$50,000? Bah, slap on the wrist.

Ive never gone to a concert so I figured I would just to do it. Summerfest in Milwaukee is having a no doubt concert, $15 lawn tickets but the Ticketmaster fees were almost double the ticket cost, I said forget it.

@Michael Ortega: I would think that a lawn ticket event wouldn't even need a ticketmaster/ticketsnow connection. Why? It's a lawn! There's no assigned seating. You arrive at the park, pay your $15 to the attendant and walk to the lawn, and plop your lawnchair down.

Or is this Summerfest thing a huge place? I'm just thinking of the lawn ticket events in Nassau County (it's next to Queens/Brooklyn on Long Island). Seemed pretty easy to do.

Regardless, I salute your sacrifice.

wow. $50k. that's what - the profit they raked in from 50 springsteen tix?

50K is a joke. They should have to pay the difference between face values and the inflated prices they got for any ticket sold through sites with misleading domain names.

It may be a small fine, but I'm just so happy they lost here.

@ludwigk: One ticket to a high profile concert nets Ticketsnow that much money. I imagine the big wigs just laughing and wiping there ass with the decision, then burning $100,000 just cause.

Now if only they would stop charging me $2.50 to print my ticket using my ink and my paper.

50k? That's barely 12.5k self ticket printing fees. Hell, I bet they up the fee now.

@nybiker: many places have lawn and assigned seating. So you can by lawn tickets, where you just come in, or pit tickets where you have a seat

@Shoelace: why? they set a price people were willing to pay, thats all there is too it. Markets set the price, and people were obviously willing to pay 3-10xs as much for tickets. People are just mad that the market price was higher than they wanted to pay.

You never know whats inside the behemoth until you crack it open. Not a surprise there was more than 100 deceptive sites. And yet venues still use ticketmaster overzealously. Talk about perpetuating the greed machine.

The fine is a pittance it's the concessions that they made that are really the interest. The reasoning because it opens things up for contempt of court if they decline.

Although I personally think we should just stop buying tickets through ticket master. If everyone stops buying tickets, ticket master will die or stop being douche bags. Find something else to do.

@nybiker:
Theres a venue out here in so cali where Blink 182 will be playing a reunion concert that has assigned seating as well as lawn seating.

LiveNation was selling those tickets, and there was no charge for some things on the lawn tickets. Assigned seats had surcharges, but no where near ticket masters fees that I have seen.

Unfortunately, almost all of the venues in the US have exclusivity agreements with Ticketmaster. The ones that don't are the ones owned by LiveNation.

So, you can't get around the ticketmaster issue, unless you want to skip concerts at most of the venues in the US.

I am so glad that I do not have the slightest interest in seeing anyone do anything with 5,000,000 other strangers, all fighting for parking.

@xtc46 - thinksmarter on twitter: Due to the deceptive domain names, many people didn't know that the price they were paying included a TicketsNow markup. If they had been aware that the tickets were being sold at above market prices, I think most would have preferred to look elsewhere before buying.

@Michael Ortega: Same thing with the Nine Inch Nails/Janes Addiction show here in Denver last month. I desperately wanted to go, but the fees nearly doubled the price of the $15 ticket. Was a tough choice not to go as this is supposedly the last Nine Inch Nails tour as Nine Inch Nails and I wasn't lucky enough to get in the lottery NIN offers...

@Shoelace: Thats unlikely. The "market price" is whatever people are willing to pay for them. Thats just like saying that its unfair for CompUSA to sell an item for 1 price if TigerDirect has it for another. Yea, they are the same company, but if they want to drive traffic to one site, or develope a specific image for one site, they are allowed to use pricing to do that. Its not their fault the customer didnt look elseware for tickets.

The one practice I disagree with is Ticketmaster claiming it was sold out then linking to tickets now for more tickets, but even then, it was only deceptive, not illegal. Stores do things like that all the time, where they advertise an item for price X and say "100 items will be sold at this sale price" or "first 100 people get price X" its the same practice. Hell, in Honolulu where I live, apartments in new buildings are sold that way. X% of units have to be sold as "affordable" units for a certin income bracket, the rest can go for fair market value, which is determined by people who want the units.

@xtc46 - thinksmarter on twitter: there's obvious deception here (hence the fine). so my question to you is, why shouldn't they be disgorged of the entirety of their profits from their deceptive practices?

@cigsm: A lotof bands have started playing and clubs here instead of stadiums, which I like a lot. They will play 2-3 sell out shows at a 4k person venue instead of 1 big show at the 15k arena (we have small venues here) but no ticket master, so its nice.

@hahamaximus: Dude, $30 to see NIN and JA? Even with fees, that's a steal. I paid $70 just to see NIN last year. You gotta learn to pick your battles!

It's a small fine, but the AG's action does begin to shed light on Ticketmaster's outrageous web of deceit. Ticketmaster can't shrug and blame the brokers anymore, now that it's clear that Ticketmaster and its affiliate were going to great lengths to deceive ticket buyers as to who was selling the tickets and what was the face value for the ticket. This is a good start toward a series of escalating fines and consent decrees for Ticketmaster.
I hope.

I always knew Ticketmaster was greedy and profit driven, and that it exploited its monopoly. But the acts described in the Illinois AG's case sound just plain dishonest. Is there a certain point where "deceptive" and "misleading" practices become fraud? Because I'm having trouble seeing that one is not the other in this story.

