I purchased tickets, in anticipation of the financial windfall that is A Conservative History of the American Left, for this summer's best tour. REM headlines, with Modest Mouse (Johnny Marr on guitar!) and The National opening (click to listen). It's like a boxing card that is solid top to bottom. All killer, no filler.

Anyhow, I was psyched to see the ticket prices in my local "summer shed" venue at a meager $25 a pop. I can do that, I thought. I repeated Algebra in high school, but I never realized that my math skills are as bad as I discovered. $25X4=$100, right? Wrong. In ticketmaster math, $25X4=$206.50.

You see, the market rate for parking in rural Massachusetts apparently is $40. I'm not sure if that charge covers those guys who go around in golf carts to save me from any dangerous beverages I might attempt to imbibe in the parking lot, but I do know that they don't get paid merely in the free beer that they expropriate. Somebody has to pay the people tasked with saving me from me. Why not me? Then there's the convenience charge of $7.60 per ticket, which docks me for the "convenience" of saving ticketmaster the cost of postage and paper by printing the tickets myself. There are an additional $7 in charges per ticket. I'm not sure for what service those "service charges" go, but I'm sure Ticketmaster has mastered some justification for it. To make a long story short, I paid $51.37 for my ticket that Ticketmaster advertised for $25--and I don't even get a seat but instead a square foot of lawn to stand atop.

I don't blame the bands. God knows Pearl Jam and other acts, possessing foresight that I lacked, attempted to avert such false advertising by Ticketmaster more than a decade ago. The corporate behemoth that is Ticketmaster, probably earning more per ticket than the actual performers for the show that I will see, was just too powerful and monopolistic for Eddie Vedder and company to defeat in the legal arena. If you can't beat em, join em, I guess. So the people still pay the money. The bands still take the money. And, ah yes, Ticketmaster still gets its cut.

I am bothered nonetheless. First, there is something fundamentally dishonest about advertising a product for a certain price and then charging double. When will movie theaters start demanding a "service charge"? One-hundred-years ago, shopkeepers who employed the digit "9" as the last number in advertising a price were considered hucksters. Nowadays, capitalists broadcast one price and then charge another price significantly higher. This is dishonest. Second, the war against scalpers by Ticketmaster and the venues they serve--limiting numbers of tickets per buyer, arresting private sellers, coaxing legislatures to pass anti-free-market laws against middlemen sellers that do not apply to Ticketmaster or the venues they serve--is an effective way for unethical businessmen to eliminate competition.

That's right, ticket sellers are in the ticket scalping business and they seek not to protect the consumer but to protect themselves from the competition that comes from middlemen providers. To point to but one instance of this lawbreaking by the "scalping" monopolists, I direct you to ESPN, which reported last year: "The Cubs set up a sham firm, Wrigley Field Premium Tickets, which was owned by the same people who owned the Cubs, run by a Cubs VP, and even had the Cubs do their accounting. The Cubs would then funnel them face-value tickets before they were available to anyone else, which the sham company would scalp." Of course, the Cubs have a zero-tolerance policy against independent profit-seeking ticket providers, which they contemptuously, and more efficiently, refer to as "scalpers." Just don't call the Chicago Cubs scalpers.

At least those dudes outside the ballpark and concert shed usually have some powerful addiction to feed. What excuse can the owners of a Major League Baseball team offer?

I confess, in high school I charged above face value--even to friends--for tickets I purchased with the intent of making a profit. I got the idea from the so-called scalpers I saw every day that I worked at Fenway Park. Walking from the Kenmore Square station to Yawkey Way, I was bombarded with hoodlums asking, "Buying? Selling?" A lightbulb clicked on over my head.

I worked, had the capital to buy, and took the risk of eating unused tickets. I even organized interesting transportation and parking-lot options, in one case renting a UHaul and using the back as a living room in the Sullivan Stadium parking lot. Why shouldn't I have been rewarded? No one bailed me out in the instances, rare, when I lost money on the deal. U2, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, The Rolling Stones, and The Who were among the acts that I saw for free in the late '80s/early '90s because I invested in large quantities of tickets and sold them for a markup. Ocassionally, I capitalized on the fears of holders of unused tickets ("You want some salt and pepper with those tickets?") only to turn around and capitalize on the fears of last-minute ticket buyers ("I hope the concert sounds as good from the parking lot as it will from inside the stadium."). I was out to make a buck. They were out to see a concert. Our interests coincided, and that was that.

