Trent Reznor’s thoughts on ticket re-sellers / scalping
Your feelings for Trent Reznor or Nine Inch Nails itself aside, the man wrote a pretty interesting article on the current state of affairs in the concert ticket industry.
Here’s the rub: TicketMaster has essentially been a monopoly for many years – certainly up until Live Nation’s exclusive deal ran out. They could have (and can right now) stop the secondary market dead in its tracks by doing the following: limit the amount of sales per customer, print names on the tickets and require ID / ticket matches at the venue. We know this works because we do it for our pre-sales. Why don’t THEY do it? It’s obvious – they make a lot of money fueling the secondary market. TicketMaster even bought a re-seller site and often bounces you over to that site to buy tickets (TicketsNow.com)!