Ticketmaster Takes Another Stab At Shutting Down Scalpers With Paperless Tickets

from the two-sets-of-rules dept

When it's not been busy trying to get into the scalping business itself, Ticketmaster has been trying to push scalpers aside. It claims it does this for altruistic reasons, but those claims generally fall on deaf ears, with many people believing it's simply trying to capture the scalpers' revenues. It's escalating the battle now by expanding its use of paperless tickets for concerts, and will use them for the upcoming Miley Cyrus tour, after an earlier series of shows sparked a flurry of complaints about scalpers. Ticketmaster has been testing the program for a little while, and trying to sell it as a convenient solution: instead of getting a paper ticket for a show, buyers don't receive one before the show, and instead must present the credit card they used to purchase their seats to get in. On its surface, this seems like a fairly effective way of cutting out scalpers by making their transactions with their customers much more difficult. But it's still not clear why Ticketmaster sees such a need to interfere with the market -- beyond its own self-interest, of course. It's hard to imagine that Ticketmaster really cares that scalping goes on, except for the fact that it's not making any money from it.

One inevitable (and legitimate) complaint about this system is that it not only takes out scalpers, but other secondary transactions, too. Want to buy tickets as a gift, or for your kid? You'll have to take the recipient to the show and go up to the gate with them. Buy tickets for yourself, but then can't go to the show and want to give them to a friend? You're out of luck, unless you and your credit card can get there (and, of course, there are no refunds). It seems likely that Ticketmaster will have to do something to rectify this, particularly given the political scrutiny they've attracted lately, and the solution seems obvious: Ticketmaster sets up a secondary market that lets people resell their tickets and reassigns them to a new credit-card holder (taking a cut for all the hard work, of course). The company has been growing its reseller business, in particular making efforts to become the "official fan resale" partner of various sports leagues and teams, and it's hard to see it not using paperless tickets as a way to expand this business. Ticketmaster hates scalping -- unless it's the one doing the reselling. But if it wants to benefit from the free market, the market should really be free, and not one established and controlled by Ticketmaster.

Carlo Longino is an expert at the Insight Community. To get insight and analysis from Carlo Longino and other experts on challenges your company faces, click here.

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Announcing The Free! Summit... And Some Other Speaking Gigs

from the talk-talk-talk dept

As regular readers of this site know, I'm pretty passionate about how businesses need to understand the economics of "free" in figuring out how to create business models that work. So, I'm excited to announce that I'll be hosting and emceeing the newly announced Free! Summit, to be held in Silicon Valley on May 11th.

Chris Anderson (whose book on "Free" will be coming out in just a few months) will be keynoting, and we're pulling together the rest of the participants as well. The event is being produced by the fine folks from Tech Policy Central, and works as a nice lead-in to their Tech Policy Summit that will start immediately after the Free! Summit concludes. In fact, attending the Free! Summit gets you access to the opening session of the Tech Policy Summit as well. And, yes, registration to The Free! Summit is, in fact, free. But... there are a limited number of seats, so sign up now. Also, we're very much looking for individuals or organizations interested in presenting case studies on how they've used free as a part of their business model. We already have a few lined up, but feel free to suggest others of interest.

I hope that many of you can join us for what I'm sure will be a great series of discussions on "free" and what it means for business models, policy and the economy.

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Separately, there are a few other events I'll be participating in that are worth mentioning:

• First up, I'm going to be keynoting the Leadership Music Digital Summit in Nashville, Tennessee, to be held on March 23 -- March 25th, where I'll be doing an updated version of my MidemNet talk. It's yet another chance to talk with folks from in and around the music industry.



• Next, I'm thrilled to be keynoting the Mesh Conference in Toronto, Canada, being held April 7th and 8th. I've attended Mesh the past two years, and it's a fantastic event for (as they say) connecting, sharing and inspiring around all sorts of new ideas relating to the internet, media and new business models. That talk will be a brand new one focusing on digital media business models, followed by an interview with Mathew Ingram and a Q&A. If you're in the Toronto area, don't miss it.



• Also, the week of March 8 - 14th, I'll (once again) be in Edinburgh, Scotland, giving a whole series of talks at the University of Edinburgh. I'm not entirely sure which of the talks are public and which are for students only, but two events that I know are public are the talk I'll be giving to the Edinburgh Entrepreneurship Club on What Makes Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley on March 10th and then I'll be attending/participating at a special BarCamp Scotland on March 14th.



• Because I'm in Scotland that week, I won't be able to attend Canadian Music Week in person in Toronto, unfortunately, but they will be showing my MidemNet talk during one of the sessions on music business models.



• Finally, unfortunately with all the travel on my schedule, I'm going to be unable to personally attend David Isenberg's fantastic Freedom to Connect even in Washington DC on March 30th and 31st, but if you're anywhere in the area, you shouldn't miss it. It's a great event focused on "the emerging internet economy" with a strong focus on the policy angles related to internet connectivity these days. You're probably already aware of Isenberg from his regular writings on the subject, but he pulls together such a great braintrust for his events that you'd be crazy to miss it if you're in the area. And, along those lines, he's agreed to offer Techdirt readers a special $100 discount on registering for the event. Prices actually go up this Saturday, so if you want to attend, you should register now...

That's it in terms of speaking events for now. There are, of course, a few other private speaking engagements that I'm doing (if you're interested in having me speak at private events, please contact us), and some other events that are in the works... In the meantime, I hope to see you at one of these events!

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Chicago Wants To Double-Collect Taxes On Event Ticket Sales

from the pay-more-taxes dept

eBay subsidiary StubHub seems like a pretty straightforward concept: it's a marketplace for event ticket resales. It's a huge market, and it makes sense to have a platform for people to resell tickets they've legally bought. However, StubHub seems to keep getting attacked and finding itself in court. First there was Ticketmaster, which complained that StubHub was violating Ticketmaster's "exclusive" rights to selling tickets to certain venues. Then there was the New England Patriots who demanded the names of whoever sold tickets through StubHub in order to punish the ticketholders. Now, the city of Chicago is suing eBay and StubHub, claiming that it needs to collect a special city "amusement tax" on each ticket sold. This is a pure money grab. The original ticket buyer already paid that tax -- and even if you accept the idea that resales should also be taxed (which is pretty questionable), then it seems like something that the actual seller should be responsible for, rather than StubHub/eBay itself. But, don't tell that to Chicago politicians who see this as an easy way to hit up a big company for millions of dollars. If this sounds similar to the attempts to suddenly get Amazon to pay up in other states, that's because it is. Seems like local governments are looking for any way to squeeze companies for extra tax dollars, no matter how little sense it actually makes.

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