SIMON HOUPT
NEW YORK — From Thursday's Globe and Mail Published on Wednesday, Feb. 25, 2009 10:00PM EST Last updated on Friday, Apr. 10, 2009 12:14AM EDT
Concert fans hit Ticketmaster with more accusations of improper behaviour yesterday after reports surfaced that the ticket giant's wholly owned subsidiary TicketsNow was selling seats to upcoming Leonard Cohen shows at wildly inflated prices even before Ticketmaster offered them for sale to the public.
TicketsNow halted the sales after hearing of them on Tuesday afternoon. Tickets to the general public go on sale next Monday.
On Wednesday, a Ticketmaster spokesman suggested the Cohen seats on TicketsNow were speculative listings offered by individuals or brokers trying to sell tickets in the hope that they could purchase and flip them once they went on sale.
The CEO of Copps Coliseum in Hamilton, where Cohen will play May 19, said he was upset by the situation, but pleased with Ticketmaster's response.
“We've been pretty clear to them that we expect that they take pretty quick action to make sure it doesn't happen again,” said Duncan Gillespie.
The flap came only weeks after Ticketmaster pledged it would scuttle the practice, amid complaints that the company was directing ticket buyers to TicketsNow, where service charges sometimes reach more than four times the fees on its main site.
On Tuesday, during an anti-trust hearing into a proposed merger with the concert giant Live Nation, U.S. Senator Charles Schumer urged company executives to sell TicketsNow.
Leonard Cohen fans hoping to snag good tickets for a reasonable price to his upcoming Canadian shows may already be out of luck. Yesterday, Ticketmaster offered tickets in a 12-hour fan-club presale that was easily accessed through a password posted at a Cohen fan website.
Various other corporate presales are planned. Some of the best seats to Cohen's Hamilton show are available for $549 (plus service charge) per pair for so-called “VIP” packages.
If TicketsNow is out of the reselling game, other secondary-market retailers are happy to oblige.
On Wednesday, StubHub.com was asking $918 for a single ticket to Cohen's May 25 show at the National Arts Centre. Tickets were also available on TicketNetwork.com.
And some entrepreneurs are trying to make a quick buck on something they don't even own, with eBay sellers retailing passwords to the various presales for $12.99.
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