www.ticketnews.com: A week ago, hundreds of fans were left in the lurch when they arrived at a Los Angeles performance by The Black Keys. With what most say was zero warning, the band had made tickets to the performance at The Wiltern non-transferrable, meaning any fan who purchased tickets to the sold-out show on the secondary market was denied entry, by order of the band they had paid hundreds of dollars to see.
2 comments:
I have never heard of a concert selling non-transferable tickets before; however, I understand why a band would want to. Scalpers or people who sell tickets on the secondary market can buy up all of the tickets and resell them for steep increase. It seems like a reasonable way to protect the fans. The scalpers will be discouraged from buying multiple tickets because they can’t resell them and the fans will get the cheaper tickets. Clearly it did not work that way in this situation. I was surprised to know that it is illegal for tickets to be non-transferable in four states. Since anyone in any state can buy a ticket, I wonder how these laws are applied. For the Black Keys concert it seems unlikely that second hand ticket buyers will be able to get their money back. I’m curious to see if this sets a precedent for non-transferable tickets and if any policies change because of this situation.
While I understand the feelings and frustration from the fans at not being able to see the black keys, this essentially seems like non-news to me. What people fail to realize is that buying second hand tickets to concerts is a gamble with whether it’s going to be allowed or not. It always seems like a crapshoot with whether a ticket is transferable or non-rransferable and at least whenever I got my tickets, you always have to go through the proper channels to transfer tickets, rather than selling them third party. I do agree that it is disingenuous of Ticketmaster to solely blame scalpers for this incident. But I think scalpers are only a symptom, and people buying tickets from them is just enabling them. It’s not like it’s a right to be able to buy second-hand tickets. Ticketmaster and live nation have no obligation to let you do it. It’s probably literally in the terms and conditions you agree to that they can revoke second hand tickets if they want to. As it stands, I think this whole article seems like a website called "ticketnews" trying to justify its own existence by latching on to any piece of news and blowing it out of proportion.
Post a Comment