Congress Investigating Ticketmaster And TicketsNow.Com For Deceptive Business Practices
When tickets for Bruce Springsteen’s new tour went on sale at 9:00 a.m. on February 2, 2009, fans had only one option to purchase tickets: exclusively through ticketmaster.com. Mysteriously, at that same exact time and day, ticketmaster.com’s website began experiencing “technical difficulties” and Springsteen fans could not purchase any tickets to the Boss’ shows. Instead, conspicuously placed on the same ticketmaster.com screen that informed fans that the website was experiencing “technical difficulties,” was an alternative purchasing option from TicketsNow.com, offering the very same Springsteen tickets for hundreds of dollars more than the face value of the tickets.
Thousands of other Bruce Springsteen fans who were able to get beyond the “technical difficulties” which ticketmaster.com was allegedly experiencing were informed that all tickets for all shows across the country were already sold out. They too were conspicuously re-directed to TicketsNow.com where they could elect to purchase tickets for the “sold out” shows for 10 to 50 times the face value of the tickets.
What Bruce Springsteen fans did not know was that in a recent effort to expand its business and profits, Ticketmaster acquired TicketsNow.com, a website which specializes in the secondary, resale market for tickets. Indeed, TicketsNow.com is a fully owned subsidiary of Ticketmaster, and any tickets purchased on TicketsNow.com are essentially being purchased from Ticketmaster itself, albeit at an obscene mark-up.
Ticketmaster’s conduct in the sale of these tickets has not only enraged fans of Bruce Springsteen and the Boss himself, it has also sparked a Congressional inquiry into Ticketmaster’s business practices. United States Representative Bill Pascrell, Jr. (D-NJ) has requested that the U.S. Department of Justice Antitrust Division (“DOJ”) and the Federal Trade Commission (“FTC”) investigate Ticketmaster’s relationship with its subsidiary TicketsNow.com, and their handling of ticket sales for the Bruce Springsteen tour. Representative Pascrell’s letter to the DOJ and the FTC can be read here.
The fact that ticketmaster.com experienced “technical problems” at the exact time that Bruce Springsteen tickets were to be sold, and the speed with which tickets were made available on TicketsNow.com – a fully owned subsidiary of Ticketmaster – raises serious questions about Ticketmaster’s business practices and whether it engaged it deliberate and intentional deceptive business practices.
If you were forced to purchase one or more Bruce Springsteen tickets through TicketsNow.com at prices above the face value of the tickets because you were barred from purchasing tickets at ticketmaster.com, please contact us to discuss your legal options.
