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Ticketmaster change TicketsNow promotion after Springsteen anger
By CMU Editorial | Published on Thursday 5 February 2009
Ticketmaster chief Irving Azoff had to pull himself away from the rumoured Live Nation merger talks yesterday to apologise for problems in his company’s selling of tickets for an upcoming Bruce Springsteen tour in the US.
And, having pissed off one of the country’s biggest music stars, he seemingly felt the need to make an on-the-fly change-in-strategy decision regarding the co-promotion of Ticketmaster’s secondary ticketing service on its primary ticketing website.
He issued an apology after Springsteen’s official website posted a message accusing the ticketing giant of deliberately and misleadingly redirecting fans to their secondary ticketing resale site TicketsNow.
Springsteen’s people commented after a number of the singer’s fans complained that when they tried to buy tickets for one his shows via the Ticketmaster website they consistently got an error message, which then redirected them to TicketsNow, where they could buy tickets on the secondary market off online touts, but at a considerable mark up (Ticketmaster, of course, take a cut of that mark up on their TicketsNow site).
A statement from Springsteen and his band said they were “furious” that their fans were being redirected to TicketsNow from their official tickets site, adding: “We perceive this as a pure conflict of interest. Ticketmaster is there to ensure that we have a good, fair sale of our tickets at their face value plus normal ticketing charges”.
It’s not the first time Ticketmaster, who got into the secondary ticketing market last year by acquiring TicketsNow in North America and Get Me In Here in the UK, have come under criticism for redirecting fans from official ticket sale webpages to unofficial resale auctions. The Consumers’ Association Of Canada recently described the practice as “a conflict, a monopoly and unconscionable”.
Ticketmaster say they provide the link to TicketsNow only when their main site is unable to sell primary tickets for an event, either because they are not an agent for that event, or because all primary tickets are sold out. They argue that is an added value service for consumers keen to get tickets by any means. However, in the case of the Springsteen tickets, it seems that fans were redirected to the sister website when the primary site was simply unable to cope with demand, ie because of bandwidth rather that ticket availability issues.
Either way, with Springsteen et al on the war path, Azoff quickly issued a statement apologising profusely, and pledging to restrict the occasions when the Ticketmaster website points consumers to TicketsNow, and to only offer the secondary ticketing option where an artist approves.
He wrote: “While we were genuinely trying to do the right thing for fans in providing more choices when the tickets they requested from the primary on-sale were not available, we clearly missed the mark. Fans are confused and angry, which is the opposite of what we hoped to accomplish. We sincerely apologise to Bruce, his organisation and, above all, his fans”.
He continued: “We recognise that we need to change our course. We have committed to Bruce and state publicly here that we have taken down all links for Bruce’s shows directing fans from Ticketmaster to TicketsNow. This redirection only occurred as a choice when we could not satisfy fans’ specific search request for primary ticket inventory, but to make sure there is no misunderstanding in the future, we also publicly state that we will never again link to TicketsNow in a manner that can possibly create any confusion during a high-demand on-sale. Specifically, we will not present an option to go to TicketsNow from Ticketmaster without the consent of the artist and the venue, both of whom work together to bring the joy of live entertainment to millions of fans”.
And he concluded: “If any fans inadvertently purchased tickets in the resale marketplace believing in error they were purchasing from the initial on-sale, we will refund the difference between the actual purchase price and the face price of the ticket. (Please don’t abuse this good faith gesture – we did not give brokers any preferential access to tickets). We are committed to helping deliver the most transparent and best live entertainment experience to fans. We will do better going forward”.
So there you go, if you want quick action on something, just send in Springsteen who is, it seems, really the boss.
