Last nights NO APOLOGIES tour was out of control.  Chris Rock, in my opinion, puts on the best stand up show I have ever seen.  He went on for nearly 2 hours in front of a packed house of over 6,000 at the Gibson Amphitheater.

As I mentioned in yesterday’s post, the squirrel and I got two single tickets, both front row orchestra but in different sections for the show.  Instead of paying $179 per ticket as was the going rate on the Ticket Brokers, we paid $40 and $65 respectively, so it was a killer deal.

The challenge was if we were actually going to be able to sit together.  We arrived as the opening act (Mario Joyner) went on.  There were still a bunch of empty seats.  People in Los Angeles are famous for showing up late and leaving early.  Par for the course with any event. 

I was all ready to use one of my techniques to get her down into my section, but was surprised to see the security was VERY relaxed.  Nobody checked our tickets at all.  I had a feeling that there would be two seats in my row opened seeing as I checked the internet and saw that there were two still for sale earlier in the day.

Sure enough, we were able to sit together front row orchestra for the opening act.  Even though the show was “sold out”, there were several seats in the PIT area (directly in front of us) still open during the first act.  We stayed put in our seats, though, because there is NOTHING wrong with front row orchestra.  We had a railing to put our feet up, no one in front of us.  It was AWESOME!!!

Mario’s riff on Home Depot employees and cell phones was brilliant.

Just as Chris went on, the two seats that were empty in my row were taken by a VERY young couple.  It must have been the younger brother of the Scalpers who were trying to get $179 per ticket, because these kids looked really out of place.  But nonetheless, it was their seats, so I was going to have to separate us……If I didn’t already have my next option scouted out!

I saw that  there were four seats together in the 2^nd row of the PIT in the dead center.  So close that Chris Rock was looking at us when he was talking to this crowd of 6,000 plus.  It was as if he was in our living room.  I snapped a few pics for you at the beginning of his set, but then put the phone away and enjoyed the show. 

I apologize in advance for the truly ghetto pics my phone takes.  My brother says there is probably a setting on my phone that allows the pictures to be bigger, so when I see him today I will let him fix that for me.  I suck at handling technology.

Chris Rock tickets

It never ceases to amaze me how much the Scalpers can get away with when it comes to charging for tickets.  I got two single tickets for tonight's Chris Rock show for the Squirrel and me.  I paid $40 for one with no shipping and $65 for the other including shipping.  Both of these tickets are front row orchestra.

Seating chart for the Gibson Amphitheater:  http://www.gotickets.com/venues/ca/universal_amphitheater.php

Just for shits and giggles, I went on StubHub the day I received my ticket to see what others were going for in my row.  I about threw up in my mouth when I saw that there were six tickets available in my row for $269 EACH.  Wow!!!

So I checked again yesterday since I didn’t have the wherewithal to cut and paste that day, just to show you what they are going for one day before the show.  Well, the $269 tickets were gone, but there were two in my aisle on Coast to Coast tickets for $179 per ticket.  That is more per ticket than the combined price of my two ($40 + $65 = $105 total combined price). 

Now the only question is, are we going to be able to sit together?  Stay tuned for my update after the show.  Looking forward to this one!  Chris Rock is one funny motherf#*ker!!!

Hi Game ON,

Congratulations on winning this item! The next step is to pay the seller.

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Gibson Amphitheatre at Universal City Walk on Friday, April 25, 2008

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In case you ever wondered why the f*#k you can’t get tickets on TicketMaster when they go on sale, it is because the Scalpers have “line-jumping” automated software.  This allows them to go on-line and skip all of the true fans who are trying to get our tickets the old fashioned way.  And this isn’t 4 or 8 tickets they can get when they jump us.  They can get hundreds of tickets, all at once, leaving us all empty handed.

Read the following two articles to get caught up on what the hell I am talking about.

What are we going to do about it???  I have made a pact with myself to NEVER, EVER go to Ticket Brokers or Scalpers.  And I NEVER pay more than face value. NEVER.

