Ticket Outlets

See You In Hell

See You In Hell

Is this the real McCoy?
Feb 13, 2007
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five-venoms.spaces.live.com
I need to resort to the genius / experience of the forum collective to help me out with a little something regarding purchasing tickets in general for concerts.

I live in Dallas and am accustomed to dealing with one of three main ticket companies when I want to go to a concert: Ticketmaster, Front Gate Tickets, and House of Blues.

Ticketmaster (which should be added to the Axis of Evil as "Dubya" so eloquently defines it) and I engaged in a little transaction just this morning. Type O Negative and Celtic Frost are touring together this Spring and are coming to Dallas next month. The face price of the ticket for this show is $23.00. After Ticketmaster got through with me the total came up to $36.36 (including convenience charges, tax, and a processing charge). As some of you have indicated in varous posts Ticketmaster is notorious for gouging.

Front Gate Tickets generally imposes a much-more-reasonable markup of about $3 to $4.50 on their tickets. Fortunately the majority of my upcoming concerts (Sonata Arctica, Finntroll, Kamelot) came from this company.

House of Blues seems to have its own agency that does a nominal markup but nails you on shipping ($10 if you want tickets sent to you otherwise you can opt for Will Call at no charge). Needless to say for my Dimmu Borgir show I'll be in the Will Call line.

At any rate....

I am wondering how this whole ticket outlet thing works. When a band is touring how is it decided what ticket agency to use? I am sure there are many factors I am unaware of and I'm hoping some of you can "Enlighten Me" (yes that was an obvious nod to Masterplan) on how this whole thing comes together. I would have thought, before the dawn of the internet, things like accessibility (Ticketmaster outlets were all over the place) was a key determinant. Now with just about everything online though any of these ticket outlets I described earlier are but a point and click away it seems. So what am I missing here?? Perhaps similar inquiries have been posted in the past but anyway....
 
Depends on who the Venue has a contract with...like Center Stage has one with Ticketbastard. UGGH that means we will have to buy the Showcase tickets thru them this year as well. It was a lot less service charges from Ticket Alternative who did the Loft tickets.
 
Ah, so it is an arrangement with the venue then as opposed to the bands. I actually never even considered that. For some reason I thought it was the band or its management (or both) that dictated this.
 
In most cases, TicketBastard has a hold on the ticket sales market. (As Clear Channel does with most radio stations) And I think it's a fucking gyp that they charge almost half a ticket in fees. But I digress. I usually try and call the venue straight up and go in and get tickets that way, also some music stores may have tickets or local bands that are opening for the shows.

-Metal
 
Depends on the venue. As MetalRose stated, Ticketbastard has most of the venues. Frontgate seems to be coming up though. The best way to buy tickets is to go directly to the venue to buy the tickets but that only works with House of Blues so far. Not many venues open up their Ticket booths until the day of the show. What is find interesting is that Frontgate got the presale on the floor/gen admission seats for Heaven & Hell but BASTARD got the tickets for seating. That was the way it went here in Los Angeles.

Basically, when it comes to buying tickets we are screwed.
 
VenomGA said:
Depends on who the Venue has a contract with...like Center Stage has one with Ticketbastard. UGGH that means we will have to buy the Showcase tickets thru them this year as well. It was a lot less service charges from Ticket Alternative who did the Loft tickets.
Click to expand...

Maybe we can say "The Loft" and move it to the mainstage like last year.
Last year's tix were from TA, and not Ticketbastardwalletrapists....

J-Dubya
 
Another fairly big vendor is tickets.com
It's honestly not much better than ticketba$tard these days though fees are usually a little lower. I think it's mostly in the northeast since the three main venues I go to in NY, CT, & MA use it.
 
Can you spell M-o-n-o-p-o-l-y ? There is no (imo) shared market in tickets. Live Nation was owned by CC but now is a spin off, though it's CEO's and VP are all Mays family. So once again you have 1-2 major players telling you what to listen to, where your going to see the show and who you'll buy the tickets through.
 
yah, I found a date in Tempe last night. I'm pumped. I get to see Sonata Arctica, Epica, Nightwish, and Finntroll so far this year, and with any good luck, Lordi will book a Phoenix date too.
 
nailz said:
yah, I found a date in Tempe last night. I'm pumped. I get to see Sonata Arctica, Epica, Nightwish, and Finntroll so far this year, and with any good luck, Lordi will book a Phoenix date too.
Click to expand...

That would be awesome. In any case you have some good shows lined up. Don't think Epica is going to make it to Dallas though but I saw somewhere that Nightwish are scheduled for November 11 so hopefully that pans out.
 
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