MarcO Posted August 7, 2003 Report Share Posted August 7, 2003 http://www.denverpost.com/Stories/0,1413,36~33~1555882,00.html Article Published: Thursday, August 07, 2003 - 12:00:00 AM MST Ticketmaster sued by band Action centers on direct sales By Tom McGhee, Denver Post Business Writer A ticketing company formed by popular jam band The String Cheese Incident is suing Ticketmaster Corp. for allegedly interfering with its plans to sell seats directly to fans. Ticketmaster not only is blocking the direct sales, it is charging more for the tickets than fans otherwise would pay, according to a suit filed Wednesday in U.S. District Court in Denver. Los Angeles-based Ticketmaster doesn't comment on litigation, said Ticketmaster spokesman Larry Solters. The 20-page lawsuit filed by SCI Ticketing tells this story: The Boulder-based band formed SCI Ticketing in 1998 as a partnership with Madison House Inc., an artist-management and booking agency. Through SCI, the band offers concert tickets directly to its own fans and sells tickets to performances by other acts. SCI said that until recently, it was able to get from promoters and venues up to half of all sellable tickets for concerts by its various acts. Advertisement In 1999, SCI began offering tickets through TicketWeb, an Internet company that Ticketmaster acquired the following year, the suit said. Last year, Ticketmaster notified concert promoters and venues with whom it had exclusive agreements that artist-to-fan ticketing services such as SCI no longer would get the same number of tickets they had in the past. The only exceptions to the rule would be fan clubs that charged at least $15 per person per year for membership and agreed to several conditions. "The String Cheese Incident has never charged its fans for the privilege of belonging to a fan club. Nor have any of the other artists who use SCI Ticketing's services," the suit read. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CyberHippie Posted August 7, 2003 Report Share Posted August 7, 2003 That's pretty crazy, who decided along the way the ticketmaster would have almost exlusive rights to events? Is it the venue's? Who? I want names! Although I have to say I've been screwed a couple of times buying tickets through SCI ticketing and ended up paying more than I would have had through ticketmaster. How sad is that! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kung Posted August 7, 2003 Report Share Posted August 7, 2003 It's called a racket. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Stapes Posted August 7, 2003 Report Share Posted August 7, 2003 Give'r SCI. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bald guy in a blanket Posted August 7, 2003 Report Share Posted August 7, 2003 Typically it's the venues and promoters who go to Ticketfucker. It's part of the global trend of downloading your company's responsibilities to an outside company. It's a lot easier to put on a show, or sell a product, if you can hire away your responsibility to your customers. That way no one is actually responsible. Promoters and artists (mostly) blame Ticketmasacre while they blame the venue, promoter or just claim that they are too busy. It's progress. It makes for profit, baby. While we have to pay 75 bucks to see the Dead. How much easier is it to sell someone a shit sandwich if you don't actually have to watch them eat it? The thing is the artists could change this. And I mean more than just fan club tickets. They're the ones in demand. A band like Phish could sell a whole venue through mail order and record stores. If someone (a promoter)found the venues that don't have deals with Ticketcocksucker it wouldn't be that hard. Most of them don't care. The're busy, besides they give out 200 tickets on their website. (Pearl Jam tried, did a whole tour, then signed an agreement with who else? Ticketcrapper) The promoters are all ambition driven folks who want to "play with the big boys" and that means Ticketmolester. ...and you know what...I'll still pay 80 bucks to see a show. So it's my fault too. The buck is getting passed so fast we can't even see that there is a buck anymore. All it'll take for change is for some idealistic, goodhearted, financially sound company to stand up and take reponsibility for making the system better for consumers. Shouldn't be a problem, ask a keyboard player about the history of MIDI. I've got to go sell a Kidney to see Springsteen in Buffalo. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MarcO Posted August 7, 2003 Author Report Share Posted August 7, 2003 hey baldguy- Springsteen @ SkyDome Sept 10th. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DevO Posted August 7, 2003 Report Share Posted August 7, 2003 Fuck those clowns!!! Click here for a TicketMaster story. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
secondtube Posted August 8, 2003 Report Share Posted August 8, 2003 quote: String Cheese Incident takes Ticketmaster to court LOS ANGELES, Aug 6 (Reuters) - Colorado jam rock band String Cheese Incident has filed suit against Ticketmaster in federal court in Denver, charging the No. 1 concert ticket retailer had tried to cut off direct ticket sales to fans. At issue are the blocks of concert tickets typically held back for sales to die-hard fans, a practice successfully pioneered by the Grateful Dead and now common for many acts including Pearl Jam, Fleetwood Mac, Aerosmith and others. In the lawsuit filed on Wednesday, SCI Ticketing, a company formed by a partnership between the band and Madison House, a booking agency, charged Ticketmaster had used its "monopoly power" and "a web of long-term" contracts to cut off its supply of concert tickets. A spokesman for Ticketmaster said the company does not comment on pending lawsuits as a matter of policy. The lawsuit asks for damages and a court order barring Ticketmaster from the alleged anti-competitive practices. Boulder, Colorado-based SCI Ticketing provides tickets for concerts by String Cheese Incident, King Crimson and others. The company is one of several businesses spun off by String Cheese Incident, which sells its own concert CDs and DVDs, books travel for fans and supports charity causes through its affiliates. SCI Ticketing said in the lawsuit that