Is There Any Hope For Fan Friendly Ticket Buying? City Council Holds First Hearing

Earlier this week we reported that a city councilman was going to attempt to make ticket buying more fan friendly. Yesterday morning, councilman Dan Garodnick held the first hearing on what we'll call, for now, The Radiohead Law (since that band's concerts in New York last month are what inspired him). He Tweeted from the hearing yesterday, "One witness talks about the difficulty of getting Knicks tickets. Knicks games these days are trying enough!"

The new legislation, introduced by Queens City Councilman Leroy Comrie, would require venues with 3,000 or more seats to be forced to reserve at least 15 percent of their tickets for the general public, available at the box office. Garodnick says, "People are increasingly frustrated by the fact that when they go to buy tickets to an event, they sell out in a nanosecond," later forcing the fan to spend way over face value if they want to get into the show, presumably stuffing the pockets of the artist they want to see. As we previously noted, artists like Katy Perry and Taylor Swift are hoarding their own tickets to sell via secondary markets at higher rates. DNA Info reports that in 2009 Taylor Swift only made 1,600 of 13,000 tickets available to the public; when tickets sell out in mere seconds, it creates more buzz for the artist.

Garodnick's crusade is shockingly being criticized by Ticketmaster. The corporate monolith says, “While well-intentioned the bill the City Council is considering would do exactly what it is trying to prevent. This bill would help scalpers and brokers gain access to more face-value tickets only to resell them to fans at much higher prices. The only people that lose in this scenario are the fans." Even if they should significantly lower their fees, they may have a point.

Can a world where there's only one Radiohead ever be a world where every fan is satisfied and gets to see them? Probably not. But, and this is a true story, Ike Willis once told us backstage at a small club in Providence that Frank Zappa had been working on a hologram machine which would allow him to play simultaneous concerts all over the world. Get into the laboratory, Ticketmaster. And until then, try actually providing "service" if you continue to bill us for "service charges."

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By Jen Carlson in Arts & Entertainment on October 29, 2011 12:17 PM

Comments [rss]

BombasticSports.com

Going to a show is a privledge not a right. If you can't get a ticket that's too bad. If they are all purchased by resellers then those are the breaks. Just because you own every album an artist has put out doesn't entitle you to see them in concert. It's a business not a charity. If you can't get tickets when they go on sale, try harder. If you can't afford to buy tickets on the secondary ticket market, make more money. It's just a concert.

bilowj

Sounds like you guys had just as much luck with NYE tickets today as I did.

A way to fix this would be to put the buyers name on the ticket and have them show ID to get in. In the case where they couldn't go the tickets could be reallocated to a the ticket pool or a waiting list or resold through a secondary site owned by TM for face value. Think what ticketsnow should be.

anon

What if you want to buy tickets for someone as a gift? Artists holding back tickets is pretty unfair. on the other hand, if all tickets are released in a general sale, and you are too slow to buy them and scalpers end up with them, that is your loss. you need to move quickly if you want something in high demand.

bilowj

You have obviously never tried to buy tickets for highly coveted shows through ticketmaster. Starting 30 minutes before onsale all phone lines all busy and the website is more or less unreachable. If you call in early and happen to get through prior to the on sale time they will tell you to call back and hang up on you. If I don't have hours to wait in line at a TM outlet, access the website or get through by phone in the 5 minutes it takes for the show to sell out it's my fault? Make sure you know what you're talking about before you tell people what to do.

If you want to buy tickets as a gift, get them a gift card.

anon

I know exactly what Im talking about. While I agree with you about the phone lines (but who uses a phone to order tickets), i completely disagree about the internet. I have never experienced TM being unreachable the few minutes before the show. I wait with my mouse on refresh for those minutes and then refresh right at 10am when the sale starts, click the options as fast as possible and type the captcha as fast as possible. I have been able to get tickets to many popular concerts this way. make sure to upgrade from your 56k modem before declaring that TM is unreachable near sales time.

you would think its an acceptable gift if i gave you a giftcard and said : here try buying tix to this popular show which makes you have to spend time getting them and if you dont the gift card is a waste. might as well give cash. what a great gift. you are delusional.

schmeep

They did this for Radiohead, and it still didn't work. Try again.

Unkle_Bob

How did it not work? Sure there were still some scalpers, but they had to work a lot harder, and were limited in number of possible tickets.