News

FTC (And Bruce Springsteen) Prove Ticketmaster Screws Fans

12:15 p.m. · February 22, 2010 · by Andrew Winistorfer

The Federal Trade Commission has released its report about Ticketmaster's sketchy ticket-selling practices, which the organization started after a large outcry from fans and the Boss himself over Bruce Springsteen tickets that seemingly sold out the moment they went on sale last year. The FTC has found a number of things, which I'll break down here:

1. Ticketmaster was redirecting fans to auction site TicketsNow, which has a mark-up of, generally, two-to-four times the face value of the tickets, even though Ticketmaster still had regular price tickets available.

2. The Springsteen tickets that were advertised on TicketsNow weren't always in-hand, which means that Ticketmaster was essentially selling the promise of eventual tickets for four times the price of an actual ticket.

3. In some cases, Ticketmaster actually sold the same ticket on TicketsNow three or four times, holding onto people's money until the last moment before telling them there were no tickets available and refunding the money.

All of this is so skeevy. What this will do for Ticketmaster and Live Nation's still-pending merger is unclear. But if the U.S. government won't stick it to banks that fucked them out of bailout money, then I can't imagine they'll go after a concert ticket broker. [Daily Swarm]