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Musician Jackson Browne's managers were so excited when they heard Maryland's high court had struck down Ticketmaster's unpopular user fees in Baltimore that they promised free lifetime tickets to the city resident who had filed suit alleging he'd been ripped off by "exorbitant charges."
The Ravens, Orioles and Baltimore concert venues — along with city politicians — didn't share the singer's jubilation.
Concerned that Ticketmaster and other ticket vendors might refuse to handle events in Baltimore, the City Council is poised to carve out an exception to its long-standing anti-scalping law, which bars companies from charging fees in excess of 50 cents on top of a ticket's stated price. A council finance committee is scheduled to vote this week on a measure aimed at allowing Ticketmaster to continue to charge its fees.
"I don't understand why the city would want to change a good law that protects its citizens," said Andre Bourgeois, the 50-year-old Inner Harbor resident whose legal victory stunned area businesses last month. The anti-scalping law "just means that the face price of the ticket has to be what the ticket actually costs," he said.
At issue are service fees Ticketmaster charges on top of the stated price of a ticket. As any concert-goer or sports fan knows, these fees can sometimes spike the total cost of a ticket to more 120 percent of its stated price.
Bourgeois filed suit against Ticketmaster and the Lyric Opera House in 2011 after being charged $12 in user fees on a $52 ticket to see Jackson Browne in 2009. His hope was that Ticketmaster would be forced to stop charging the fees for events in Baltimore — and to issue refunds to customers who have paid the charges.
According to his suit, Ticketmaster takes in about $1 billion annually from user fees on $8 billion in ticket sales worldwide. It does not estimate how much of those sales come from Baltimore.
In January, Maryland's highest court ruled that Ticketmaster's fees violate a 1948 Baltimore ordinance designed to curb scalping of Navy football tickets. What happens next — whether Ticketmaster should be ordered to stop charging the fees, and whether customers should get refunds — is still to be decided by the federal court in Baltimore.
In 2011, Ticketmaster owner Live Nation agreed to pay $22.3 million to customers to settle a class action lawsuit in California over fees.
The Baltimore City Council bill would create an exception to city law making clear that Ticketmaster and similar companies may continue to charge their fees.
Ticketmaster and Live Nation declined to comment for this article. The Lyric Opera House also declined to comment.
Bourgeois thinks the City Council should leave the anti-scalping law as it is.
"Ticket pricing should be transparent and honest," said Bourgeois, who works in sales. "There should be one price for a ticket. No add-ons."
His position resonates with many concertgoers, who complain that ticket vendors seem to go out of their way to add new fees.
"They're like, 'We had to go to the trouble of selling you these tickets. So, there's a fee for that. And, you wanted to pick up the tickets, too? You'll have to pay for that,'" said Tyler Laporte, music director at Towson's WTMD radio station.
"And there's this time limit to buy the tickets, so you feel pressured to buy them or you lose your place in line. They straight up hold you hostage," Laporte said.
Kevin Cross, 35, of Bolton Hill — who recently paid $25 in processing and service fees for tickets to a Belle and Sebastian show — says his main complaint with the charges is their seemingly arbitrary nature.
"What frustrates me is it's not the cost of doing business," said Cross, an attorney. "It doesn't cost $25 to do an online transaction. It doesn't bear any relationship to the cost of the transaction or the cost of holding the concert."
But the venues that rely on companies like Ticketmaster, Ticketfly and MissionTix say they don't want to be in the business of processing large volumes of tickets, so they appreciate the service such vendors provide.
City Councilman Carl Stokes, who introduced the bill seeking an exception for the ticket companies, said the Lyric Opera House, Ravens, Orioles, Hippodrome and the National Aquarium are among the organizations asking the council to change the law. Although Orioles tickets are now sold through a different vendor, the court ruling would apply to those user fees as well.
"One big concern is Ticketmaster would say, 'We're not doing business in Baltimore anymore if we can't charge more than 50 cents,'" Stokes said. "Fifty cents is much too small an amount for their services."
