Remember RMG Technologies, the horrible little company that made five-year-olds cry by snatching up all the Hannah Montana tickets? Boaz Lissauer, a New Jesery plastic surgeon, recently sued them and other ticket resellers after paying $195 for nosebleed seats worth $63 to see the Police in Madison Square Garden. Lissauer is now asking a Pittsburgh court for class action status.
Ticketmaster won an injunction in October barring RMG from accessing their services, but RMG is countersuing, claiming that Ticketmaster is an illegal monopoly. We’re torn because Ticketmaster is an illegal monopoly, but $195 is way too much to pay for tickets to the Police.
Man claims agency helps scalpers horde tickets for Hannah, Police, sports [AP]
(Photo: AFP/Getty Images)
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here in Australia we have whats called “a declared venue” events at said venues are subject to the following provision:
Ticket holders are permitted to on sell their tickets provided the cost of the ticket is no more than 10% above the original ticket price. However, the Act does not authorise the resale of a ticket if the original conditions of sale by the event promoter prohibit resale.
@forgottenpassword: If a reseller is hacking the system, then Ticketmaster needs to (and should) address that issue using the legal system.
Just like any case where a seller (in this case, Ticketmaster) and a buyer (in this case, RMG) have an issue, they need to be the ones to resolve the issue, using the courts if necessary.
@lemur: “If the scalpers are able to sell the tickets for more than the original price that’s because the original price was too low.”
WRONG. It’s because there aren’t any tickets available at the original price because the scalpers bought most of them.
Ticket scalping used to be illegal. I don’t give a rat’s ass what you call these ‘ticket brokers’ they’re pond scum.
i thought ticket scalping is illegal in the US. confused as to how this company is not in trouble.
Ticketmaster is a monopoly when it comes to live event tickets. It is an illegal monopoly as they charge exorbitant rates for something usually done for free (online purchase of airline tickets) or a small fee ($1 for movies). Additionally they charge you the fee if you buy the ticket on site, so they use their monopoly to charge you without providing a product or service.
Concerts suck anyways: crowds, poor acoustics, unknown quality of sound system, cheating with notes instead of chords etc.
1. Monopolies are illegal. Just ask Microsoft.
2. The TV theory: the problem is not that the TV has $50.00 in parts, it is that someone went to the TV store and bought all the TVs before anybody else could and is now trying to sell the TVs at $500.00 dollars. If you think that is fair, please tell me where you shop and what you intend to buy so I can screw you…
@DoctorMD: Airlines let you buy tickets for free on their site because they get the profit from your flight. If you buy it from Travelocity, then get a kickback from the airline to sell you the ticket. Ticketmaster doesn’t profit from the face value of the the concert ticket.
You are incorrect that Additionally they charge you the fee if you buy the ticket on site, so they use their monopoly to charge you without providing a product or service.
There are plenty of venues where if you purchase at the box office you do not pay a service fee. Ticketmaster doesn’t own any venues, so if you walk up to a box office on site and get charged a fee, the venue decided to charge that fee. If you walk up to a venue box office, 99% of the time those employees are venue or promoter employees, not Ticketmaster. Ticketmaster provides the system the venue uses, but the venue or promoter staff the box office.
I am hardly a fan of Ticketmaster but you are stating things that aren’t accurate.
Ticketmaster is willing to take the bad PR to keep their clients happy. People bitch about TM, TM gives service fee rebates to their clients, the clients are happy, and insulated from the complaints. In the end people hate TM, but they have to use them.
What they ought to do is any tickets that get purchased in the first 4 hours go into a lottery system. If there are tickets left after the 4 hours, everyone gets a ticket and the go for a first come first serve.
Or the tickets sold during the first 4 hours require an ID to match the ticket.
@Gorky: How about a class action against those jerks who are reselling homes for more than they paid? What about all those poor people who need a house, and can’t buy one? Government, help me!!!!!
since when is it a “right” to go to a concert. If you can’t afford it, don’t go. I guess maybe I’m just not getting it. Isn’t this the same as saying it’s not fair for people to camp out to get tickets as soon as they are available, when you are unable to do so? I definitely don’t feel that the government needs to get involved. Quit paying the high prices, and the scalpers will quit charging so much. If they couldn’t get more than the “real” price for the ticket, they wouldn’t charge more…supply & demand…
@timsgm1418:
Yeah, but these guys are not “camping out” in line. They are using software to buy as many tickets as possible online so they can resell them for outrageous prices & keeping anyone else from buying them at normal prices. Its one thing for a scalper to camp out overnight to buy 50 tickets….. its quite different for one to do so online & buy 5,000 the moment they are available to the public before any individuals can get them.
It’s more like ticket resellers have butted into line en masse, like a bunch of bullies, so that no one else gets any, then turns around to all the people they butted in front of and offers to sell the tickets for everything they have in their piggy bank.
Many states (26 states) have adopted anti-scalping regulations, nearly 3/4 of the US population lives in jurisdictions where such laws apply.
So in this case the Police at Madison Square Garden, New York city claim jurisdiction for any transaction, anywhere, if the event is to be held in their municipality. The NY anti-scalping law Limits resale price (include such limits as $1 above printed price; $3 service charge; percentage limitations).
