Concertgoers can't win

By Tony Hicks
CONTRA COSTA TIMES

Jon Mealley exhaled and mouthed a quiet obscenity.

It was 10:10 a.m. Sunday morning at Concord's Tower Records. Mealley had been a much happier man at 10, strolling toward the Ticketmaster counter, the first in line for what he hoped would be great seats at two Tom Petty concerts.

Ten minutes later, here's what he had: Last-row seats for one show, lawn seats for the other.
"(Expletive) lawn seats," muttered the Concord resident. "I was the first guy in line. At 10:02 they said there were no more (reserved) seats. At 10:07 a guy walked up and said, 'We're sold out.' Out of, what, 30 people here, probably only 10 got tickets."

Concertgoers' No. 1 beef used to be ticket prices. These days, they're happy if they can get tickets at all.

Concert promoters and entertainment industry officials point to reasons for this. There's the proliferation of ticket brokers, companies that often use high-powered technology and special software allowing them to buy large quantities of tickets in a short time. Add to this the tickets committed to "pre-sales" offered to fan club members and to radio promotions, and the general public gets fewer and fewer chances to get out of nosebleed seats.

"You can't even be the first guy in line and get good seats," said Mealley.

Ticket-selling outlets like Ticketmaster, Tickets.com and TicketWeb have sought to make buying tickets more convenient in the past decade, with increased outlets, Internet service and phone access. But these improvements have proved a boon to ticket brokers, which can snatch up tickets and then sell them for hefty profits, despite Ticketmaster's best attempts. Days after Mealley stood in line for two hours and paid $41-$59 each for seats to a Tom Petty concert, online ticket broker sites like ShowMeTickets.com offered front-row seats for the same concert. For $715.

"It's a cat-and-mouse game to stay ahead of them," said Bonnie Poindexter, a Ticketmaster spokeswoman.

Back when physical presence was required to buy tickets, brokers paid people to line up early. The 21st century version is getting employees on computers every Sunday morning. It's perfectly legal in California.

It's called capitalism in any other business, noted Paul Cobbe, the co-owner of Walnut Creek-based Bay Tickets. He realizes music fans who can't pay $700 to sit in the first row take it very personally. "The ticket business is easy to pick on," said Cobbe, who defends his business as a way for fans to avoid hassle. "People love their music. It's the only area I know of in the free-market system that people complain about."

Cobbe's agency doesn't use software to get around Ticketmaster's security devices, which include an optical password system supposedly impervious to computer intrusion. (Tickets.com has a similar system using sequences of numbers.) But there is expensive software out there that can do it, allowing users to rapidly and repeatedly enter a site to buy as many tickets as possible.

"I tried every application out there," Cobbe said. "By and large, they're garbage. It's a waste of time and money."

Still, ticket brokers are finding ways to frustrate fans, ticket agencies and, as a result, performers. And some of those performers are kicking back. Bruce Springsteen played the relatively small Paramount Theatre in Oakland on Thursday, and tried to make it as tough as possible for scalpers. Buyers could only purchase two tickets at a time and had to pick them up at the theater's box office. After standing in long lines, they were ushered directly into the theater, cutting off scalping opportunities.

"We'll see more of that, various artists caring more about getting that ticket into the fans' hands," said Ticketmaster's Poindexter.

But that creates even more inconvenience, forcing people to arrive early and stand in long will-call lines.

"That's the only method that's been proven to (keep tickets from scalpers)," said Gary Bongiovanni, editor of the concert trade magazine Pollstar. "It's Draconian, though, and it could never work in an arena."

Some states crack down on brokers by outlawing selling tickets for more than twice face value. "California law isn't terribly comprehensive in this area," said Nathan Brankin, a spokesman for Attorney General Bill Lockyer's office. He said the only state laws applying to scalpers involves scalping on a venue's property. Brokers also must work from a "brick and mortar" facility if selling more than six tickets at a time.

But while brokers may help elevate prices, they are by no means the only reason tickets are so hard to get for big shows. Artists and concert promoters control the ticket inventory, and usually the venue determines which agency will sell the tickets. Ticketmaster gets most of the big shows in the Bay Area.

Various radio stations get blocks of tickets, either to give away or pre-sell to listeners. For example, for the Petty shows, KFOG-FM 104.5 gets two seats in the first five rows to give away. Fan clubs are making a bigger impact, as more artists offer up to 10 percent of a venue's tickets to club members before they go on sale. It's a way for artists to reward fans and bypass ticket agencies altogether.

But there's no way to prevent scalpers from joining fan clubs, nor are there any guarantees. U2, which charges members $40 annual membership fees, had problems earlier this year getting tickets to some of those very fans who joined to avoid dealing with Ticketmaster.
"I went to close the transaction and got kicked out, so I had to start over and my pre-sale code said it was already used," said Jim Cordoba, of San Ramon. "I had to call Ticketmaster. They gave me a new code, which still did not work."

Cordoba eventually got his tickets six hours later and, eventually, an e-mail of apology from U2.
Even with all these factors in play, technology, ironically, seems to be the biggest culprit. In the late '70s and early '80s, Concord's Jeff Nelson bought from the venues when it was still first-come, first served. He camped out for Springsteen tickets at San Francisco's Winterland in 1978.
In contrast, getting Springsteen tickets in 2005 meant Nelson had to start punching a computer with one hand at 9:58 on a Sunday morning, while dialing a cell phone with the other. He struck out, missing Thursday's show.

"Now you just know that's the way it is," Nelson said. "I don't go to many big-name shows anymore, and that's part of it."