Though Stokes' bill would set no limits on the fees ticket vendors may charge, he says the measure is designed to buy the council time until it can fully consider and propose a new regulation on user fees. That could limit the fee to a percentage of the ticket price, he said.
"Many of the vendors want us to do away with the law entirely," Stokes said. "We have said, 'No, we won't do that. There is a consumer interest here.'"
Ryan O'Doherty, spokesman for Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake, said the administration "supports a bill that allows local culture venues to continue their long-standing operations, including reliance on third party ticket distribution services, temporarily while the City Council modernizes the law with regard to ticket sales."
He said the mayor views the legislation as a "temporary solution to deal with the court ruling" while the council crafts an "appropriate law for the long term."
Ravens spokesman Kevin Byrne said the organization believes the current laws are "antiquated."
"We are in support that the law be updated to meet the current practices throughout the country," he said. "Ticketmaster provides a convenience to fans and to teams and other entertainment providers. They have costs to their infrastructure, as do other companies involved in the same business."
But the Maryland Consumer Rights Coalition thinks the city shouldn't be in a hurry to do away with its anti-scalping law.
Marceline White, the coalition's executive director, said she wants the city to enforce the law by imposing the statute's $1,000 fee each time Ticketmaster breaks the law.
The council's bill "would, in effect, block enforcement of the city's anti-scalping ordinance against Ticketmaster even as the same law continues to be enforced against Baltimore citizens," she said. "There should be one standard that both individuals and corporations are held to."
Not everyone sees the issue in black or white.
Brian Shupe and his wife, Abigail Janssens, owners of the 8x10 club in Federal Hill, have sold tickets through Ticketmaster since they took over more than eight years ago. Shupe believes the surcharge fees are too high, but doesn't equate them to scalping.
"I am not a Ticketmaster apologist," Shupe said. "However, Ticketmaster has to charge fees to do what they do."
The surcharges for 8x10 tickets, in particular, can be hard for consumers to accept, Shupe admits. Most of the club's shows are in the $10-$15 range, but Ticketmaster adds $7.90, which includes a $2 "facility charge" and $5.90 "convenience charge." Still, he says, the benefits of using the company far outweigh the costs.
For example, Shupe said, using Ticketmaster can ensure that a customer is admitted to a venue, even when he or she loses a ticket.
"When people come to my venue and say, 'I ran my tickets through the wash,' the only way I can verify that is to call Ticketmaster," Shupe said. "They print out another ticket. [The customer] gets in the show with no questions asked."
Meanwhile, rivals to Ticketmaster say they, too, need to charge more than 50 cents per ticket — but not as much as Ticketmaster.
Founded in 2008, San Francisco-based Ticketfly has emerged as a local and national competitor. On Jan. 3, Rams Head Promotions — which owns Rams Head Live in Baltimore and Rams Head on Stage in Annapolis and operates the Pier Six Pavilion — announced that its tickets would be sold exclusively through Ticketfly. Rams Head venues had previously used ShoWare, and to a lesser extent, Ticketmaster.
Will Payne, marketing communications manager for Ticketfly, says his company's fees are, on average, 30 percent to 50 percent lower than Ticketmaster's. He says the surcharges are necessary to cover the costs and salaries of a professional-grade ticket system.
"As a ticket provider, we don't make anything off face value," he said. "The only way we make money is from the service fee."
Payne said the best way to avoid surcharge fees is to buy tickets at a venue's box office, not online. But that's not always convenient.
TLDR: Man sues TM in Baltimore, and wins due to old, 1948 law against scalping. The highest fee that TM can charge is 50 cents. Council is trying to amend the bill to exclude TM, and the like. So, regular scalpers still get boned, but the corp gets to keep bending people over.
LOL at Ticketmaster's response for why we need them. They can probably still make money with 50c per ticket. If not, I'm sure an enterprising business will take that spot.
Well, of course, council will try and accommodate Ticketmaster because:
Spoiler!
Quote:
Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake's top aides and relatives have routinely received free tickets to performances at Baltimore's 1st Mariner Arena in recent years, including sold-out concerts by such artists as Rihanna, Sade andJay-Z, public records show.
