Now, this could be interesting. A Canadian man is suing Ticketmaster over its previously reported TicketsNow secondary ticket sales site.
As previously reported, the growth of online ticket touting, where individuals buy tickets for in-demand events and then sell them for profit via an auction website like eBay, or one of the newer sites specifically established for ticket reselling, has not been without controversy, with a number of artists, artist managers and gig promoters expressing dislike for the phenomenon, partly out of concern for punters who end up paying hiked up prices, partly because the touts can often earn considerably more on a resold ticket than they do.
Despite those concerns, the so called secondary ticketing market has become big business, meaning an increasing number of promoters and ticket agents are adopting an "if you can't beat them join them" policy, and getting into the tickets resale game themselves. To that end, primary ticketing giant Ticketmaster last year bought two established secondary ticketing companies, TicketsNow in North America and Get Me In in the UK.
Ticketmaster's dabblings in secondary ticketing, while in part legitimising the sector, has also further pissed off those who object to the growth in touting, not least because, in the US, when they are unable to sell primary tickets to an event, either because they aren't an official seller or they have sold out their allocation, they point people instead to TicketsNow, where tickets are often available at a marked up price. Though the reseller earns most of the mark up, Ticketmaster does get a commission.
Some artists, promoters and consumer groups have criticised the link up between Ticketmaster and its sister company TicketsNow, because, they say, some fans, knowing the former to be a primary ticket seller, won't realise that the latter is a resale outfit where tickets for in-demand events are likely to be considerably marked up. In fact, The Consumers' Association Of Canada recently described the practice as "a conflict, a monopoly and unconscionable".
And, of course, last week Bruce Springsteen hit out when he heard that his fans were being redirected from his official Ticketmaster tickets site to the resale service, seemingly simply because the main site hadn't the bandwidth to cope with the number of people going online to buy tickets (ie primary tickets were, in theory, still available).
Once The Boss spoke, Ticketmaster chief Irving Azoff quickly issued an apology and pledged to review the way the company's primary tickets site promotes its secondary sister site.
Henry Krajewski's admittedly optimistic lawsuit against the ticketing giant says that TicketsNow, and Ticketmaster's promotion of it via their primary site, breaches Ontario rules that restrict ticket touting. He is suing after he was sold two tickets via TicketsNow for a Smashing Pumpkins gig that had a face value of C$133, and which were sold to him for C$533.65. He is suing for a massive C$500 million and wants the case to become a class action, so anyone sold marked up tickets via TicketsNow could sue for a refund of the difference between a ticket's face value and what they paid.
Ticketmaster have yet to comment on the lawsuit. My knowledge of Ontario's ticket touting rules isn't great, though Krajewski's case (and especially his damages claim) doesn't seem too strong to me.
Nevertheless, with Ticketmaster likely to be keen to prove to the US authorities that its proposed merger with Live Nation will not give it an overly unfair advantage in the live entertainments sector, it could probably do without lawsuits, even in Canada, in which it is accused of already abusing a conflict of interest.
PS: No confirmation as yet regarding Ticketmaster and Live Nation's previously reported plans to merge, though the Wall Street Journal seems to think it'll come today.