Ticket Distribution Leaves Mom Fuming

Friday, November 6, 2009

Page 11

AT THE SIDEBAR (Column)

Ticket Distribution Leaves Mom Fuming

By J’AMY PACHECO

I waited several days to write this column.

I did this because I know better than to write a column, send an e-mail or make a telephone call when I’m really annoyed. But you know what? It’s been days, and I’m still mad. So here goes anyway.

You may have seen news reports about tickets for singing sensation Taylor Swift’s return engagement at the Staples Center in Los Angeles selling out in minutes. The concert isn’t until next April, but according to news reports, tickets were gone immediately after going on sale Friday morning.

That’s baloney. Tickets were gone long before half the moms in Southern California even got admitted to the Ticketmaster website.

Like many others, my daughter adores Taylor Swift. When she learned Swift would return to the Staples Center next year, she verbally wished she could go.

At first, I balked. But then I thought maybe I’d give it a shot and surprise her with tickets on Christmas morning. I logged on to Ticketmaster before tickets were scheduled to go on sale, and proceeded to refresh over and over until the “buy tickets” button popped up.

Quantity was the only thing I specified; I looked for tickets in ANY location, and at ANY price. You can’t imagine (nor would I want you to) what went through my mind when I got a message that there was not a single seat available that met my criteria. Since my criteria was essentially anywhere but the restroom, that had to mean the concert sold out while I was typing the number two.

I’m a pretty fast typist, so I knew that wasn’t possible. I tried over and over, coming up with the same result every time: “Sorry, no exact matches were found.”

Curious, I gave up and went to eBay–not to purchase tickets, but to see who had them for sale. To my utter disbelief, there were–within five minutes of tickets going on sale–already 781 listings for Taylor Swift tickets at the Staples Center.

These listings were for specific seats, not general “if we get some tickets, you can buy them” listings. And they were good seats, too. Seats where you could actually see the artist, not like the nosebleed seats I had in the second-to-last row last time I went to the Staples Center.

Since most of these auctions were for multiple seats, I realized that meant literally thousands of seats were passed on to ticket brokers for resale long before the ticket buying window opened to normal fans.

Digging further, I discovered many of these auctions had been created as long as 24 hours before tickets for the concert allegedly went on sale. What that told me is that ordinary moms trying to buy tickets for their Taylor-adoring daughters never had a chance in the first place.

From my perspective, ticket brokers have only one agenda: to grab as many tickets as they can, then immediately resell them at unconscionable markups. Taylor Swift tickets that would have cost $49.50 to $69.50 have been sold and are still selling on eBay for hundreds of dollars, putting them out of reach of most fans who actually want to see Taylor Swift perform.

Why is this legal? I’ve asked the question here before, when I had a similar experience trying to buy tickets for my then-fourth-grade daughter to see the Cheetah Girls. It’s been four years, and nothing’s changed. I could go to jail for buying a ticket and trying to resell it for a dollar more than the original cost outside the Staples Center. A ticket broker can not only mark them up ridiculously high, but can get them where ordinary people–Taylor Swift’s fans–can’t. Why?

A ticket broker gets to make a small fortune off of tickets meant for fans. I, on the other hand, get the privilege of telling the girl whose first guitar song was Taylor Swift’s “A Place in This World;” the girl who won first place in a convention competition last summer by recreating Swift’s “Tea Party” poster with a Barbie doll, that she doesn’t get to go because I can’t afford the hundreds of dollars I’d have to pay to get a $49.50 nosebleed-section ticket.

I don’t know who made the decision to create a behemoth concert ticket distribution system that shuts out fans at the expense of profiteering, but I think it was a bad one. And I, as the mother of a music-loving teen, would love to see it change.

Soon.