Ticketmaster is in the hot seat after a media investigation revealed the ticketing giant has been recruiting scalpers for a secret program that puts more money into its own coffers — and venues are often in the middle, says True North Sports and Entertainment.
According to the story by CBC and The Toronto Star, Ticketmaster employees told undercover reporters the company looks the other way when it comes to professional scalpers who purchase and resell tickets in bulk, often at inflated prices.
Kevin Donnelly, Senior Vice President at TNSE, said venues like Bell MTS Place are often stuck in the middle when it comes to issues like this.
“We’re in the fray, but we’re frustrated for sure,” he told 680CJOB Thursday.
“Ticketmaster are the biggest, and we think they’re the best at what they do, but there are other companies. When the contracts come up for renewal, we’ve strongly considered going to other suppliers, but you end up with the same struggle.
“There are a dozen different companies that do what Ticketmaster does, and they are facilitating resale because that is a reality of that business.”
On a local level, Donnelly said a recent initiative by the Winnipeg Jets to eliminate paper tickets is encouraging, as it gives consumers an extra level of security that their tickets are legitimate.
“For concerts, we’re moving down that path. For the Jets, they took a big leap and I give them full credit for removing the PDF. The PDF is that barcode image that you can photocopy that really becomes an easy tool for bad actors. They can reproduce that thing and sell it and sell it again.
“I saw over 100 people turned away at the Metallica concert the other night that had a fraudulently reproduced barcode. They’d bought it on Kijiji, they’d bought it on another site… I heard many people say they paid over $400 for a $100 ticket. They get to the window and it’s a fraudulently produced ticket, and somebody’s already in that seat.”
Dean Budnick, co-author of the book Ticket Masters: The Rise of the Concert Industry and How the Public Got Scalped, told 680CJOB that cracking down on ticket resellers can be difficult, as many of them are just regular people trying to make a buck.
“There are big corporations involved, there are professional ticket scalpers involved, but there are also soccer dads, hockey moms, college students,” said Budnik.
“People who need a second source of income who understand if they can buy a Paul McCartney ticket, they can turn around and resell it on a platform and make a little money.”
Ticketmaster’s virtual monopoly on the concert business, said Budnick, is an issue specific to North America, as individual venues in Canada and the US enter into exclusive contracts with the ticket giant.
“In other parts of the world, that’s not the case,” he said. “The United States government and the Canadian government haven’t really taken any sort of initiative in trying to stem the flow of Ticketmaster’s ability to enter into these long-term relationships with the venues.”
Tickemaster denies
Ticketmaster issued a statement denying the scalping allegations:
“It is categorically untrue that Ticketmaster has any program in place to enable re-sellers to acquire large volumes of tickets at the expense of consumers. Ticketmaster’s Seller Code of Conduct specifically prohibits re-sellers from purchasing tickets that exceed the posted ticket limit for an event.
“In addition, our policy also prohibits the creation of fictitious user accounts for the purpose of circumventing ticket limit detection in order to amass tickets intended for resale.”
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