Ticketmaster Is Not Having A Great Week, But Neither Are Ticket Buyers
A few weeks ago, Bruce Springsteen fans were up in arms after tickets to his hotly anticipated homecoming shows appeared on Ticketmaster’s “secondary market” site TicketsNow suspiciously close to their onsale time. But somehow, the ticketing behemoth managed to top itself, faux pas-wise, with the No Doubt reunion shows in the band’s homeland of Orange County, Calif.: Tickets to those shows were listed on TicketsNow some 24 hours before they went on sale to fan club members, and more than a week before they were available to the general public. Bet you Irving Azoff is hoping that the local Congressional representatives aren’t big Gwen Stefani fans.
On the same day that Live Nation announced that tickets would be put on sale March 7 for No Doubt’s Irvine concerts, TicketsNow.com already listed 57 tickets for those shows for sale for prices ranging from $70 to $854. That was also more than 24 hours before presale tickets would be offered to members of the group’s Tour Club. (One of TicketsNow.com’s competitors, StubHub.com, also shows ticket listings for those No Doubt shows with prices running from $76 to $342.)
Under the agreement, Ticketmaster promised “not to allow the sale or offer of sale of any tickets on the TicketsNow.com re-selling website until the initial sale begins on its primary website,” according to the statement issued Monday by Atty. Gen. Anne Milgram’s office. That deal also led to Ticketmaster’s vow that “all tickets it receives for sale to the general public will be sold on its primary market website.”
Fans in other areas have complained that the practice has continued this week, with TicketsNow.com also offering resale tickets for upcoming shows by Leonard Cohen and Brad Paisley, among others, before they’ve gone on sale through primary ticket outlets.
To their credit, I guess, TicketsNow removed the listings for the No Doubt and Leonard Cohen shows from their system, and probably the people offering tickets didn’t actually have them in hand, but this is another suspicious move in a series of shady dealings by a company that isn’t exactly popular at present.
