It's funny how there's all sorts of "laws" and "rules" to prevent monopolies from dominating our economy, and yet somehow, Ticketmaster has managed to sidle past them all to become our sole ticket-bearing god. And what a spiteful and vengeful god it is.
This morning, I eagerly waited for my computer clock to slip from 9:59 to 10:00, credit card in hand, ready to buy tickets to the recently announced Billy Joel/Elton John concert next March.
I consider myself an old pro at this. In my youth, I was famous for knowing which Ticketmaster locations were the least populated, resulting in the shortest lines and therefore best seats. With the onset of the internet age, I quickly learned how to prepare for an onsale date like an athlete training for a big race...I get up early so that I'm clear and focused. I sign into my Ticketmaster account ahead of time to avoid wasted time during the purchasing process. I have all of my information laid out in front of me, knowing exactly how much I'm willing to spend and where I want my seats to be.
It's all a little excessive. But it's proven successful many times, resulting in great seats at some awesome concerts - I've never been front row, but I've been lucky enough to avoid the nosebleed/back-of-the-stage/I-can't-see-over-the-6'5"-dude-in-front-of-me seats.
Until today.
I followed my usual routine. I refreshed the event page precisely at 9:59:59 a.m. The ticket page appeared, I clicked on my choice of ticket price (the middle selection of only 3 options for this show), and I waited for several minutes while the site told me my wait would be "3 minutes...6 minutes...9 minutes...13 minutes...8 minutes...4 minutes...6 minutes..." You get the point.
After about 3 1/2 minutes total, the ticket screen came up, offering me.....nothing. There are no tickets available at this price.
Huh?? But it's only 10:03! I was literally one of the first people in line - and you're telling me that an entire third of the seats have already sold out??
So I swallowed my pride and started over, this time choosing the - eek - lowest price option. I was still hoping for a decent seat - sure, I'd likely be way high up in the rafters, but maybe I could snag front row of the uppers, or at the least an aisle seat.
This wait time was much shorter. WIthin a matter of seconds, I was taken to the ticket screen, seeing that the search resulted in.....no seats.
Ok. Now you have to be joking with me. Two thirds of the seats sold out in less than 4 minutes?? I've never, ever had this happen to me before, not for the most popular shows, and I've seen a few spectacular ones.
And that's when I saw it. To the right of the somewhat apologetic but somehow snide "no tickets available" box, there was an ad. An ad to try to purchase my tickets for this show elsewhere, namely, on a ticket broker website. A broker owned by.....
Ticketmaster.
Seriously. My jaw dropped open. I mean, I already knew that there were scores of ticket brokers out there who grab up thousands of tickets in order to re-sell them to us, the innocent public, at ridiculously inflated prices. But how innately wrong is it for Ticketmaster to own one of them?!?!?
They even had ticket prices listed...at FIVE TIMES the original sale price. Specific seat numbers. All within a few short moments of the tickets going "on sale" to the general public. Clearly, Ticketmaster allowed this - ahem - broker to buy up a goodly amount of the tickets before anyone else could even bring up the purchasing page.
I call bullshit. Big time bullshit.
So here's what happens (it seems to me): Ticketmaster advertises tickets going on sale for the price agreed upon with the artist and venue, etc etc. They then leave a minimal amount of those tickets for sale to the public, while scooping up the majority of them to re-sell on their "broker" website at a much higher price. They make the face value on the original tickets PLUS whatever extra they can tag onto the bloated broker price. They're effectively cheating both the public AND the artists!! But because they can skate around arguments by showing that they do indeed sell SOME tickets at face value on the actual Ticketmaster site (mostly the higher end tickets, natch), there's not much anyone can say or do.
It's a scam. It fucking sucks. And I'm not going to this concert now because of it.
Isn't there anything we can do about this??? I wish I could band us all together, we could all rise up, march against the evil overlords, and encourage venues to sell tickets themselves, abolishing the massive greedy monopoly that is the Ticketmaster.
But if Pearl Jam couldn't do it, then I doubt that one measly unknown blogger chick can.
So I'll skip the Joel/John concert, albeit in a rather peeved state of being. And I'll continue to hope that the government or perhaps another popular artist with a conscience will eventually step forward to challenge the Master.
Until then, I'm renting "U2 in 3D."
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