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February-4th-2009, 08:54 AM
Lawmaker: Investigate Springsteen ticket sales (http://www.nj.com/news/ledger/jersey/index.ssf?/base/news-12/1233725223156520.xml&coll=1)
Wednesday, February 04, 2009
BY PEGGY McGLONE
A New Jersey congressman has asked the federal government to investigate allegations that tickets to two Bruce Springsteen concerts were diverted to a ticket resale agency moments after they went on sale Monday morning.
Rep. Bill Pascrell (D-8th Dist.) said his constituents complained that Ticketmaster, the primary ticket seller for the concerts, said tickets were sold out and directed consumers to its subsidiary, TicketsNow, a secondary marketplace where tickets were being offered for resale at three and four times the cover price.
Pascrell wrote a letter yesterday to the Federal Trade Commission and the antitrust division of the Justice Department asking them to "investigate the relationship between Ticketmaster and TicketsNow to ensure that the procedure for purchasing tickets remains fair to the average consumer."
"There is a significant potential for abuse when one company is able to monopolize the primary market for a product and also directly manipulate and profit from the secondary market," he wrote. "The speed with which tickets were made available on Ticketmaster's official resale site raises questions about whether TicketsNow brokers were given preferential treatment."
About 30,000 tickets to the two Izod Center shows were sold in a little over an hour Monday morning. Many fans said they encountered error messages at the Ticketmaster website that prevented them from purchasing tickets before they were sold out.
Others were outraged that within minutes of the sale, hundreds of tickets were being hawked at TicketsNow.
"This burns me up. It's reprehensible," Pascrell said. "There has to be a deal cooking between the two companies, Ticketmaster and TicketsNow. One has no tickets and the other is selling them at three and four times the (original) price."
Click on the link for the full article
Wednesday, February 04, 2009
BY PEGGY McGLONE
A New Jersey congressman has asked the federal government to investigate allegations that tickets to two Bruce Springsteen concerts were diverted to a ticket resale agency moments after they went on sale Monday morning.
Rep. Bill Pascrell (D-8th Dist.) said his constituents complained that Ticketmaster, the primary ticket seller for the concerts, said tickets were sold out and directed consumers to its subsidiary, TicketsNow, a secondary marketplace where tickets were being offered for resale at three and four times the cover price.
Pascrell wrote a letter yesterday to the Federal Trade Commission and the antitrust division of the Justice Department asking them to "investigate the relationship between Ticketmaster and TicketsNow to ensure that the procedure for purchasing tickets remains fair to the average consumer."
"There is a significant potential for abuse when one company is able to monopolize the primary market for a product and also directly manipulate and profit from the secondary market," he wrote. "The speed with which tickets were made available on Ticketmaster's official resale site raises questions about whether TicketsNow brokers were given preferential treatment."
About 30,000 tickets to the two Izod Center shows were sold in a little over an hour Monday morning. Many fans said they encountered error messages at the Ticketmaster website that prevented them from purchasing tickets before they were sold out.
Others were outraged that within minutes of the sale, hundreds of tickets were being hawked at TicketsNow.
"This burns me up. It's reprehensible," Pascrell said. "There has to be a deal cooking between the two companies, Ticketmaster and TicketsNow. One has no tickets and the other is selling them at three and four times the (original) price."
Click on the link for the full article