Online Ticket Sales
I was recently victim to the same misfortune when I went online to buy Garth Brooks tickets for a rare appearance at the newly opened Sprint Center in Kansas City. Tickets went on sale for one concert at 10am, and were sold out of not only that concert, but an additional 8 concerts by 11am. It wasn’t hard to figure out why. In order to find tickets, it’s not hard to Google “Garth Brooks tickets” and find an online ticket broker who is willing to sell you a ticket for a helluva lot more than they bought it for. Capitalism, yes. Fair, no.
One may argue that you can’t blame them, because they did the same thing you would have, they just did it sooner. Although this may be the case for some brokers, I find it hard to believe for others. With the advancements of software in this present day of technological advancement, programs can be written to hack web pages, and circumvent certain security measures that attempt to make sure an actual person is clicking a link online, and buying the tickets.
The most recent of these events was when the ticket agency for the Colorado Rockies was shut down shortly after offering tickets to the World Series. What happened? Paciolan, the online ticket agency for the Rockies, which was recently acquired by Ticketmaster, sold about 500 tickets, and the servers came to a screeching halt due to “a malicious attack” on their servers. I imagine some legitimate fans got tickets, but I would be willing to bet a lot of them were ticket brokers looking to make a fortune. According to USA Today, tickets were available at other online ticket sites shortly after for prices in upwards of $17,000. This is ridiculous.
What happened to the old days when you could take your kid to the ballpark and see a famous player come to town, or hometown fans cheering on their team when they make it to the playoffs or World Series? Fortunately, they haven’t gone away. Those fans still attend the games, still go to the concerts, still create those memories. The only difference is, they paid 5-10 times more to sit in their seat than the person they bought them from. It’s an unfair advantage, and in the end, the true fans are getting screwed.
Let’s take the recent Garth Brooks concert for example. ALL tickets were on sale for $35. Floor level, lower level, upper level, next to the stage, you name it, $35. I found some lower level tickets on StubHub.com for around $140, shortly after the concerts had sold out, and just bit the bullet. Why pay this much? Garth will rarely perform in shows after his retirement, he’s an incredible entertainer (having been to multiple shows), and I wanted a chance to take my Dad to a show, just like he took me to my first Garth show. I’m exited to go, but still have a bitter taste in my mouth from paying some ticket broker.
So what can be done? Sell tickets to the true fans, and sell them to a warm body, not a computer sitting in a room 300 miles away, hacking the site to buy cheap tickets. Bring back the box office, where you have to sit in line for hours in the cold to buy your tickets. Then the true fans win. This suggestion may be hard to imagine coming from a person like myself who embraces new technology, and works with it every day, but also knows what it’s like to be on the fan side of the deal.
With the music industry complaining about record sales being down, digital music downloads biting into revenues, and artists trying to attract fans through tickets sales at concert venues, I can’t imagine them being to happy to know that people are taking advantage of their true fans. It’s time for someone to step up and do something. I agree with Billy Ray Cyrus on his view of it, it’s not the entertainers at fault. State governments like Missouri have promised to prosecute the online ticket vendors who resell the tickets at more than face value. This most recent World Series event is just one example that I can see happening quite often in the future. It’s not hard for ticket brokers to circumvent technology, and hackers will usually be one step ahead of the game, it’s a sad truth. Maybe it takes some governmental regulation with stiff penalties for violators, or overall abolishment of online ticket sales. I don’t think either are great options, but something has got to be done.
I like this idea from Missouri Attorney General Jay Nixon: To prevent scalping, fans must pick up their tickets at the venue’s box office — on the day of the concert — and present photo identification and the credit card they used for payment. Sounds simple, reasonable, and fair to me.
