Something seems off here.

A few weeks ago I was completely irritated about not getting M. Ward tickets and wrote this complaint about Ticketmaster but never posted it (who knows why). Still had it saved and figured it was worth rehashing considering the recent controversy about Ticketmaster’s scalping site. The fact that this is getting attention is great news- of course it took something as high profile as a Bruce Springsteen show, but that’s fine. Unfortunately this good news is offset somewhat by the pending buyout of Ticketmaster by Live Nation to create an all encompassing ticket and venue behemoth- hard to believe this wouldn’t be in violation of antitrust laws, but it sounds like it has quite a bit of momentum.

Anyway, here goes:

I realize complaints against Ticketmaster are not the most the most original subject. We all know it is a monopoly, fees are exorbitant, etc. It's been this way forever, and despite the sometimes ridiculous lengths I will go to in avoiding them, doing business with Ticketmaster is as inevitable as the 47% in service charges and fees that they recently stuck me with on Fleet Foxes tickets. 

But the racket has been taken to an entirely new level- now they have something called TicketsNow, which is essentially an online scalper site, run by, you guessed it, Ticketmaster. 

Here's how it worked for me. M. Ward tickets for the Somerville Theater went on sale at 10:00 a.m. I know this is a relatively small venue, so at 9:59 I'm refreshing so that as soon as this opens up, I can get in. First try at tickets gives me upper-upper balcony, so I try again for better, and 2nd try (for orchestra) tells me that section is sold out. But the sold out screen now directs you to TicketsNow.

So somehow in the course of 45 seconds Ticketmaster's OWN scalper site already has dozens of tickets available for $100+ (face is $20). Granted, there was a "pre-sale" for this show, which was basically the same as the on-sale but opened a few days earlier. I did the same 10:00 refresh for that and the only thing that came up were seats in the far
corners of the right and left orchestra. So there is an entire center orchestra section that seems impossible to get tickets to, unless you're willing to pay resale prices on the scalper site. The FAQ says that the TicketsNow tickets are from "brokers", but are we really supposed to not assume that Ticketmaster isn't just holding back tickets so that they can sell them at higher costs on this site? What a scam. 

I suppose it is possible that there was a huge rush on tickets. But in my experience in ticket buying in Boston, which is pretty extensive, sell outs like this rarely happen. It's one of the great things about seeing music in this city- shows will sell out eventually, but if you're on the ball you can almost always get in, and probably get good seats if it's not a club. And as notable as M. Ward has become (he would definitely sell this place out eventually), there's just no way that all orchestra tickets were gone in 45 seconds. 

Business is business I suppose. I'm lucky enough to live close to a lot of the venues I go to, so I can buy directly there and don't have to deal with this too often. And if not, I've had great luck bypassing Ticketmaster with Music Today and Ducat King pre-sales. But I'm still amazed that such an incredibly high level of widespread consumer-screwing is allowed to happen. 

Turns out I was incorrect on one thing here- the M. Ward show did indeed sell out quite quickly, so I misjudged this one and should have just bought the tickets when I had the chance. But I still can't believe it sold out THIS quickly, and have to think it is at least in part due to the reallocation of tickets to the scalping site. Very interested to see where this story goes. Worth noting that Ticketmaster seems to have taken down the scalping site, at least for now.