Ticketmaster scalping? - Printable Version

Ticketmaster scalping? - Printable Version

+- PunBB (https://punbb.in)
+-- Forum: General Discussion - Hipbase.com (https://punbb.in/forumdisplay.php?fid=4)
+--- Forum: Non Tragically Hip Discussion (https://punbb.in/forumdisplay.php?fid=9)
+--- Thread: Ticketmaster scalping? (/showthread.php?tid=12269)

Pages: 1 2

Ticketmaster scalping? - kelman66 - 01-03-2009

A little story from cbc some may find interesting.
cheers

<a class="postlink" href="http://www.cbc.ca/consumer/story/2009/01/02/ticketmaster-consumers.html#socialcomments">http://www.cbc.ca/consumer/story/2009/0 ... alcomments</a>

Re: Ticketmaster scalping? - kelman66 - 02-25-2009

seems relevant again

Boycott Tricketmaster

Re: Ticketmaster scalping? - MountainHip - 02-27-2009

Pile on some more.................

<a class="postlink" href="http://www.cbc.ca/canada/toronto/story/2009/02/25/ticketmaster-cohen.html?ref=rss#socialcomments">http://www.cbc.ca/canada/toronto/story/ ... alcomments</a>

Re: Ticketmaster scalping? - skippy the wonder dog - 03-24-2009

Looks like game over, in Ontario at least:
<a class="postlink" href="http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20090324.wticket0324/BNStory/National/home">http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/ ... ional/home</a>

March 24, 2009 at 12:06 PM EDT

TORONTO — The Ontario government geared up Tuesday for a fight with Ticketmaster, threatening legislation to stop the entertainment giant from allowing tickets for concerts in the province to be resold on its TicketsNow website.

The province tried to convince Ticketmaster to stop the practice on its own, said Premier Dalton McGuinty, but the company wasn't willing. That's forced the government to bring in a bill to stop the resale of tickets to Ontario events on TicketsNow, he said.

Re: Ticketmaster scalping? - grimes - 03-24-2009

skippy the wonder dog Wrote:Looks like game over, in Ontario at least:
<a class="postlink" href="http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20090324.wticket0324/BNStory/National/home">http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/ ... ional/home</a>

March 24, 2009 at 12:06 PM EDT

TORONTO — The Ontario government geared up Tuesday for a fight with Ticketmaster, threatening legislation to stop the entertainment giant from allowing tickets for concerts in the province to be resold on its TicketsNow website.

The province tried to convince Ticketmaster to stop the practice on its own, said Premier Dalton McGuinty, but the company wasn't willing. That's forced the government to bring in a bill to stop the resale of tickets to Ontario events on TicketsNow, he said.

:nooooo

Dalton has completely missed the point here. So TicketsNow won't be able to re-sell tickets, but we'll continue to ignore Stub-hub, Ebay, Ticket Brokers, and the guys on the street outside the Air Canada Centre every night?

There is always going to be a ticket re-sale market. If Dalton is actually concerned with "protecting consumers," we need to regulate it, rather than making everything illegal and forcing it underground...

Re: Ticketmaster scalping? - skippy the wonder dog - 03-24-2009

Well, I don't know exactly how it is that TicketsNow is legal, so they would need new legislation. But presumably new legislation aimed at TicketsNow would also render illegal sales for events in Ontario through eBay, StubHub, etc. You can't aim a law at a single business.

This puts you back to the scalper on the street. Fact is you'll never really deal with him, or other underground scalpers.

But knocking it underground will help consumers. The ready and obvious availability of tickets through legit sources like TicketsNow serves to increase prices. The scalper outside the ACC needs to unload them tonight, or lose his money; unless the show is sold out, he has problems demanding top dollar, and many people don't bother, assuming they won't be able to get seats. The online scalper selling through a legit, widely known service is dealing with thousands of potential buyers, all competing for a limited number of easily accessed tickets. Result: higher prices.

Not a complete solution, definitely, but a good move.

Re: Ticketmaster scalping? - The Horrible Esthete - 03-24-2009

I'm no practitioner of law, but I don't think it's the 'brokering' itself that is drawing the threat of litigation; it's the conflict of interest surrounding the brokering that has lawmakers concerned, isn't it?

Ticketbastard often holds exclusive rights as the original merchant for event tickets; for them to even offer or sponsor this secondhand brokering service raises serious questions of collusion on their behalf. They can say "Oh, sorry...'Ticketmaster' has sold out of tickets for your event, but you can buy them on our 'TicketsNow ®' site for an inflated price".

Re: Ticketmaster scalping? - grimes - 03-24-2009

skippy the wonder dog Wrote:Well, I don't know exactly how it is that TicketsNow is legal, so they would need new legislation. But presumably new legislation aimed at TicketsNow would also render illegal sales for events in Ontario through eBay, StubHub, etc. You can't aim a law at a single business.

This puts you back to the scalper on the street. Fact is you'll never really deal with him, or other underground scalpers.

But knocking it underground will help consumers. The ready and obvious availability of tickets through legit sources like TicketsNow serves to increase prices. The scalper outside the ACC needs to unload them tonight, or lose his money; unless the show is sold out, he has problems demanding top dollar, and many people don't bother, assuming they won't be able to get seats. The online scalper selling through a legit, widely known service is dealing with thousands of potential buyers, all competing for a limited number of easily accessed tickets. Result: higher prices.

Not a complete solution, definitely, but a good move.