Ticketmaster had targeted the artist-run agency and instructed concert venues and promoters to stop supplying it with tickets. "This concerted refusal to deal with SCI Ticketing, and Ticketmaster's monopolization of the relevant market and its abuse of that monopoly power, are causing damage to SCI Ticketing and may lead to its demise," the lawsuit said. Los Angeles-based Ticketmaster is a unit of media mogul Barry Diller's InterActiveCorp. (nasdaq: IACI - news - people) In the lawsuit, SCI Ticketing said that Ticketmaster had told concert promoters and venues with which it has long-term contracts in May 2002 that it would only allow direct-to-fan sales by SCI and others if the bands in question had "legitimate" fan clubs. Those were defined in part as fan clubs that charge at least $15 per person for membership. String Cheese Incident has never charged its fans for belonging to a fan club and saw no reason to impose such a charge just to obtain tickets, according to the suit. Copyright 2003, Reuters News Service Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TonyRage Posted August 8, 2003 Report Share Posted August 8, 2003 From my understanding, a venue can choose to have an exclusive contract with a ticketing agency, regardless of what the promoters want. Venues usually have some leeway on this because they need to maintain relationships with promoters in most cases. The bigger the venue, the more sway ticketmaster will have because promoters have fewer choices for concerts with predicted large audiences (say 10,000 spectators and up). Bands really cannot do much about this except to organize their own shows/festivals, rent the space and hire another agency as well as promoters who will work specifically for the show. This makes the concert that much more expensive to put on and you end up with tickets that are just as, or more expensive (take It for example) than ticketbugger ticketed concerts. It is a flawless system for ticketfucker and gives them a virtual monopoly on large-scale concerts. In the case of SCI ticketing, the venues have a right to say no to ticketcumwads demands to make a larger percentage of tickets available exclusive through ticketgretzky, but run the risk of losing their deal with ticketgimp and then not selling enough tickets to make it profitable since people will be confused on how to get tickets (TM is easy to use for sure). This is when the promoters say "hey, no way am I losing money cause the stupid band wants to help their stupid fans. I'm not taking a hit on this one." And so TicketJohnWayneBobbittfucker is back on top of teh sales with the deal they want from the venue. quote: And to think, they all laughed when I bought ticketmaster. No one is going to pay a 50% service charge." Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
weezy Posted August 8, 2003 Report Share Posted August 8, 2003 If only we could do something like this: click here The USA: Taking a club to the cowering seal of democracy. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MuleMomma Posted August 8, 2003 Report Share Posted August 8, 2003 As one of the many bookers of the Comfort Zone (between May 1999 and March 2001, and then back for a short time pre-closure), the one hard lesson I learned is that it's best for your patrons to have a ticket before the event. In that way, they're pretty committed to coming to the show night of, and not likely to lame out or look for other things to do instead. Often we were counting on reaching an out-of-town or suburban market (not just the downtown core of Toronto) in order to break even on the show. So, as often as we could, we would try to have tickets available at local record stores and convenient locations so that if possible our patrons could avoid being screwed by TM. In the end though, in order to have tickets available to everyone conveniently, it would make most sense to go the TM route. In all cases, we would include the mandatory 17% Entertainment Tax within the base price of the ticket, so that the end result TM ticket cost (including other taxes, handling and shipping charges) wouldn't be as much of a shock. When making tickets available through TM, you have the option as to whether you want the 17% added on after the base ticket price or before. Either way, it's gonna be there, the only difference being the shock when your $21 ticket becomes $30, or the base ticket price being the $25 in the first place. Anyway, interestingly enough, one of my final shows booked was Mike Clark's Prescription Renewal, featuring Mike Clark on drums, Charlie Hunter on guitar, Robert Walter on keys, Skerik on sax, and DJ Logic on tables. As a result, it was the first I'd heard of them, but Music Today contacted me about selling tickets to their fan base for the show. Sounded like a plan, making tickets even more widely available to patrons. Well, shortly after agreeing, I received a call from TM saying that it was a breach of the contract I had signed, and that my ticket agreement was exclusive with them. I'm not sure where it stands now, but I'm thinking that perhaps TM have relaxed their rules on this stipulation, as more recently I've attended many shows that have been available through both means. Anyway, I'm not pro-TM by any means, but speaking from a promotional standpoint, often your options are limited, and as much as I wish there were other alternatives (I remember the days of having 2 or 3 options), I would not blame any venue or promoter who makes the choice to have tickets available through TM as it increases the convenience level for fans to catch their favourite band. Just my 2 cents Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
hamilton Posted August 8, 2003 Report Share Posted August 8, 2003 quote: Originally posted by MuleMomma: ...and as much as I wish there were other alternatives (I remember the days of having 2 or 3 options) Yeah, whatever happened to Ticketron, anyway? Were they bought out by TicketBastard? Or forced out by TicketBastard? I guess they're not called "TicketMaster" for nothing, eh? (slightly off-topic, but that Mike Clark Prescription Renewal show was rather good, as I recall... ) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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