http://www.ticketnews.com/news/ticketmaster-facing-ticket-scalping-allegations111214852

For those too lazy:

Ticketing giant Ticketmaster is facing new allegations that the company withheld tickets from the recent general on sale for a Nashville, TN Lady Gaga concert, only to list the tickets for sale with significant price mark-ups on secondary ticketing websites.

According to an investigation by Nashville's NewsChannel 5, five tickets for the concert were found for sale at above face value prices on secondary ticketing site StubHub. NewsChannel 5 traced the source of those tickets back to Ticketmaster's parent company Live Nation, with the tickets designated for "Live Nation executives" in internal documents.

In response to the report by NewsChannel 5, Ticketmaster spokesperson Jacqueline Peterson denied that the company was involved in any ticket resale, telling NewsChannel 5 that the "tickets were put on sale to the general public, then purchased by a scalper and put on StubHub."

These most recent allegations of withholding tickets from onsales and reselling them on secondary ticketing sites are hardly the first for Ticketmaster. A separate investigative report by Nashville's NewsChannel 5 uncovered documents that appear to indicate that Ticketmaster cultivates relationships with independent brokers and provides tickets to the brokers for resale at marked up prices.

Among the documents were emails from Live Nation's former CEO Isaac Azoff to ticket broker Chuck Lombardo discussing with Lombardo the benefits of Live Nation and Ticketmaster's merger to Lombardo's business. Ticketmaster has stated that these and other documentation found were evidence of "old business practices."

Also cited in the NewsChannel 5 report was an undercover investigation by a British television crew from earlier in 2012. During the investigation, the undercover reporter was told by a broker that Live Nation has a deal in place with that particular seller so that any profits from resold tickets are split 90/10, with Live Nation taking the lion's share of the split. Ticketmaster did not directly address the evidence presented by NewsChannel 5, but did release a statement to the network stating that "Ticketmaster stands categorically against ticket scalpers."

While Ticketmaster does own three secondary ticketing websites, including TicketsNow.com which has been at the center of several high profile on sale glitches in the past several years, the primary ticketing site continues to publically campaign against so-called ticket scalping. Most recently, Ticketmaster's fight against scalping was demonstrated in the company's support of the Tennessee Fairness in Ticketing Act, which purports to curtail ticket scalping by requiring brokers to register with the state along with creating more stringent laws that would promote greater transparency in the secondary ticketing market.

I truly wish these constant investigations would go somewhere towards breaking up ticket master and live nation

Ticketmaster/Stubhub against scalping is like Phillip Morris running anti-tobacco commercials (all the Truth commercials were made by PM)...

I lived in Nashville for 22 years and hate Channel 5, but I salute them on this. It was probably that d-bag Phil Williams who broke the story. Good for him.

Another hilarious pricing story....
Rush played the TD Garden in October. Most concerts I've seen there place the balcony in one price level. Not anymore. They actually split the balcony price level in two. The cheaper seats happened to be under an overhang. Anyone who's seen a show at the TD Garden knows that the overhang destroys the sound, rendering it muddy and unintelligible. Ticketmaster sure knows this... Hey, you want to actually hear the show? That'll be an extra $40.

Now I have been witnessing obnoxious ticket scalping situations for as long as I can remember. I am a lover of concerts and within these past couple of months, the situation has escalated and gotten much worse. There has to be some kind of underlying reason as to why there are SO MANY tickets on stub hub and ticket liquidator and absolutely nothing on ticketmaster.com.

Honestly, the last five or so concert tickets that I was hoping to get have been absolutely horrid experiences for me. Now to be frank, I did have an obsession with the Jonas Brothers a couple of years back. As many people know they had a reunion concert in NYC last month. My friends and I were hoping to go. In October I was beyond excited to get tickets for the concert. Like I always do, I previously researched the date and time that the tickets were to go on sale and there I was, at 9:55 AM ready for the tickets to go on sale in five minutes. I refreshed the page at 10 AM, chose best available seating, any price, asking for two seats considering the ticket limit per household is FOUR. I click to get to the checkout page....and there was nothing. I hope I am correct but I am pretty sure that no venue in the world can sell out in ten seconds.

But here is the funny thing, I go to the stub hub website and there are almost 1,000 tickets for that show on sale starting at about $200 for nose bleed seats. Also I noticed that there were groups of FOURTEEN SEATS together. Oh well thats a bit comical because from what I reckon, the ticket limit per household was four tickets.

This does not make any sense to me. There is no possible way that these slimy ticket scalpers do not have an underlying deal with the Ticketmaster website because those extremely large grouping of seats are not accessible when ordering like a normal person off of the website.

Ticketmaster needs to come out and say something about this. It is upsetting a lot of people, including me. I went to the Z100 Jingleball viewing party... again, because that was the most inexpensive way I could get into MSG on December 7. While being shown a pan of the crowd, there were a decent amount of seats empty. One can only imagine how frustrating this was.

Ticketmaster as got a lot of work to do and a truth to be said because I know that I am not the only person who finds something very suspicious going on. To me, I thought the whole point of Ticketmaster and their business was to encourage going to concerts and shows and ensuring that their customers have a secure ticket experience and enjoyable time at their event. From what has been happening within the past couple of months...it does not seem so.

@sarahmorales said:

Now I have been witnessing obnoxious ticket scalping situations for as long as I can remember. I am a lover of concerts and within these past couple of months, the situation has escalated and gotten much worse. There has to be some kind of underlying reason as to why there are SO MANY tickets on stub hub and ticket liquidator and absolutely nothing on ticketmaster.com.

Honestly, the last five or so concert tickets that I was hoping to get have been absolutely horrid experiences for me. Now to be frank, I did have an obsession with the Jonas Brothers a couple of years back. As many people know they had a reunion concert in NYC last month. My friends and I were hoping to go. In October I was beyond excited to get tickets for the concert. Like I always do, I previously researched the date and time that the tickets were to go on sale and there I was, at 9:55 AM ready for the tickets to go on sale in five minutes. I refreshed the page at 10 AM, chose best available seating, any price, asking for two seats considering the ticket limit per household is FOUR. I click to get to the checkout page....and there was nothing. I hope I am correct but I am pretty sure that no venue in the world can sell out in ten seconds.

But here is the funny thing, I go to the stub hub website and there are almost 1,000 tickets for that show on sale starting at about $200 for nose bleed seats. Also I noticed that there were groups of FOURTEEN SEATS together. Oh well thats a bit comical because from what I reckon, the ticket limit per household was four tickets.

This does not make any sense to me. There is no possible way that these slimy ticket scalpers do not have an underlying deal with the Ticketmaster website because those extremely large grouping of seats are not accessible when ordering like a normal person off of the website.

Ticketmaster needs to come out and say something about this. It is upsetting a lot of people, including me. I went to the Z100 Jingleball viewing party... again, because that was the most inexpensive way I could get into MSG on December 7. While being shown a pan of the crowd, there were a decent amount of seats empty. One can only imagine how frustrating this was.

Ticketmaster as got a lot of work to do and a truth to be said because I know that I am not the only person who finds something very suspicious going on. To me, I thought the whole point of Ticketmaster and their business was to encourage going to concerts and shows and ensuring that their customers have a secure ticket experience and enjoyable time at their event. From what has been happening within the past couple of months...it does not seem so.

....this has been going on for probably 2 decades....jesus