Just the ticket

When Fleet Foxes announced last summer they would play only one show in Florida, Tampa concertgoer Chris Forsha was prepared. He jumped onto Ticketmaster’s website to try to get choice seats moments before the sale went live for the Jacksonville show. But he was never able to access anything closer than a balcony seat, as all the best seats were gone seemingly just minutes after they went on sale.

If you’ve attempted to purchase tickets online via Ticketmaster or a performance venue in recent years, you’ve probably had a similar experience. Why is that? The odds are strong that a large block of good seats had already been snapped up by crafty ticket scalpers — or “resellers,” as they’re more politely known — who then worked with a middleman like StubHub to find buyers. That left you, despite your diligence, out of the loop.

Bruce Springsteen feels your pain. When he hits the stage with the E Street Band at the Tampa Bay Times Forum next month, thousands of fans will be able to get dibs on the best seats via “paperless” tickets — tickets which can only be redeemed at the site of the venue by the credit card holder, with a valid ID. Restricting a block of seats to paperless purchase means that fans can buy prime seats from the source — the Forum’s box office or Ticketmaster — rather than having to deal with an online broker, where the price could be considerably higher. AC/DC, Miley Cyrus and a host of professional sports teams are among those going the paperless route. With so much commerce being handled directly thru smartphones, the trend is expected to increase in the future.

And that’s exactly what StubHub is afraid of. The broker is a major backer of a bill floating in the Florida Legislature this winter that would make it illegal for ticket vendors to put restrictions on the resale of tickets, and would essentially block the paperless movement.

StubHub’s complaint — shared by many concertgoers — is that paperless ticketing takes away the power of the consumer.

“When you get your ticket, you’re not allowed to give it away, not allowed to share it, not allowed to distribute it to your friends,” says Jon Potter of Fan Freedom Project, a year-old group whose start-up costs were funded by StubHub. “You’re not allowed to sell or re-sell it.”

But isn’t technology pointing in the paperless direction anyway? Yes, Potter says, but he’s opposed to buying a ticket only to be told “You don’t own that ticket.”

Influential music blogger Bob Lefsetz disagrees. In an email, Lefsetz writes, “Generally speaking, StubHub is on the wrong side of every issue on this. They’re essentially scalpers, that’s their business.”

It’s an interesting conversation, but it’s far from just an academic one. Florida is one of several state legislatures around the country that are debating the issue.

The most prominent voices in the debate are Ticketmaster and StubHub, but the controversy is also causing considerable angst among people like Judy Lisi, president of Tampa’s Straz Center for the Performing Arts. The Straz doesn’t use Ticketmaster and tolerates StubHub, and the center doesn’t use paperless ticketing (yet), but she says passage of the Florida bills — dubbed “Transparency in ticket availability” (HB 225 & SB 392) —— could severely impact the way her company does business. She points out that every business has the right to market and sell its product the way it wants to, and that when the Straz restricts a block of seats more fans are guaranteed the opportunity to purchase tickets at face value, before they go on the open market and get bought up by scalpers.

“It’s always been hard to legislate scalping laws, but at least they were on the books, and at least the consumer had some type of protection,” she says with urgency in her voice.

Scalping was for a long time illegal in Florida, though of course it had always occurred, with a wink and a nod. But after ticket reselling exploded on the Internet, state legislators passed a law in ’06 that allowed for the practice, as long as it was conducted through an authorized dealer — such as StubHub. After complaints from the Straz and other nonprofit performing arts centers, a new bill in 2009 was passed that said that the resale of tickets to facilities smaller than 3,000 was to be restricted to no more than $1 over face value.

A quick Google search of shows going on at the downtown facility mock that law. Tickets for Fox News personality Bill O’Reilly’s appearance at Carol Morsani Hall next month originally went on sale with tickets ranging from $48 to $98, but a site called Ticket Liquidator can get you a pair in the orchestra for $219 apiece.

The Florida Consumer Action Network (FCAN) is a fan of the proposed Florida legislation, sponsored in the House by Fort Walton Beach’s Matt Gaetz and in the Senate by Fort Lauderdale’s Ellyn Bogdanoff (neither of whom returned CL’s calls for comment).

FCAN’s executive director in Tampa, Bill Newton, says he’s been frustrated about having to go through Ticketmaster to purchase tickets through a single operator, and says that’s not healthy for the consumer. “As consumers, we [FCAN] do favor free markets more times than you would think,” he says. On its website, FCAN says the bills ensure that consumers have the right to sell or transfer their ticket any way they choose, to anyone they choose, at any price they choose.

Newton says there’s lots of misinformation regarding the bills, and it’s important that Florida consumers know the facts. On that point alone, Newton and Lisi are on the same page. But that’s the only point.

Lisi says she’d like to sit down and meet with FCAN, because she thinks it’s “Orwellian” that anybody could call the legislation consumer-friendly. She disputes the fact that tickets right now aren’t transferable, saying whoever purchases a ticket from her box office always has had the right to give (or sell) it to somebody else.

But a spokesperson for StubHub, Joellen Ferrer, says that close to half of all tickets purchased via her company’s site are below face value (Judy Lisi disputes that, arguing she’s never seen that happen). Ferrer says fans drive price competitiveness. For example, she says that while tickets for the Miami Heat vs. the L.A. Lakers will definitely be priced much higher on StubHub, fans can find tickets for a less attractive opponent, like say, the LeBron James-less Cleveland Cavaliers, at less than face value.

A search by CL for a Heat/Cavs game on February 7 seems to back up Ferrer. On the Heat’s website, one ticket could be found in Section 327 for the face value price of $46. On StubHub, you could get two tickets together in the same section for $20 apiece.

Nationally the issue is raging, and confusing, as there are two “fan”-related organizations backing differing points of view. In addition to the Fan Freedom Project, there is also the Fans First Coalition — financed by Live Nation, which owns Ticketmaster.

Michael Marion, the president of Fans First, is the building manager at the Verizon Arena in Little Rock, Arkansas. He says concerns about paperless ticketing inconveniencing concertgoers are way overblown, and that a survey taken after a Taylor Swift concert where paperless tickets were issued at his facility showed that 88 percent of those asked would go paperless again, so convenient was the service.

Another provision in the proposed law is a requirement that websites for all facilities in Florida must show the number of tickets available.

In December, the House sponsor of the bill, Matt Gaetz, wrote a letter to the editors of the Tampa Tribune in response to a negative editorial. His letter claimed that big ticket sellers often pre-sell thousands of tickets to VIPs, premium credit card holders, fan club members and event sponsors, shutting out fan access to the best seats.

But Lisi sees such pre-sale set-asides as a protection against inflated prices.

“The problem with putting all your tickets up is the consumer does not have a chance to purchase seats at the base price.” If all tickets are made available at once, the argument goes, a venue is opening itself up to the threat of bot software computer programs that snatch up reams of the best tickets for resale. That practice is (nominally) condemned by everyone involved in the ticketing debate.

Tampa concertgoer Chris Forsha says he sees both sides of the debate. He thinks paperless ticketing could make it easier for him to get good seats at a concert, but he still likes the idea of having an actual ticket for a souvenir of the live experience.

He also says he’s suspicious when interest groups begin lobbying for legislation. But that’s our political system at work, and right now, it appears that those who fear a paperless ticket future (i.e. StubHub) are winning the argument.

This article appears in Feb 9-15, 2012.