@jdmba: Yeah its so much trouble walking up the stairs from the basement apartment, and moonlight wreaks havoc with the complexion. Best to stay inside.

@xtc46 - thinksmarter on twitter: @socalrob: Thank you both for the clarifications.

pretty much all the ticket companies are fee crazy (except brown paper tickets who are awesome and even let you choose what kind of charity to send part of your minor surcharge to).

We have ticketswest out here in pdx. i just paid 6.50 per ticket service charge on 18 dollar get up kids tickets. online the charge was 7 and then there was a 3.50 order charge. There is no box office to go here.

I ordered tickets for a show at the Paramount in Seattle. They use their own ticketing service..so i thought it would be cheap...9.35 cents per ticket on a 25 dollar ticket...plus an order charge (not to mention the fact that they have to be the only theatre in the world who sells their seats left to right and not center out.)

The main arena and the main performing arts center here in portland also charge service charges at their box offices.

My point really is...if you tell me tickets are 20 dollars, there should be some kind of way to get them for that price. If i have to go down to the building the 1st day they are onsale before noon to do it, whatever, there must be some way to get tickets at their advertised price...

@Michael Ortega: @nybiker: Summerfest is a two-tiered thing. You pay to get into a large event with a lot of concerts, then they have a separate ampitheatre that has assigned seats in front and lawn seats in back. That's where the headliners are, and they cost extra.

Regardless, you should go to the venue and just buy tickets there, from the box office. If you don't live in the city, have a friend do it for you. There's some decently cheap/free parking near that place, so it shouldn't be an issue.

(Note: I lived in Milwaukee for many years. Summerfest used to rock before they got rid of the $3 fest-long admission pin.)

@supercereal: Wow! It's not that the fees for the NIN tix were that expensive, it's just that the tix were so cheap to begin with - what a bargain! I paid out the ass to see NIN in Vegas last year.....

@jdmba: I dont get it either. And you forgot paying an absurd amount of money for the privilege of doing so.

@xtc46 - thinksmarter on twitter: It isn't the market price. Its a monopoly price. If it was a fair market then you could claim they are at a market price (assuming market is synonymous with fair which most people think). They are the price makers, and that is the problem. This is one reason for the utter contempt for their company across the nation. The other being the deceitful practices the AG went after.

Don't try to put an economics model into a real life situation when you obviously don't see the monopoly. it's like trying to fit a beach ball into a small peg square. Doesn't work.

@thinksmarter on twitter: The problem was Ticketmaster was selling all their tickets to TicketsNow, claiming a concert was sold out, then they would increase the base price of the ticket at TicketsNow and still charge all the other BS fees.

@Michael Ortega: I almost bought lawn tickets yesterday for $8 each... but they were OH so nice and added a parking fee of $6 to each ticket + $6 more in fees to make the total ticket purchase to $20 each.

I've been to the venue they were selling tickets before. They herd you in to park like cattle, and do NOT check for any sort of parking pass. Paying for parking would be ridiculous. (much less, paying for parking twice when everyone would be in the same car.)

@jdmba: It isn't as bad as you think. I've been front row at stadium concerts before (no assigned seats), and the traffic didn't take more than 30 minutes to clear after I made it back to my car - which also didn't take that long.

being a regular concert goer, I pretty much know what the total ticket cost will be after the fees and am ready for it. You know the fee will be there, so why act shocked when you see it?

I can always go to the box office in the venue and buy the ticket for face value. Or I can pay Ticketmaster for the convenience of being able to buy the tickets from home or work while sitting on my fat ass, not having to wait in line or travel to the venue. That's a convenience I am more than willing to pay for.

Of course, this coming from the guy who dropped over $800 for tickets to multiple Paul McCartney shows earlier this week. Go figure.

So this is really the best they could do against Ticketmaster? Just slap them with a fine of $50,000? Why isn't anything being done to break up this monopoly?

@xtc46 - thinksmarter on twitter: If TicketMaster was explicitly saying "100 tickets are on sale for X" than your store analogy might actually work. But they weren't - they were claiming the event was sold out even though it wasn't. IMO that crosses the line into fraud, which funnily enough is illegal.

And affordable housing units are so completely different I can only assume you have no idea how those programs work. Quick version: it's not the apartment owner/developer who decides how many units are "affordable" or what the price is. It's federal, state, and/or municipal government, since it's a public assistance program. The apartment owner/developer gets funding and/or tax breaks in exchange for providing affordable housing. The point is to avoid the infamous housing projects a lot of cities built in the 60s and 70s.

Ticketmaster is pretty deceitful. However, the greed starts at the top, and the record labels, artists, and promoters start the greedfest, and it trickles down through Ticketmaster and even to the concessions.

@Jeff McRae: If people had to go to the Box Office, a lot less tickets would be sold. So that isn't in the best interest of the artist or the venue.

THIS is why I stopped attending sports events and concerts. I will not be party to this kind of bullshit.

I leave this up to the sports teams and musicians to resolve. It's not my problem anymore as I am no longer contributing to it.

When sports teams and musicians finally resolve this... I will start attending again.

@Ryan Gard: The last 5 concerts I have gone to have used etix... and while they are just as bad on the fees. at least they aren't ticketbastard

This is like a hug from Santa Clause. A gold star on the fridge and money from the Tooth Fairy.

I hate TicketMaster so much I can't wait for their trial...whenever that may come.

@ludwigk: Not even. What a joke.