I got word yesterday that my ticket request was accepted for 2 tickets to the Phish show on June 6 at the Comcast Center (aka Tweeter Center, aka Great Woods) in Mansfield, MA. About the same time, many others were notified that they were shut out of tickets, either for all the shows they requested or a good portion of them. Shortly after, tickets were being posted to TicketsNow.com, a site owned by Ticketmaster, the ticket giant that controls tickets for all the major players in concert, sports, and theatre venues. Some would call Ticketmaster a monopoly. Some would call the fact that they own a ticket brokerage/auction site unethical. Many would say that Ticketmaster insiders, big scalpers, people who give money to Ticketmaster for quick and early access to popular tickets, have a quick shot at getting tickets and use TicketsNow to sell those highly sought after tickets for a premium, sometimes a good 500-700% of the face value.
I ran into one such scumbag today at work. As I’m finishing up a student comes in and starts asking about our IP addresses. He starts to describe his operation. It’s small time, I’m sure, when compared to people who make a living off of scalping tickets through these legal, yet ethically questionable, means. He starts saying how he wants to get a couple computers up with a couple friends and browsers and get on Ticketmaster to buy as many tickets as possible right at 10:00am when they go on sale. I catch onto his game and totally catch him off guard by saying “So you’re one of those scumbags who buys up the Phish tickets just to turn around and sell them on TicketsNow, aren’t you?” He actually has the balls to reply “And Stubhub and…” You get the point as he lists other ticket auction sites. I catch him even more off guard when I tell him that I already got my Phish tickets. His response… “How’d you do that?” Guess he’s not as quick as most of these scumbags who put their names in for the Phish lottery and got tickets. He goes and asks if I have any extras. I tell him that if I did, I’d sell them to friends or strangers for not a penny over face value. He responds, as he walks out the door, “You jerk.” Wait a minute here… who’s the real jerk? The fan who buys his tickets from the source and isn’t trying to make money out from under the band of the scumbag trying to beat the system and get tickets to sell to fans for a premium. I hate to say it, buddy, but you’re not just the jerk, not just a scumbag, but a real asshole.
Anyway, there was a lot of discussion on the Phish boards about the whole TicketsNow thing shortly after the Hampton shows went on sale. There will likely be more after Saturday when a large portion of the summer tour goes on sale. I’m sure there’ll be even more discussion after the rest of the summer tour goes on sale. My advice to the fans… put pressure on Ticketmaster. Call your senators and representatives in Congress. For tickets to be on TicketsNow within minutes of them going on sale at Ticketmaster, someone is using a means other than the Ticketmaster website to get their tickets. Ticketmaster knows this. Do they care? Probably not, at least now they can get a portion of that sales when people use TicketsNow to buy their tickets. Hell, they can even suggest to the poor fans that get shutout to check TicketsNow.
For the rest of you who weren’t shutout… I’ll be at the Comcast Tweeter Center in the Great Woods of Mansfield, MA on June 6. Look for me. I’ll be the guy wearing the concert t-shirt (or if you really want to meet up, check with me ahead of time, and maybe we can plan something). Oh yeah, don’t promote the scalping of tickets. Whatever you do, no matter how much you want to see Phish, DO NOT BUY TICKETS FROM SCALPERS. That includes TicketsNow, StubHub, and whatever other sites exist selling tickets for more than $50 plus the service fees (which should be no more than $20 per ticket).
FYI, Live Nation, which owns most of the concert venues in the US, has taken back their ticketing from Ticketmaster. Most of the summer tour will not be sold through TM, going from one monopoly to another…
tisk tisk…not very professional jimmy
Lucky S.O.B. My order wasn’t fulfilled. So, now I’ve gotta try my luck with Live Nation (who I hate as much as Ticketmaster). If they were playing at a venue IN Chicago, I’d buy at the box office to avoid all the fees and BS (that’s what I did for My Morning Jacket).
I really hate the whole Ticketmaster/Ticketsnow thing. There’s some major conflict of interest going on there. They’ve gotta be holding back tickets just to sell for a higher mark-up later. And I’ve heard nothing but bad things about StubHub.
However, if I don’t manage to get pavilion seats for either Deer Creek or Alpine, my sister-in-law’s husband is friends with a scumbag (an independent ticket broker). I hate to do it, but at this point in my life, if I’ve gotta sit in the lawn I’d rather not even go. It doesn’t even feel like you’re at a concert to me – more like you’re at someone’s back-yard party with some loud music playing. And, he’s gotten us really awesome seats in the past (like 3rd row for Trey w/ the 10 piece at Deer Creek). (I know, I should hate myself for supporting a corrupt system, but like I said, if I’m not up close I’d rather not even go.)
I used to not mind the lawn, at least not when I was with a group of people. Since I’m just going with my wife (who will sit through half the show because she doesn’t like Phish, but wants to be with me for our 1st anniversary weekend and said she’d go see them once), we need seats. I got seats, though they are uncovered. The Comcast Tweeter Center at Great Woods has decent views from all the seats. They used to be a normal place with all the seats in the pavilion and an expansive lawn. Now the lawn is tiny because they wanted to be able to charge more and they put seats 2/3 of the way up the lawn.