As Esthete pointed out, there are two issues: 1) re-selling tickets above face value 2) Ticketmaster owning a re-seller and thus creating a conflict of interest. Since #1 is already illegal in this province why would we need a new law for it? I assume the new law being contemplated is going to address #2. Fair enough.

My beef is the fact that the government is continuing to ignore issue #1, which is far more important. Obviously we're only talking about sold out events here. For events that aren't sold out people can just buy from the box office, so there is no issue with sales above face value. And don't dismiss the guy on the street so easily. He's not just "a guy" these days. It's an organized cartel, and it's big business. Walk around the west side of the ACC on an event night and you'll usually notice a Lamborghini parked nearby. It belongs to the "head scalper" in this town. Just for fun, try to buy tickets for a Leafs game from one of them well after the game has started. They usually won't budge from the price they were asking before the game, because they don't want people to think you can get in cheap by waiting until the game starts. They'd rather not sell the ticket and take a loss than hurt their market in the long run (Though this applies less to one-time events like concerts).

As for the online secondary market resulting in higher prices - if the laws of the land were actually enforced, this wouldn't be the case, because these sites would be forced to limit sales to face value (save for a reasonable sales commission/service fee).

Re: Ticketmaster scalping? - GCPC107 - 03-25-2009

The Ministry of Justice and Attorney General of Saskatchewan has recently published a Discussion Paper regarding Ticket Selling and Reselling. It looks at the existing laws in Ontario, Manitoba and Alberta and discusses the arguments relating to the problem and the options available to address the problem. It is not too long and it is written in a plain language manner. The link is as follows:

<a class="postlink" href="http://www.justice.gov.sk.ca/Ticketresellingdiscussion">http://www.justice.gov.sk.ca/Ticketresellingdiscussion</a>

I recommend taking the time to look at this.

Re: Ticketmaster scalping? - skippy the wonder dog - 03-25-2009

grimes Wrote:As Esthete pointed out, there are two issues: 1) re-selling tickets above face value 2) Ticketmaster owning a re-seller and thus creating a conflict of interest. Since #1 is already illegal in this province why would we need a new law for it?

I haven't actually looked at the bill. But I suspect Ticketmaster is saying, look, this has nothing to do with us, we're just the hub, the service provider. You have to go after the resellers themselves.

Then the legislation would be to clarify that if you operate such a hub, you may not allow resellers to sell tickets to events in Ontario for more than face value.

I agree with you that the existing law needs to be enforced, but a law to clarify the responsibility of anyone operating a ticket resale site strikes me as a good thing also.

Re: Ticketmaster scalping? - grimes - 03-25-2009

skippy the wonder dog Wrote:
grimes Wrote:As Esthete pointed out, there are two issues: 1) re-selling tickets above face value 2) Ticketmaster owning a re-seller and thus creating a conflict of interest. Since #1 is already illegal in this province why would we need a new law for it?

I haven't actually looked at the bill. But I suspect Ticketmaster is saying, look, this has nothing to do with us, we're just the hub, the service provider. You have to go after the resellers themselves.

Then the legislation would be to clarify that if you operate such a hub, you may not allow resellers to sell tickets to events in Ontario for more than face value.

I agree with you that the existing law needs to be enforced, but a law to clarify the responsibility of anyone operating a ticket resale site strikes me as a good thing also.

I haven't read the bill either, but if that is the case, I admire your faith in the government. Call me a cynic, but until there's some evidence that they actually intend to enforce the law, I don't see it as anything more than cursory response from the Premier's office to quell the recent public outrage over ticketmaster...

Re: Ticketmaster scalping? - grimes - 03-25-2009

GCPC107 Wrote:The Ministry of Justice and Attorney General of Saskatchewan has recently published a Discussion Paper regarding Ticket Selling and Reselling. It looks at the existing laws in Ontario, Manitoba and Alberta and discusses the arguments relating to the problem and the options available to address the problem. It is not too long and it is written in a plain language manner. The link is as follows:

<a class="postlink" href="http://www.justice.gov.sk.ca/Ticketresellingdiscussion">http://www.justice.gov.sk.ca/Ticketresellingdiscussion</a>

I recommend taking the time to look at this.

Thanks for that, it sums things up quite nicely. Personally I still favour the regulation option. We won't ever eliminate the black market, but at least it allows consumers who want to get rid of tickets they've already purchased a legitimate way to do so, and a legitimate way for those who missed the public on-sale to purchase in-demand tickets without having to worry about whether the tickets are real or not...

Re: Ticketmaster scalping? - skippy the wonder dog - 03-25-2009

grimes Wrote:Call me a cynic, but until there's some evidence that they actually intend to enforce the law, I don't see it as anything more than cursory response from the Premier's office to quell the recent public outrage over ticketmaster...

Yes, it wouldn't be the first time a government in this country has introduced purely cosmetic and meaningless legislation to convince the public that they're actually doing something more effective than flapping their arms and squawking.

I must be allowing my hatred of Ticketmaster to cloud my judgment. Wink

Re: Ticketmaster scalping? - skippy the wonder dog - 04-03-2009

On the topic of ticket brokers, anyone see this little feel-good story?

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20090403.wticketmaster03/BNStory/Entertainment/home

"I wouldn't want to pay this much money to see myself" -- Charley Pride

Re: Ticketmaster scalping? - emperor penguin - 04-03-2009

skippy the wonder dog Wrote:On the topic of ticket brokers, anyone see this little feel-good story?

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20090403.wticketmaster03/BNStory/Entertainment/home

"I wouldn't want to pay this much money to see myself" -- Charley Pride

:lol: I didn't realize a Charley Pride ticket was still in that much demand, nice story nonetheless.