The city-owned arena provides hundreds of free tickets each year to the mayor's office, including blocks of seats to World Wrestling Entertainment matches, comedy shows and the circus, according to documents provided by the mayor's office in response to a public records request.
he mayor's office frequently distributes tickets for some events, such as Baltimore Blast soccer games, to children or community members. Rawlings-Blake's family members and aides often fill seats for shows by musical and other acts. This year, they have attended eight events, including professional bull-riding and Cirque du Soleil.
Ryan O'Doherty, a spokesman for Rawlings-Blake, defended the mayor's use of the tickets. He said the arena has provided complimentary tickets to the city for several decades under the terms of various operator agreements.
"The documents show that the City, like many others across the country, provides hundreds of complimentary tickets to hard-working employees, school students, elected officials, youth leagues, community groups, and charitable organizations," O'Doherty said in an email.
But James Browning, regional director of Common Cause Mid-Atlantic, a government watchdog group, questioned the propriety of the mayor's family and top aides receiving tickets.
"Unless they have a job promoting the city of Baltimore, it's hard to see a public interest in the mayor's family repeatedly getting free seats at these events," Browning said.
Rawlings-Blake's use of free tickets became the subject of public debate after she took back Ravens tickets this year for the mayor's skybox at M&T Bank Stadium from City Council PresidentBernard C. "Jack" Young. He had criticized her support of the Baltimore Grand Prix.
Browning also said the practice of giving away tickets to aides in the mayor's office — secretaries, scheduling aides and the mayor's police protection officers received blocks of tickets to events — raises concerns about how such perks are distributed.
"If they want to give people perks and bonuses, it should be in a way that is out in the open with their salaries and bonuses so that they can be held accountable in how they reward people," he said.
Frank Remesch, general manager of 1st Mariner Arena, did not respond to requests for comment Monday.
The records, which cover the past 21/2 years and were released by City Hall, include lists kept by Rawlings-Blake's office of ticket recipients and the number of tickets each was given.
The records also included hundreds of pages of emailed correspondence between an aide to the mayor, Elizabeth Koontz, and Teresa Waters, a 1st Mariner Arena employee. Koontz, who was charged with organizing ticket distribution for the mayor's office, sent several requests for tickets to specific events.
Arena officials set aside blocks of tickets for the mayor's office, including for sold-out events such as last year's Sade concert, according to the documents.
The mayor's office received 34 tickets to the 2011 show, which kicked off the reclusive musician's first North American tour in a decade, the records show. Rawlings-Blake got 10 of those tickets to distribute at her discretion; top aide Kaliope Parthemos received four; and other aides received a total of six tickets.
Six additional tickets went to other elected officials, who were not identified in the documents, and six went to unnamed community members.
More recently, Rawlings-Blake accepted four tickets in May to see 1980s boy band New Edition. Top aide Kimberly Washington received four tickets, and Teminka Rawlings, the mayor's sister-in-law, received two. Other city officials and state Sen. Nathaniel McFadden also attended the show as guests of the mayor, according to the records.
In June 2011, Rawlings-Blake's husband, Kent Blake, obtained six tickets from City Hall to see pop star Rihanna in concert. Teminka Rawlings received two tickets, as did then-Mayor Adrian Fenty of the District of Columbia. At least nine other tickets went to the mayor's top aides.
Lower-ranking employees of the mayor's office got blocks of tickets to events including the circus, Disney on Ice, the Harlem Globetrotters and motocross shows. Administrative assistants, scheduling aides and police officers assigned to protect the mayor received as many as a dozen tickets to such events.
Lobbyist Lisa Harris-Jones was a frequent guest of the mayor. Also listed as recipients are City Council members, though some not by name.
Most of the guests were identified in documents by first names. O'Doherty, the mayoral spokesman, confirmed that tickets went to a number of relatives, including the mayor's husband, brother and sister-in-law, and to top aides such as Washington and Parthemos. O'Doherty declined to identify other guests.
