Secondary Ticketing

A dirty industry secret has recently come out into the open that may change the way concert tickets are sold.

It's always been curious that all the best seats in the house were gone even to the first standing in line at the box office. For many years, it's always been assumed that the ticket brokers and scalpers used their influence for these tickets, and while that might be partially true, the true reason has finally come to light. The acts themselves are given those tickets, who then sell them to the ticket brokers for a far higher price that the face value of the ticket.

The revelation all came in the wake of a major blowup by Bruce Springsteen in recent weeks. Instead of being able to simply purchase a ticket to see the Boss, fans were bumped to the secondary TicketsNow.com - even though comparable tickets were available on the mainline Ticketmaster.com. Springsteen wanted nothing to do with the practice, and immediately shouted down the scheme. Unfortunately, plenty of artists gladly participate, to the detriment of their fans.

Nine Inch Nails alter-ego Trent Reznor recently reaffirmed the dirty dealings in a blog post.

"The venue, the promoter, the ticketing agency and often the artist camp (artist, management and agent) take tickets from the pool of available seats and feed them directly to the re-seller (which from this point on will be referred to by their true name: SCALPER). There is money to be made and they feel they should participate in it."

Fans are tired of paying inflated prices far above the face value of the ticket, and in this economy, they'll soon be forced to act. We should see some tours with lots of unsold seats this summer.