A Massachusetts man has filed a class action lawsuit against Ticketmaster Entertainment and its secondary ticket market subsidiary TicketsNow for allegedly defrauding purchasers of Phish tickets by redirecting them from less expensive tickets on Ticketmaster’s Web site to more expensive ones on TicketsNow.
The lawsuit filed by John O’Hurley in U.S. District Court in Massachusetts marks the third such lawsuit filed against the two ticketing giants, following suits in New Jersey involving how the companies handled sales of Bruce Springsteen tickets and The Dead tickets. Like the other two lawsuits, the Phish suit seeks class action status, but it exempts fans who were part of a non-lawsuit settlement reached between Ticketmaster and New Jersey Attorney General Anne Milgram over complaints concerning the Springsteen onsale. Ticketmaster did not admit any wrongdoing in relation to the settlement with Milgram.
The lawsuits represent more negative news for Ticketmaster as it seeks federal regulatory approval for its proposed $2.5 billion merger with Live Nation.
At issue in all three lawsuits is the way Ticketmaster was allegedly shuttling ticket buyers from its Web site when tickets were apparently sold out, over to the TicketsNow broker Web site, which resells tickets for a premium. Under the direction of former President and CEO Sean Moriarty, who left the company this year, Ticketmaster bought TicketsNow in early 2008 for about $265 million and was criticized almost immediately for allegedly redirecting fans from Ticketmaster to TicketsNow.
The latest lawsuit states:
Through agreements with venues artists and/or event promoters, Ticketmaster obtains (usually exclusive) rights to sell tickets to sporting, music, and other entertainment events. These tickets are sold on their website, www.ticketmaster.com. When tickets are scheduled to go on sale, customers typically log into the Ticketmaster website and purchase the desired tickets. However, Ticketmaster has engaged in a practice whereby large quantities of tickets, usually the most desirable tickets, are sold, redirected or otherwise conveyed by express or implicit agreement to TicketsNow.com, which charges ticket purchasers more than face value for tickets, sometimes up to thousands of dollars more than face value.
The result is that, within minutes or even seconds of tickets going on sale at Ticketmaster, purchasers are informed that tickets to an event are sold out or otherwise unavailable. These individuals are then rerouted directly from Ticketmaster’s website to TicketsNow.com. The format and layout of the two webpages are purposely similar to conceal that TicketsNow is a separate entity, which sells tickets on the secondary market and at above face value. In fact, TicketsNow expressly identifies itself as a Ticketmaster company. Consequently, customers redirected to TicketsNow believe that they are purchasing tickets at face value directly from Ticketmaster.
This artificial manipulation of the market price for tickets results in purchasers having no choice but to pay grossly inflated prices for tickets, just minutes after the tickets first become available to the public..
O’Hurley claims he tried in late January to buy two Phish tickets from Ticketmaster, but was redirected to TicketsNow where he bought two tickets for a total of $455.40. When his confirmation email arrived, however, it said he had bought nine tickets for a total of $2,064.25. The tickets carried a face value of $60 each.
The two companies have maintained, according to the lawsuit, that they “don’t divert tickets from Ticketmaster and list them for resale on TicketsNow. This simply does not happen.” Yet, the two have repeatedly done just the opposite.
In a twist, new Ticketmaster CEO Irving Azoff has slammed the secondary market as being a major part of the problem with the overall ticketing industry, and he said he would consider selling TicketsNow.
The lawsuit claims that the two companies’ “misrepresentations and inaccurate statements lead consumers to believe that tickets are being offered on TicketsNow only when there are no tickets remaining or available in the primary ticket market and, further, that there is no common interest between Ticketmaster and TicketsNow in moving tickets to the secondary ticket market. Individual purchasers are therefore misled to purchase more expensive tickets on the TicketsNow website as the only available option.”
Last Updated on May 27, 2009
13 Comments
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“When will people realize that Ticketmaster does not and never has diverted tickets to Ticketsnow.”
I laugh at your comment. I witnessed it first hand as did an unbelievably large amount of others. How does Ticketmaster (Distributor of all tickets) sell out of tickets in 3 minutes, yet their “sister” company has hundreds above face value? Shady business practice. It will come back to them. 🙂
THANK YOU. I tried to buy Phish tickets on Ticketmaster when they first went on sale, and they were sold out within 3 minutes or less. Ticketsnow obviously had some sketchy setup with ticketmaster and gave no possible chance for the public to buy the tickets. I really hope this guy wins. Ticketsnow is b****!
