Ticketmaster seller records subpoenaed

[lbchawkeye]

Ticketmaster being shady?

An investigation into how Ticketmaster Entertainment Inc. handled Bruce Springsteen concerts has reached the subpoena stage.

The giant ticketing company based in West Hollywood incurred the wrath of the singer, concert-goers and even Congress in February for alleged actions that possibly forced fans to pay more than face-value for tickets through its resale operation, TicketsNow. On Friday, Ticketmaster sent an e-mail to brokers "to inform you that we are now required to hand over certain information about TicketsNow's broker clients and their sales activities."The complaints initially came from thousands of fans who were unable to log onto the Ticketmaster site when tickets for the concerts went on sale. The fans said they were redirected to the TicketsNow resale site, where the tickets were available at a markup.

http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-cotown-ticketmaster4-2009apr04,0,517583.story

I could be wrong, but wasn't the Cubs (or Red Sox maybe) accused of doing the same thing with their tickets. That being selling hard to get tickets from an affiliated broker at a major markup?

If the merger between Ticketmaster & Live Nation happens... it'll be interesting to see how it affects prices.

[newsbreaker]

The Tribune company opened their own "broker" who purchased huge blocks of tickets to Cubs games and sold them out of an office just down the street at a markup.

I don't know if it was proven that they were given first grab at tickets, but that's what everyone assumed.

Even more curiously, when the demand waned a bit during one of those seasons, all of a sudden sold-out dates weren't sold out anymore, and tickets could be purchased at face value via the Cubs again.

I'm not sure if they're still doing this or not.

[lbchawkeye]

Yep, Newsy that's what I remember too. I think it was a Dateline-esque investigation, but don't think anything was ever done in the legal sense.

On a slightly different note: It'll be interesting to see how the economy affects the baseball ticket sales this year too.

[newsbreaker]

Cubs ticket sales are actually up a little, but I've heard that most teams are expecting a 10% drop in attendance.