What is it about one 74-year-old singer/poet that has so many people up in arms?
Following anger in Canada over the handling of the sale of Leonard Cohen tickets, Ticketmaster Entertainment finds itself mired in a controversy again involving ticket sales for the aging performer, this time for a couple of New York City shows scheduled for May.
And in a twist, in an exposé this week in the Wall Street Journal, company CEO Irving Azoff and others all but outed Cohen and other artists for being the ones who quietly resell their own tickets. The admission, which in this case involved Azoff client Neil Diamond, corroborated what TicketNews has reported on in the past involving Van Halen, Bon Jovi, Radiohead and others.
In the latest Cohen case, tickets went on sale earlier this week for the May 16 and 17 shows at Radio City Music Hall, and within minutes they supposedly sold out, according to the New York Daily News. However, premium tickets were available at the same time on Ticketmaster’s TicketExchange, a resale site, for prices significantly higher than face value.
Ticketmaster spokesperson Albert Lopez told the Daily News that nothing fishy went on, that tickets were legitimately bought quickly by fans, but he added that an undisclosed number of tickets that were on TicketExchange had not been made available to the public during the onsale.
TicketNews emailed several questions to Lopez for him to elaborate, including where those TicketExchange tickets came from, how many were there and what were the original face values for those tickets.
In addition, TicketNews asked for more information concerning Azoff’s statements to the Wall Street Journal that artists and their representatives resell tickets, considering Diamond is a client of Azoff’s, yet Azoff has repeatedly said he believes that the secondary resale ticket market should be outlawed. Lopez did not respond to the email.
The issue of Ticketmaster’s relationship to the secondary market remains a thorny one for the company, especially as it battles to have its merger with Live Nation approved by federal regulators. Ticketmaster recently settled a complaint with New Jersey Attorney General Anne Milgram over its handling of sales of Bruce Springsteen tickets.
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keep their feet to the fire
I find it ironic that a website owned by a company that has championed legislation allowing more open ticket re-selling across the company is whining so much about artists re-selling their own tickets. What gives, TicketNews/TicketNetwork? It’s good for all your brokers to make a buck of Hannah Montana or Bruce Springsteen but not the artists themselves to do the same? As a broker, I find the hypocrisy laughable. You can’t say you want ticket re-selling restrictions dropped for the general public but kept in place for the artists themselves.
And I agree with the guy who posted above me, this is getting old. Like it or not, the merger will eventually go through.
News flash – artists selling own tickets! That’s right up there with other “captain obvious” statements like:
1. Restaurant workers can eat at their place of work for free.
2. Best Buy employees can get computers without the retail markup.
3. Realtors can buy houses without paying the 6% commission.
Of course the artists are holding the best tickets for themselves. Do you know how many close friends Neil Diamond, his band, his manager have? I’m sure they can all point to at least 4 family members who want tickets when his show comes to town. They can’t find people ALL the time to use these tickets, so they re-sell them on the open market later. So why is it criminal for Ticketmaster to do this work, instead of Stubhub or some other scalper?
As a ticket broker for the past 12 years, I am getting tired of hearing what artists can and can’t do with their tickets. They are the performers, they are the reason we are even selling tickets so why can’t they do what they want with some of the tickets. I would much rather have Ticketmaster on my side then against us. We have worked many years against Ticketmaster and only up to about a year ago with the addition of Ticketsnow are we finally working together. Why ruin that? Let’s salvage this relationship and stop all the negative banter.
It’s not criminal for the artists to hold some tickets for whatever purpose. So why keep this fact in the shadows while pointing the finger at brokers? Why use brokers as scapegoats for a common practice that like you said has been quite obvious for many years? Why keep throwing ticket brokers under the bus?
I think we all know the answer to that question. It’s the same answer that caused the Bruce Springsteen “computer glich”.
Mr. Branch, you drew an inaccurate conclusion and are misleading your readers when you wrote, “And in a twist, in an exposé this week in the Wall Street Journal, company CEO Irving Azoff and others all but outed Cohen and other artists…” The Wall Street Journal article, while naming several artists involved in selling tickets through TicketExchange, DID NOT name Leonard Cohen as one of these artists. Leonard’s name was not mentioned in the article at all. Leonard’s management has assured Cohen fans that while Leonard was offered the option of having tickets sold on TicketExchange, his management DECLINED the offer. Further, Leonard is not involved in any plan or program wherein he would profit from the resale of tickets on TicketExchange, TicketsNow or any of the myriad ticket broker sites. Please correct your article.
This is getting OLD
You can add Rod Stewart to this list or Ticketmaster is still screwing us all. All these primos were on Marketplace at http://www.ticketmaster.com/exchange/1C004269D6425196?page=1&sort=price the second the public onsale started. No way fans had time to buy and list.