PreferredSeat.com Blog

Ticketmaster  was given a slap on the wrist by New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo on Wednesday after they have been found to be sending their customers via links on the Ticketmaster website to deceptive rewards cards companies according to the Toronto Sun. Twenty one other companies including Budget, Staples and Avon were similarly found to send their customers to these companies.

Affinion, Vertrue and Webloyalty were singled out for inviting shoppers to receive a discount on an item they were purchasing online. Then they signed them up for a free trial membership that automatically charged them a monthly membership fee, unless the customer phoned in to cancel.

Ticketmaster has been under fire from consumers for years for their high service fees and it’s unlikely that the public will feel any better about them after this. Ticket brokers such as Preferred Seating tickets have been experiencing greater sales with the poor customer satisfaction that the large ticket companies such as Ticketmaster provide.

The Live Nation and Ticketmaster Merger has prompted John Malone’s Liberty Media Corp. to make an offer to acquire almost 35 million shares of the newly formed company. After getting regulator approval on Monday both Live Nation and Ticketmaster’s stock have risen on the expectation of increased earnings.

Unfortunately those earnings will have to be borne by the fans attending live concert events with increased ticket prices and worthless overpriced tour packages leaving the average fan in the upper deck. Consumer groups and ticket brokers around the country have opposed the merger because of the possible increase in price of concert and event tickets.

If anyone is surprised by the decision of the fed to allow the merger to go forth all you had to do is look at how Liven Nation and Ticketmaster started referring customers between each other as soon as the proposed merger was announced. No business gives up their customers to a competitor on the hope that they will join forces. This was decided long ago, only the details had to be worked out.

The public is still in charge though, if they say no to the artist scalping their own tickets then maybe it will change. In the meantime, I’m not putting my money in that merger, the Apple iPad is way cooler!

The San Francisco 49ers new stadium proposal in Santa Clara will face some tough hurdles this week as the newly released environmental impact report goes before Santa Clara’s planning commission. The planning commission will most likely approve the 49er stadium proposal and send it over to the City Council on December 8th. From there the City Council would decide if the proposal should be put to vote, as reported on KCBS, “If we certify the EIR over the next month or several months, depending on how long the matter may take, we could put the matter before the voters next year perhaps in the June election,” said deputy city manager Carol McCarthy.

Another key to the 49ers coming to Santa Clara rests with the public. There will be a meeting on Wednesday for them to voice their opinions on the $937 million project to pay for the stadium in the parking lot of the Great America Theme Park.

As can be expected residents are split on the proposal, football fans and business owners love the idea, but especially those with no interest in sports are against spending public funds to support a private enterprise.

San Francisco 49er season ticket holders have reason for concern as well with the fact that those dreaded Personal Seat Licenses or PSL’s will be used to finance the stadium, dramatically driving up the cost to attend a game. Huge numbers of longtime fans will be forced to give up the season tickets many have held since the Kezar days because of the cost of the PSL and inevitable rise in the face value of the ticket as they saw in Dallas with the new Dallas Stadium.

And that doesn’t take into account the changes in seat locations that 49er fans will go through. Deals have to be made and many of those prime seats will go to the deal makers and longtime 49er fans that were on the 50 yard line, will be lucky to get between the 30’s in the new stadium.

The New York Yankees had to cut their ticket prices for the $1 billion Yankee Stadium when fans balked at the outrageous prices and it remains to be seen how long the Cowboys fans will be willing to pay top dollar for a team that is average. There will be a lot of talk of potential windfalls for the City of Santa Clara, but they better take a good look at New York and Dallas and see if it all really benefits the fans and the city, or the owners.

San Francisco 49ers tickets are on sale for all the games at Candlestick Park in San Francisco.

Ticketmaster has been in a giving mood lately, or maybe the promoters are having big problems selling tickets in this economy. Don’t let the talk of the recessions waning fool you, times are tough when a $80 ticket is being given away by Ticketmaster.

But truth be told nothing is free, even free tickets from Ticketmaster. Because, even the free tickets come with a price, and that is a few small service charges that add up to about $3 – $5 a ticket. Still a bargain compared to the face value of the ticket.

Where do you get these free tickets, you ask? Well you need to be either a season ticket holder, or belong to a VIP program at a venue to receive these offers in your email.

It’s a sort of rewards program to get patrons to spend money on parking, drinks and food, and generally make the place look like they actually sold all of those seats. So for a free ticket from Ticketmaster, the show must not be selling well in the first place, think Rod Stewart, or Jamie Foxx, performing in an arena where the ticket sales show they should be performing in a much smaller venue. Or they should be charging much less for their tickets.

Now, if I’m getting offers for free tickets, the next time I want to go to a show, I may wait and see if the free ones come out first, before I lay down my money. I wonder if the promoters and Ticketmaster thought of how that will impact future ticket sales.

It appears Irving Azoff is willing to blow off the $275 million that Ticketmaster spent to acquire Ticketsnow, the secondary ticketing company, as one of the concessions to regulators to get the Ticketmaster – Live Nation merger approved. The speculation is that the merger of Ticketmaster and Live Nation could be approved if some of the other entities they own are sold off.

The first on the list would have to be Ticketsnow, but since Azoff has been blasting the company in the press for months, he’s blackballed the very company he needs to sell. Then, to seal the deal he told a group of lawyers in Los Angeles this Saturday that reselling tickets should be illegal and he would press Congress to implement more anti scalping laws. Who’s going to buy a company that the present owners have vowed to destroy it’s only means of success?

There has to be a lot more money involved in monopolizing the entire music business as Irving Azoff looks to do, than the $275 million they paid for Ticketsnow. And to say it is for the benefit of the consumer is a slap in the face to people with reason. One company controlling the tickets, from print to concert, is like Ford controlling the resell of your car after you paid for it. Or the dentist telling you that he gets a cut of the gold in your mouth, should you ever decide to sell it.

The funny thing in this is Irving Azoff’s reasoning for outlawing scalping, “I tell them that they wouldn’t allow someone on the street to scalp a gallon of gasoline when there’s an oil crisis” says Azoff. “Why would they allow someone to stand on a street corner and scalp a ticket when it’s in high demand, too?”. Well Irving, the oil companies have been scalping oil forever! Especially when there’s a crisis. Where have you been! And Ticketmaster and Azoff’s game plan to change to dynamic pricing just is built upon the idea of supply and demand. If demand is up, Ticketmaster will raise the price.

And reselling tickets has nothing to do with street corners any more, not that it makes any difference at all. Nobody should have the right to control a product once a consumer has purchased it, not for cars, gold teeth or tickets.