this a few years ago but dropped it.

Right...but as long as they are taking steps to provide equal access to all, the monopoly issue has nothing to do with who is buying the tickets; it's about the justifying service charges and convenience fees.

Quiet and Shy wrote:

aeroparrot wrote:Ticketmaster pretty much has a monopoly on selling tickets for most of the popular venues. Congress looked into this a few years ago but dropped it.

Right...but as long as they are taking steps to provide equal access to all, the monopoly issue has nothing to do with who is buying the tickets; it's about the justifying service charges and convenience fees.

And quite frankly I think THOSE should be made ILLEGAL since that's essentially "legal" scalping (No different than a ticket scalper bumping the price to make a profit...)

What is the purpose of a "convenience fee" or "service charge" anyway?

Here's a perfect example of where the Ticketmaster monopoly is a problem!

http://www.buffettnews.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=46302

aeroparrot wrote:Ticketmaster pretty much has a monopoly on selling tickets for most of the popular venues.

that could be because the Ticketmaster has exclusive rights at many venues; paid for by those lovely "service fees". They even go so far as to "loan" money to promoters and venues to secure certain acts.

Think about that next time you shell out that extra $15-20 in service fees.