John Deutzman's Blog

This is really a messed up situation. Especially since New York State made it legal to sell tickets for whatever the "market" will bear. I don't know -- on one hand, it's capitalism to resell tickets. On the other hand, it's ridiculous if brokers buy up ALL the tickets using slimy technology to beat the ticket-limit system.

Funny thing -- last year I bought tickets from Ticketmaster to see The Police; I ended up having extras and I had an almost IMPOSSIBLE time reselling them -- AT FACE VALUE!

--Arun/MyFoxNY.com

We are most definitely being screwed.
I recently spent several hours at my computer trying to get 4 tickets for a Jonas Brothers concert in Bridgeport, CT as a birthday surprise for my daughter and her friend (the other 2 were for her Mom and myself!) I settled down in my chair 10 minutes before the tickets went on sale and with a couple of minutes to go started to refresh the "find tickets" page. When I finally did get through they were all gone....every last one. This was at 12.03pm. Now I realise that this was going to be a difficult task but I was furious to discover that a huge amount of tickets were to be found on sites like Cheaptickets and Stubhub for sale up to $1000 each!!! I had to explain to my daughter that her "surprise" was not to be as I refuse to be ripped off in this way. Having revisited these sites in the hope of getting some good news I discover that there are single tickets left for not much more than face price, not that I or any parent in their right mind would purchase seats in different areas of the stadium for their 11 year old and themselves. I hope that these agencies are left with hundreds of unsellable single tickets and that it hurts them badly. This is a disgrace that needs to be stopped right now.

This doesn't happen all the time....I saw the Spice Girls and Carrie Underwood this weekend by purchasing tickets from Ticketmaster at face price...no problems on the website with either of these purchases.

Recently, for a Las Vegas show, I paid $190.00 ticket, $28.00 handling, and $15.00 shipping adding up to $233.00 for one ticket, through a ticket broker, that when I received it was actually $92.00! Unbelievable!! "Highway Robbery"

It's also interesting to note that Ticketmaster has its own "resale" Website (TicketExchange), where ticketholders can sell extra tickets...

I was one of the ladies that was on this story last night, and the reason I was part of this story is because I don't want other children like my niece to have to go thru being up set because they can't see their favorite group. I wish I could afford the price that they are asking for now but I can't because my income is limited and my check that I get for the month is not enough to pay for those tickets, because I am about 45 percent without vision. Plus I wanted the governor and the senators of New Jersey too see this story because they don't enforce their own law. I even wrote to them, and not one off their offices has wrote me back. Hey my niece deserves concert tickets, because she is a child who gets stage awarded honors in school, plus she is a safety patrol monitor, a student council member, she is in the band, plus she does activities outside of school, and her grades never go below 88.

Grouchy,

Your screen name says it all. How do you explain the fact that all tickets are gone immediately? How do explain the testimony of both Ticketmaster and the ticket broker that claim there is a system out there designed to scarf up all the tickets.
Whatever is going on screws over the hard working people who make up the fan base for these groups and teams.
Of course as long as all of the politcians get their seats with a few phone calls (if they can fit in them) there won't be any outcry.

john

"How do you explain the fact that all tickets are gone immediately?"

40,000 people want to go and there are only 10,000 seats! I'm sure the 2 people in your report weren't the only people on their computer or on the phone trying to buy tickets; far from it in fact. Ticketmasters technology can process orders in a very timely manner, (within seconds). If you announced that you'd be outside your office giving away 100 checks for $1,000 each, do you think more than 100 people would show up to get one? And based on that number of people interested, how long do you think it will take you to hand out the 100 checks you have? Not very long.

In terms of your second question, I never said there wasn't software that gives the users an advantage in buying tickets -- I'm sure there is. But if it bought ALL the tickets, they'd all be up for sale and NO hard working people would get to go. That is not the case. Plenty of hard working people do get their tickets direct from Ticketmaster and it's easy to look at the resale market and see how much is there. It's not ALL the tickets, it's not 50% of the tickets and not even 20% of the tickets. It's a small percentage for any given show. So, a few hard working people can't get tickets. Just like a few hard working people can't afford health care, a new Cadillac or filet mignon every night.

How can you say hard working people are getting screwed? There simply weren't enough tickets to go around, just like you didn't have enough $1000 checks to go around. In our free society, not everyone gets everything -- it's not sprea

Hey Johnny Boy:
Why in "the wide world of sports"are you wasting your preciuos time addressing a "practice" that is "as old as prostitution?"
Remember...how does it go..."ROYAL SCREWING"?
JC

This story is a dead end, John. Like any industry, you're going to have your bad apples that use questionable methods to achieve their goal -- that's understood and it's as wrong in the ticket industry as it is in oil, the stock market or any other business. But you make it sound like everyone reselling tickets is crooked and screwing the general public, (and always have been), and that's just wrong.

Saying that scalpers "scarf" all the tickets up is simply not true. If they did, you'd be able to go to Stubhub or any other ticket reselling site and see 40,000+ tickets available for a Mets / Phillies game. The problem is, you have no evidence to substantiate your claims; in fact, the evidence that everyone with a computer has access to disproves major aspects of your report.

Hey all negative people? I did do research on this matter, and I still have the print outs to prove it. Theere is 10 or more pages with ticket broker or scalping websites that sell tickets are a crazy price. I am also sadden that ticketmaster has ticketexchange, and that the meadowlands and prudential center in Newark also has sites where you can buy tickets at a higher price, but just think if people didn't buy these tickets from these sites, the brokers and scalpers would o out of business, and it wouldn't mater to the performers because they would have made there money already.