Everybody needs to earn a living. I strenuously object to those who "earn" it by force or fraud. In the case of the ticket monopoly, it gets money by both. Agree to their stated price for a ticket, and they will shortly inform you that the price is actually double. Infringe on their territory of ticket markups, and they will sic the police on you. There are rackets everywhere. The most successful ones are those that convince the authorities to protect their turf and eliminate the competition. That's Ticketmaster.

I was looking for play tickets recently so I checked Ticketmaster and found the duckets I wanted for a face value of $74 to be $122.50 with all applicable extra charges and fees had I chose to order them electronically. Times four.

Cheap b@stard that I am, I ended up going to the ticket office at the theater and buying them for face value.

Dan,

Only point you miss is that the venues actually conspire with Ticketmaster in these fees. The service charges do not all go uniformly to Ticketmaster at all but are shared in individual agreements with the venues. So a venue wants to charge 30 for a ticket but instead charges 25 and then takes a cut of the service fees Ticketmaster charges to bump their take up to thirty.

Ticketmaster gets to look like the bad guy (they are anyway) and the venue who chooses to use Ticketmaster is never noticed.

It's called a middle. Ticketmaster has one with the Venue. The venue has one with the promoter (if outside Live Nation), and then worst of all the promoter has a padded "cost" with the band. This "fake fee" often screws the bands out of hundreds or even thousands that they deserve.

I'm all for making money but the event costs X and that usually is an all inclusive amount to pay all involved in it's production. These interim companies certainly deserve to be paid for the conveniences they offer but seem to be inflating the price of their nominal services.

You should have posted the youtube clips of the National at Paddy O's in Faneuil Hall. Username Lou and WFNX booked that show. here is the clip: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZZ1QS4-eVmU

Ticketmaster is owned by Paul Allen, isn't it?

Let's go Ha-awks [clap, clap, clap-clap-clap]!

Very strange series, Ralph. In Boston, the Celtics look like the Celtics we have seen all year. In the ATL, they are entirely different. They had no problem getting road wins during the regular season, even in such adverse situations as being down 22 to San Antonio in the AT&T Center, so I have to assume they have some problem with Atlanta. I do not expect them to have much trouble getting road wins next round.

Celtics over Hawks in Game 7, then Celtics over Cavs in 6.

Dan:

It sounds like what Ticket Master is doing is fraud and should be considered consumer deception. However, I have to defend standard ticket scalping as perfectly moral.

Scalpers perform a service for society. Namely, they acquire surplus tickets, when the average joe does not have time to do so. They then provide those tickets for sale through a second market, it often being difficult or impossible to get tickets through the first market (the box office). It must be the case that people have trouble acquiring tickets through the box office, or else scalpers would be out of business.

I saw multiple Celtics & Bruins games this year that I would not have had the chance to seen if not for scalpers. So I would say that in most cases, scalping is a moral and desirable example of the division of labor providing goods that we .would otherwise not have access to.

Ben-T,

Strangely enough, I think the Hawks pose tough matchup problems for the Celtics because the former are very athletic (they are the most athletic team in the league). Josh Smith can literally jump out of the gym. Joe Johnson is terrific (I never could understand Phoenix letting him go). Horford is an animal. Add the wiley veteran Bibby to the mix, and they can be dangerous if they get confident and shots start falling. I'd definitely favor Boston at home, but game 7s are tricky. Anything can happen in a game 7.

Ralph & Ben-T,

Shockingly I finally have some professional basketball to get excited about. The Hawks are blowing me away this series, those games in Atlanta were unreal. Literally no one gave them a chance, and that isn't a surprise as they came into the playoffs as the worst record. But then they put up 60% from deep against the best defense in the league . . . wow.

The thing that gets me going is not that they may win this series (I still doubt it) but that they are so young. And now that they get a bit of a "we can do this" swagger and maybe one or two good pickups in the next year or two and Atlanta may finally have a solid performing, good, basketball team on its hands.

And of course the Hawks have my hometown hero "Rio" on the bench (Mario West). He is one of th better stories in basketball for those familiar with it.

Hawks are definitely gonna be good in this league Bruce. But the Celtics are still my favorites to win it all.

The National is a very bright spot in the contemporary music scene. Should be a great show, Mr. Flynn. I haven't commented in awhile but I love your blog and look forward to buying your new book. Peace \\//

-Polemical Muhammad Ali (!!!)