Looks like someone works for Ticketmaster.
god this is idiotic –
3 minute sell out?
15,000 tickets
3,000 live ‘outlets’ (phones, internet, physical)
6 ticket limit.
So in the fist minute as long as at least 3,000 people are trying to get tix (can be many more than that) and they request 6 tix each – – -18,000 tix in potential sales status…
2 minutes for those transactions to go through – another few minutes for tix to open back up (no sales elected or bad credit card) and re-sell…and you are sold out.
Ticketmaster does not OWN the tickets – they cannot ‘divert’ inventory (even if they want to!)
I look forward to the day when you KYS.
The Phish Phans are wrong. I understand the frustration, but the fact is that there is no way Ticketmaster redirected people to that site to drive prices up unless it was approved by Phish and they were making a profit off it as well… BUT THAT IS A HUGE STRETCH.
If you know how advanced Scalpers are in general, you’d realize that they can buy tickets with their bots and immediately put them on sale on ticketsnow or wherever without as much as clicking their mouse once. In all likelihodd, this is what happened.
The focus needs to be pulled off the ticket companies & artist management and put on TICKET BROKERS. Someone needs to bust the ones operating in states where it is illegal and the entire ticketing industry needs to work on technology to stop ticket brokers & their bots.
As much as I hate Ticketmaster, this lawsuit would be a win for morons if Ticketmaster loses.
Thanks for saying this. I read all of this news around ticketing lately and wonder have any of these folks tried to find out how it really works instead of assuming and playing the role of victim? I’m not saying that there are not a lot of shady things that go one with artists, managment, etc. but until people take a role that does more than play victim, the money wins everytime. Scalping is done in some very intelligent ways. It’s amazing how inventive people are at getting around the “system”. I do work for a TicketMaster competitor. Let me give an exmaple of where I’m going here: a woman once became angry at me because the computer gave her the wrong date when she purchased her tickets on line, and I should give her a refund. When I informed her that 3 different screens came up asking her to verify information before she purchased the tickets, she became angrier as opposed to taking some responsibility for her own actions. People need to quit displacing blame, and take appropriate action. I agree that many industries need to take a look at their practices but saying something is unfair because you didn’t get tickets or were not really paying attention or that it didn’t happen your way…doesn’t solve anything.
If you would’ve tried to get tickets to the Phish shows, you would’ve realized it’s not that easy.
I look forward to the day when Ticketmaster files suit against every moron who sued them, and every moron who joined one of these class actions. Maybe the lawyers will smarten up when their clients can’t pay them for these frivolous suits. When will people realize that Ticketmaster does not and never has diverted tickets to Ticketsnow.
Monkey see monkey do, lol
He is suing becauses he doesnt know how to select 2 tickets…what a joke!
Aside from the fact that this guy is obviously a ticketmaster troll, he is also a corporate pig in general. Notice his use of the words “frivolous lawsuits,” the corporate branding phrase in their fight for “tort reform” aka “take away the bastards’ rights to sue us so that we can do whatever we want to them without fear of reprisal.” Ticketmaster is obviously engaging in fraudulent business practice as anyone who has attempted to buy tickets from them and been redirected to the $2,000 scalp jobs on TicketsNow can attest. ANTITRUST LAWS NOW! Monopolistic monsters like Ticketmaster need to be gutted with a fish knife, no pun intended.
actually, it’s a very clever situation, similar to what several other aftermarket sales corporations do.
They receieve a notification in advance that they can sell ‘x’ number of tickets to an event, at ‘x’ prices (with variations based on the venue seating) Their ‘crime’ is that they set up ticketsnow to automatically purchase ‘x-1’ tickets at the EXACT SAME TIME as they list the tickets. It is not ‘diverting’ the tickets, and yet it is similarly unethical and underhanded.
I hope this class action lawsuit goes through and calls attention to the fact that Ticketmaster is, and has become, a monopoly that cripples competition, and is thus prohibited under the American business practice laws.