| It was one thing when
I failed to get World Series tickets to see my beloved
Yankees crush the Mets in 2000. Back then, in what
now seems like a prehistoric era, technology was not
as advanced, and dedicated fans had to use the telephone
to get tickets, which meant listening to the busy
signal for an hour before an operator got on the line
and announced that the games had been sold out.
Okay, I could accept that. It was the World Series.
Everyone wanted to go see New York’s finest
play New York’s… second finest. Sure,
I knew scalpers were making the most of the situation,
buying the tickets in bulk and then selling bleacher
seats for $500 a pop. But when your team is playing
for the ring, you can almost overlook that kind of
thievery.
Almost. One year later, I found myself fighting the
phone lines again, this time to get tickets to see
my team get slaughtered by the Arizona’s dynamic
duo, Curt Schilling and Randy Johnson. In return,
I got a busy signal and a prime place on a friend’s
couch when, to my chagrin, I was unable to get tickets.
Sometimes baseball is best enjoyed from the privacy
of one’s home, so not going to those games wasn’t
the worst thing in the world. I’ll concede defeat
on those two hard-fought battles because I still had
access to the games, which were, after all, nationally
televised. This morning, however, marked a very different
milestone in my history with Ticketmaster.
All I wanted to do was see the Boss in Boston. Bruce
Springsteen is playing an acoustic tour with a one-night
stop at Boston’s Orpheum Theatre. I came to
work a half hour early; I logged on to Ticketmaster
before the tickets went on sale; I made a pact with
myself to incur credit card debt on the Boss’
behalf.
The precaution turned out to be a waste of time.
At 9:02, exactly two minutes after the tickets had
gone on sale, the concert was sold out. At 9:03, GreatTickets.com
and eBay and other scalper havens were selling my
tickets for over three times face value, despite the
Ticketmaster promise: “In the spirit of fair
access and to ensure Bruce’s fans obtain premium
seating, this event is a “WILL CALL ONLY”
event. UPS, ticketFast, and regular mail will not
be available as delivery choices.”
Now, hold on. Fair Access? Premium Seating? For whom?
Paying a scalper $300 for $75 tickets is not ‘fair
access’ and reading about the concert’s
set list the day after on Backstreets.com is not really
‘premium seating.’ Sure, I’m bitter
about the tickets, but I’m more incensed about
the inability of normal people to go to normal concerts
for normal prices. Springsteen may be a legend, and
he may have a legendary following, but this should
not preclude non-legendary Americans from seeing him
play.
In an age of corporate dominance, what room is there
for ordinary people and ordinary concerns? The tickets
were overpriced in the first place, fetching between
$75 and $85 per seat before the absurd Ticketmaster
processing fee. Now, opportunist scalpers are selling
the seats for even more ridiculous prices—one
Craig’s List poster offered balcony seats for
$900 apiece.
If they were serious about ‘fair access,’
Ticketmaster would have established a more equitable
process years ago. But the truth is, the company needs
to sell tickets, and it is not their concern how those
tickets get sold. If a scalper hacks into the system
and buys each and every seat in Boston’s Orpheum,
Ticketmaster still makes money. If Bruce Springsteen
plays a sold-out concert to an empty theater, Ticketmaster
walks away unscathed.
Some years ago, Eddie Vedder, lead singer for the
Seattle-based band Pearl Jam, engaged in a year-long
legal debate with Ticketmaster, refusing to allow
Pearl Jam tickets to be sold through them. Vedder’s
point was valid and promptly overlooked: Ticketmaster
is a monopoly, owning access to almost every ticket
at every venue for every concert nationwide. They
can charge whatever processing fees they want and
they can conveniently ignore the rampant scalping
problem because their business is never in jeopardy.
Not getting tickets to a concert may seem like a
small issue and, really, it is a small issue, unless
you see it as emblematic of the growing conflict between
business and people. Big business is, in truth, never
concerned with the every day struggles of every day
Americans, and Ticketmaster’s behavior makes
that strikingly clear. Consider it just another notch
on the belt of a country that has turned its back
on Americans in favor of corporate interest.
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