O'Doherty sent the ticket lists to reporters at several publications and television stations, after WBAL-TV requested the documents through a public records request.
O'Doherty wrote in an accompanying email that he was sending the information to all the news organizations "in the interest of a transparent government."
"Local news outlets should judge for themselves the relative news value of this information, which is neither new nor extraordinary," he wrote.
Rawlings-Blake has reported free tickets to events as gifts on her ethics forms in recent years. Officials are required to report gifts from entities that do business with the city.
From 2008 through 2010, the mayor listed receiving more than 140 tickets to 70 events, including shows at other venues such as Meyerhoff Symphony Hall.
On the ethics forms, she reported receiving free tickets from Remesch to such shows as the Jonas Brothers, Alicia Keys, Beyonce, Maxwell and Jay-Z. The mayor also has received tickets to mixed martial-arts fights and the circus at 1st Mariner Arena.
But for 2011, her first full year as mayor, Rawlings-Blake did not report tickets from 1st Mariner Arena on her ethics disclosure forms. Her spokesman, O'Doherty, said the mayor's office concluded she does not need to report the tickets because the arena is owned by the city and, therefore, not a separate entity that does business with the city.
City Councilman Brandon Scott said he received arena tickets from the mayor when he worked as a member of her staff, and also after he joined the council.
"Being out in the neighborhoods, I gave them out to kids," Scott said. "People ask, 'Hey, do you guys have tickets to this kind of stuff?' Were it not for these tickets, some kids would never see the inside of the arena. If it weren't for these tickets, some of these kids would never get out of their four-block-by-four-block neighborhood."
Scott said he tried to invite young people involved in community groups to age-appropriate events. "I'm not giving kids tickets to lingerie football," he said.
City Councilman Nick Mosby said he received arena tickets only once from the mayor. They were to the Disney on Ice show.
"I don't know who gets them and who doesn't," he said of the tickets. "If I didn't have two young daughters, maybe I wouldn't have been offered them?"
Rawlings-Blake and economic development officials are exploring locations for a new indoor sports and concert arena to replace the aging 1st Mariner Arena. City officials are evaluating possible locations, financing and other aspects of the new arena, conceived of as an 18,500-seat facility that would cost at least $300 million.
Among arenas of a similar size around the country, 1st Mariner was last year's highest-grossing with nearly $16 million. City boosters contend that a new venue could build on the success of the arena. http://articles.baltimoresun.com/201...vens-tickets/2
I buy tickets all the time, most recently the Jay Z concert, and they charged me $5 for processing. Like im sure it actually costs them $5. I dont mind the fee, just the amount.
One time I bought tickets that were $20 bucks and the fee was like $4 bucks or something. WTF? Even free tickets are not really free.
coming from a ticketing agency similar to TM, service charges actually pay for some of the overhead (call center employees, marketing, processing cost (2.5-3% of transaction value), etc.)
service fees arn't bread and butter but sure does help.
__________________
Sometimes we tend to be in despair when the person we love leaves us, but the truth is, it's not our loss, but theirs, for they left the only person who couldn't give up on them.
Make the effort and take the risk..
"Do what you feel in your heart to be right- for you'll be criticized anyway. You'll be damned if you do, and damned if you don't." - Eleanor Roosevelt
See, the issue isn't always about the price, it's about the honesty. It's like when you go to those travel agencies and you see London from $250!* *$1790 in taxes and fees.
If I buy a ticket for $120 and it comes out to $200+, I want to know why it wasn't called a $200 ticket. It's not always about the cost of the services and fees, it's about being told you can buy something for one price and then being told "well, actually, it'll cost you half again as much as you thought. Too bad."
See, the issue isn't always about the price, it's about the honesty. It's like when you go to those travel agencies and you see London from $250!* *$1790 in taxes and fees.
If I buy a ticket for $120 and it comes out to $200+, I want to know why it wasn't called a $200 ticket. It's not always about the cost of the services and fees, it's about being told you can buy something for one price and then being told "well, actually, it'll cost you half again as much as you thought. Too bad."
Well, someone paid attention in Canada and fixed that.
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