Ticketmaster Gets Sued In Quebec

[C-Dawg]

$500M Ticketmaster lawsuit reverberates in Quebec

A $500-million class-action lawsuit launched against Ticketmaster Monday over allegations that the popular ticketseller violates Ontario anti-scalping laws may have repercussions in Quebec even though it’s not included in the lawsuit at this time.

Ticketmaster was accused of breaking Ontario laws that prohibit the resale of tickets at greater-than-face value in a complaint filed in Toronto.

The suit, filed by Sutts, Strosberg LLP and Branch MacMaster Barristers and Solicitors on behalf of all Canadians who purchased event tickets in Ontario from Ticketmaster or through TicketsNow, seeks $500 million in damages, said Luciana Brasil, a lawyer at MacMaster.

“We expect a very large number of claimants,” Brasil said. “We’re just estimating the damages.”

Strosberg and Brasil plan to ask an Ontario judge to allow one plaintiff to represent all the other ticket buyers in a group lawsuit. A hearing for the certification motion hasn’t been set.

Laws prohibiting the resale of event tickets for more than their face value are also in place in Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba. The Canadian lawyers said they plan to file similar suits in those provinces. When contacted by The Gazette yesterday, Brasil said they were not familiar with the anti-scalping initiatives in Quebec, but would “consider expanding” the lawsuit if it became clear it was justified down the road.

Gillett Entertainment Group (GEG), the entertainment giant that books big acts like Céline Dion at the Bell Centre, would not comment yesterday on the lawsuit or whether it would be changing its business practices because of it. Dion’s ticket sales are handled by Admission, a Ticketmaster company.

A Gazette story in December 2007 found that tickets for two Céline Dion concerts at the Bell Centre sold out in under 15 minutes.

A half hour after tickets went on sale, 148 Céline tickets in the red section – prime location for concerts at the Bell Centre – were available on the TicketExchange site, Ticketmaster's secondary sales site.

The top ticket price listed on Ticketmaster for a Bell Centre Céline concert was $195. The tickets posted on TicketExchange ranged in price from $500 to $1,985.

Yesterday’s lawsuit by law firms Sutts, Strosberg in Toronto and Branch McMaster in Vancouver, claims Ticketmaster “conspired to divert tickets to popular events” from its main website to its own ticket auction website, http://www.TicketsNow.com.

“Customers have voiced concerns over the fact that tickets for the most popular events can ostensibly sell out in minutes, only to become immediately available in the secondary market at much higher prices,” said Luciana Brasil of Branch McMaster in a news release.

The lawsuit was filed on behalf of all Ontario customers who bought tickets through Ticketmaster or TicketsNow.com from and after Feb. 9, 2007.

“It is reasonable to expect consumers to be curious about the process by which tickets are sold to them,” said Jay Strosberg of Sutts, Strosberg. “The mere fact that Ticketmaster has a financial interest in both retail and premium ticket sales leads to an obvious question about the process by which those tickets are sold to members of the public and how it works.”

The representing plaintiff in the lawsuit also claims that he had recently bought two concert tickets for $533.65, including service charges on TicketsNow.com. The lawyers are claiming that their client would have only had to pay $133 for the pair if they were available on Ticketmaster’s main website. The plaintiff says he was directed to the more expensive tickets by Ticketmaster. The lawsuit also claims that the additional fees and surcharges violate Ontario’s anti-scalping laws, the news release said.

Even though the Canadian lawsuit was filed on the same day as a similar American action, the suits are unrelated, according to lawyers.

The American lawsuit was filed after singer Bruce Springsteen complained about the company’s sales practices.

Ticketmaster was sued for redirecting fans, including those trying to buy Springsteen tickets Feb. 2, to TicketsNow.com where the tickets were marked up by hundreds and even thousands of dollars. Ticketmaster gets a 15 percent cut from TicketsNow, which it owns, Paul Kiesel, lawyer for the plaintiff, said in the complaint filed Feb. 6 in Los Angeles federal court.

“Ticketmaster profits twice as the result of the monopolistic scheme,” Kiesel, of Kiesel, Boucher & Larson LLP, said in the complaint, which seeks unspecified monetary damages and an injunction to stop the practice. “Defendants have illegally bilked event ticket purchasers out of millions of dollars.”

Fan complaints that they were steered to TicketsNow when they tried to buy Springsteen tickets prompted a New Jersey congressman to call for a federal antitrust investigation into Ticketmaster’s sales practices. Attorneys general in that state and in Connecticut are looking into the matter.

Springsteen, in a posting on his website, condemned Ticketmaster’s sales practice.

“We perceive this as a pure conflict of interest,” Springsteen said. “The abuse of our fans and our trust by Ticketmaster has made us as furious as it has made many of you.”

Ticketmaster, based in West Hollywood, Calif., issued an apology Feb. 4 for having steered Springsteen fans to TicketsNow and vowed to refund them the price difference between the face value of tickets and those purchased inadvertently through the reseller. Fans also will no longer be shown a link to the resale market unless the artist agrees, Ticketmaster said.

Albert Lopez, a Ticketmaster spokesman, didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment today.

Springsteen tickets in the U.S. went on sale at 9 a.m. on Feb. 2 and within seconds people who tried to order them were told the Ticketmaster site was experiencing technical difficulties, according to the U.S. complaint. Those who were able to get past the message were informed tickets to the Springsteen shows were not available.

Fans were then redirected to the TicketsNow website, where tickets were available “within seconds” of the start of the sale, according to the complaint. Tickets with a face value of $65 and $95 were listed for sale for $200 to $4,998, Kiesel said in the complaint.

[Snowparrot]

I was about to post the same Canadian Press story...

[A1A-Keet]

Omg this is too funny

[Sanjuro's tequila]

A Gazette story in December 2007 found that tickets for two Céline Dion concerts at the Bell Centre sold out in under 15 minutes.

Moral: You simply don't come between Canucks and their Celine!!

[Spider Johnson]

Where is Jimmy on this? I like what "The Boss" did. I wonder how many other artists are going to sign up to have their names removed? Any odds on Jimmy being one of them?
I also wonder how many people are going to actually get any money back?

Take the bastards down and take them down hard. Let them bleed as much as they have bled everyone else. With interest of course.

$500 Million? Over all these years, ammounts to nothing! How many concerts have they ripped people off/sold such tickets? What did they get per concert? Do the math for just one concert.

Let Congress make an example out of them. Oh wait Congress really sets a fine example, don't they. No doubt ticketbastards learned from them.