I think the ticket resellers that buy up all the tickets and then re-determine their value are the scum of the earth so I don’t, won’t and never will purcahse anything through them.
I don’t have a beef with Ticketmaster’s online sales. If they want to charge you money for the connivence of ordering online, then so be it. What really pisses me off is when they tack on the same service charge for buying the tickets AT THE VENUE’S BOX OFFICE. I haven’t bought tickets in awhile, but this used to be the case at “Ticketmaster exclusive venues”. If I get my butt off the couch and drive down to the arena box office, I should be able to buy the ticket at face value plus tax. No additional charges.
@castlecraver: Agreed. People learn about supply and demand in econ. 101 and think they can tout that in a snarky way far too often.
Just because it makes sense in a completely free and efficient market does not mean it’s not illegal. We don’t live in a world of free and efficient markets.
Whether we’d be better off or not in such a world is not something I want to debate here.
I can read about it now, Anonymous vs. Ticket Resellers.
I don’t get why this is such a problem. Simple premise of capitalism– supply and demand. I have it, you want it, I have the only whatever product, I charge what I want. There is nothing wrong with this. Do we want to go to a socialist system? Goodness, if I had a house in a school district that was always winning awards for academic excellence, low-no crime, low-no pollution, nice location, etc., it would cost a lot of money as opposed to a house that is failing in academic standards, rife with crime and pollution, and that is the way it should be! What is possibly wrong with this?!
And as long as the software used to buy tickets so quickly is something accessible to others there is absolutely nothing wrong. What if I am extremely rich and for example, my adult child loved Hannah Montana(substitute with any celebrity) and was getting married. I want them and all their family and friends and my friends and business connections and such to be at this concert, as a sort of wedding celebration. Why can’t I buy those tickets online the second that they are released? It’s not my problem if other people were too slow to buy them. I could just as easily negotiate a deal with the stadium and celebrity as buy online. (This is something I remember reading– an Indian billionaire had a huge party for his daughter’s wedding I believe and he hired a famous celebrity to perform(seriously… an A-lister, I just don’t remember).
All the other arguments aside, this isn’t right. And I earned that right by standing in many lines ‘back in the day’ to get the good tickets.
Now you can’t get the good tickets because these bottom feeders with illegal software are snapping them up so they can illegally sell them for more than they paid for them.
This is NO DIFFERENT from if I was to be first in line at some huge theater in say, NY, for the next Star Wars movie and bought ALL the tickets for the show, then turned around and sold them for 2/3/4/5x what I just paid. I don’t think that would go over too well.
Excuse me, I earned the right to say this isn’t right
and so did the rest of us poor dumbasses standing in lines (remember waiting to get into Sears in the mall because that was where Ticketmaster was?).
@bravo369:
Absolutely. And the record companies should be able to prohibit you from reselling any CD you buy.
@avantartist:
New York repealed its idiotic anti-scalping law quite a while back – all it really did was create work for couriers, who would deliver the tix from the NJ and CT brokers into the city.
@lovelygirl:
Well, it’s not really capitalism at work.
If every venue that was sold out because of scalpers was also at full attendance, that would be one thing. In cases like that, it is a function of capitalism. People are willing to pay $X00 for a Hannah Montana, Boston Red Sox, or Super Bowl ticket. You can’t change that.
But in a large number of cases, the venues that are being scalped are sold out, but half full. People aren’t willing to pay $200 to see Wretched Emo Band play at the local concert stadium, but that’s how much the tickets are going for. Come concert time, half the seats are empty. This is just Econ 101. The price is set higher than what the demand justifies, and as a result, you have a surplus.
The problem is there are so many different types of venues that it is impossible to create a solution that caters to all of them. Tickets for a sporting event require an entirely different set of concerns than tickets to a concert, which in turn require an entirely different set of concerns than a ticket to a festival.
Actually, to go even further, even the type of sport creates a different set of concerns. Baseball tickets have an entirely different dynamic than football tickets, for example. There’s really no one-size-fits-all solution to the problem.
if ticketmaster or the venues really wanted to fix this they could: require purchasers to create an account when ordering & show ID at the door when entering the venue. buying tickets for someone else? fine, then you have to enter their name & ID# & ID type when buying & they can show their ID when they go to see the show.
that would nip it right in the bud. technically, tickets are non-refundable & non-transferable, so anyone bitching about losing the right to give away or sell their ticket is arguing for a right they don’t have in the first place.
@mac-phisto:
Yeah, I really want to show my ID every time I go to a baseball game.
@JustAGuy2:
Why is it an issue? I’m not trying to be contentious here, I’m genuinely curious: if it would legitimately fix the problem (not saying it would, but the sake of the hypothetical situation), what is the opposition to showing your ID?
@mac-phisto: “technically, tickets are non-refundable & non-transferable”
That’s simply false.
@Hambriq:
1. It’s intrusive. We have too much “papers please” in this country as it is.
2. It’ll slow down the lines to get in even further.
If the venue wants to launch this, that’s their call, but it certainly would discourage me from wanting to go to their events.
@D.B. Cooper-Nichol:
Depends on the ticket. Some (such as a lot of season tickets) are explicitly non-transferable, although that’s generally overlooked if you’re not selling them.