I refuse to buy from a ticket broker or one of those sites. I just won’t go if it comes down to that.
I’ve heard eBay (who doesn’t allow tickets on their site) owns StubHub. Anyone know if this is true?
I just worked out a ‘deal’ for 2 Asheville tickets for $350 from a dude on Ebay. I think its okay, considering I live in Indiana and have no chance on scoring a ticket for it. I tried the pre-sale and got shut out. Oh well, I love phish, but hate having to do it.
Call me “holier than thou”, but you didn’t “have” to do it. They didn’t even go on sale to the public yet. Phish has a very small number of tickets to give out in the lottery.
You can’t call scalpers scumbags if you buy from them. You just give them a reason to keep doing it. In my opinion, people who buy from scalpers are also part of the problem.
i came across this site as i was researching ticketsnow. something has got to change with ticketmaster/ticketsnow. i was lucky and my boyfriend got tickets through the lottery, but i also tried to get some today for others who weren’t as lucky. as it turns out, ticketmaster was not even selling tickets directly for deer creek or pittsburgh, you got redirected to ticketsnow as soon as you clicked on the buy tickets link! what kind of bullshit is that? how in the world is this legal? live nation was hosed up all morning, though i did hear some people finally got tickets 2 hours later. i wonder how many of those tickets went to other “legal” brokers as well?
I believe Live Nation was selling tickets for most of the shows. The site was hosed for a good 2 hours. After that, people were able to get tickets. It seemed the site going down actually helped people.
Ticketmaster, I believe, automatically redirects you to TicketsNow if the show for which you’re trying to get tickets is sold out. In my opinion, that’s pretty shady, though perfectly legal.
ticketmaster never even tried to sell tickets to deer creek and pittsburgh, at 10am it was redirecting you to ticketsnow. i understand if the show is sold out and then they offer you the choice to go to ticketsnow, but that was not the case. it even said as it was redirecting you to ticketsnow that “ticketmaster is not selling tickets for this show, but you can get them at ticketsnow”. that seems completely illegal, although i’m sure it’s not and there’s some loophole that allows them to do this.
That’s right. Ticketmaster doesn’t have most of the venues anymore, but why not try to get people to buy tickets from their affiliate so they can get the service fees?
It’s not illegal. There is no loophole. It’s just the way it is.
Stupid me…we didn’t try the lottery for Asheville but was cued up and ready for ticketmaster at 10:00am, Jan. 30 when tickets were supposed to go on sale…cheapest available were $200 a piece…I called ticketmaster to inquire what the deal was and was just told that was the available price. I’m still not clear how this works, but I’m an unhappy phan and kicking myself for forgoing the lottery…at least I’d have had a chance. Oh well…
Any idea what the GW lawn is like these days? Have the new seats totally obstructed the view? I love the freedom of the lawn
(I had pavilion seats for 7/8/94 and was bummed I had no room to dance), but I don’t want to be looking at stacks of bleachers…
Great Woods lawn is teeny tiny now. It’s probably about 150 feet deep. I don’t know what the visibility is like, but probably not idea considering they put the seats in the rest of the lawn. I had pavilion and uncovered seats for their last 2 shows there in 2004. Plenty of dancing room. The lawn is pretty lame now.
I got on Ticketmaster at the exact time tickets went on sale for red rocks and boom…sold out in 5 min! And oh, now selling on ticketnow.com, stubhub.com, etc for $300-600. What’s even the point of having a public onsale date and time? Just sell them straight to the brokers and let the rest of us stop wasting our valuable time on Ticketmaster. Plus, shouldn’t Phish actually get the difference between the ridiculously high resale value and the original $49.50???
Just for kicks, I tried to get in for the Friday Red Rocks show. I got the 15 min wait thing and went to the bathroom. When I got back it said it was sold out.
If Phish were to auction off the tickets, they could get the difference, but they don’t do that.
Something The Dead have been doing, which is kind of neat is auctioning off the first few rows and giving the extra profits to charity. On top of that, they’re requiring the auction winners to pick up the tickets in person the night of the show to prevent scalping. It’d be nice to see Phish do something like this and give the money to Waterwheel or Mockingbird.
I agree that it isn’t fair for real fans to get shut out of shows. It’s all about greed. I know people who put in for lottery tickets with the sould intent on selling them on ebay. I also know people who are really bummed out because they didn’t get tickets for shows they were looking forward to. It would love to see someone coordinate with phish ticketing and start their own ticketing distribution. Have some kind of monitoring for ticketing resale and flag ticket numbers sold for more than face. Then people would know when they are scanned at the show, they would not be allowed entry. Obviously I wouldn’t want innocent fans to be screwed, but with enough warning and time, the message would get through. Or have law enforcement prosecute these scalpers. Put forth some effort to clean the situation up. Scalping is still illegal, right? Just my opions.
Scalping is not illegal. Most states realized it was a futile effort, especially now with the internet (scalpers are no longer selling tickets in parking lots, less of a risk now).