Judge Orders Software Firm To Stop Selling Software For Beating Ticketmaster's Ticket Queue

from the i'm-sure-you-can-buy-a-scalped-version... dept

There's been a lot of talk recently about how ticket scalpers have been able to score so many tickets to Ticketmaster events, locking genuine fans out of buying tickets at list price. The NY Times had a detailed story on the debate a few weeks ago. That story noted a number of things. First, lots of people are pissed off at Ticketmaster for making it so difficult to get tickets. While there are plenty of legitimate reasons to hate Ticketmaster, in this case, it might not be the company's fault. As it noted in its defense, it often does not get to sell tickets for an entire event, as large percentages of tickets may be reserved or offered through other methods. But, more importantly, Ticketmaster pointed the blame at RMG Technologies, a company that apparently makes software popular among scalpers. The software somehow gets around Ticketmaster's ticket limits, allowing them to buy up vast quantities of tickets the instant they go on sale. The article noted that Ticketmaster had taken RMG to court, and now a judge has banned the sale of the software. There are certainly plenty of reasons to want to make the ticket buying process more fair -- but it does seem questionable that this needed to end up in court. Basically Ticketmaster is admitting that it doesn't have the technical chops to build a site that can actually limit how many tickets an individual can buy (or to come up with an entirely different system that allocates tickets more fairly). While what RMG is doing does seem unfortunate, why should it be illegal?

Want to read “the debate” that the above article is talking about?  Glad you asked.  Here it is!!! 

October 6, 2007

Your Money

In the Race to Buy Concert Tickets, Fans Keep Losing

By ELLEN ROSEN

LISA SENAUKE, a Bruce Springsteen fan since 1973, tried to get tickets to his Oct. 26 concert in Oakland, Calif. The tickets were to go on sale at 10 a.m. on Sept. 17, and starting at 9:58 a.m., she logged into her Ticketmaster.com account, credit card in hand. But though she tried again and again for the next hour to buy tickets, she was always told the same thing: nothing available.

“I never even had a chance,” she said the other day. “Who, then, got those tickets? How many people managed to log in, in between me, and sweep up the tickets?”

Ms. Senauke’s frustration is not isolated. The coming concerts of 14-year-old Miley Cyrus, the daughter of the country singer Billy Ray Cyrus and the star of the Disney show “Hannah Montana,” sold out in minutes. And the same thing happened with tickets to recent reunion tours by the Police and Van Halen.

While some fans just quietly give up, others have complained to government officials, particularly after they found tickets to the same concerts or sporting events available — sometimes at many times the face value — on secondary sellers like Stubhub.com and TicketsNow minutes after the public sale began.

After hearing from some would-be ticket buyers, the Missouri attorney general announced Thursday that the state was suing three ticket resellers on charges they violated state consumer protection laws. That same day, the Arkansas attorney general said he was seeking documents from five resellers. And the attorney general’s office in Pennsylvania is also looking into the ticket sale business after receiving several hundred complaints over the recent sale of tickets for a Hannah Montana concert in Pittsburgh, said a spokesman, Nils Frederiksen.

“All hell broke loose with Hannah Montana,” said Justin Allen, the chief deputy attorney general in Arkansas. “The tickets were gone in 12 minutes and when people turned around, they were selling at online sites for sometimes as much as 10 times the face value.”

Ticketmaster, the subsidiary of the IAC/Interactive Corporation that bills itself as the biggest seller of concert and sports tickets in the world, is also facing questions from angry fans and has sent representatives to meet with state and local officials. They argue, in part, that the number of tickets available to the public at a concert is often far less than the total number of seats in the arena.

Ticketmaster has also filed a lawsuit in Federal District Court in Los Angeles against a software company based in Pittsburgh, RMG Technologies, and several ticket brokers contending that they have discovered a way to get around Ticketmaster’s defenses.

They “are bombarding Ticketmaster’s Web site with millions of automated ticket requests that can constitute up to 80 percent of all ticket requests made,” Ticketmaster states in its suit. These actions deny “the public access to tens of thousands of tickets so that RMG’s customers can purchase and resell those tickets to the same public at inflated prices,” it contends.

A lawyer for RMG, Jay M. Coggan, denied the allegations. He said in an interview that RMG provides a specialized browser for ticket brokers but would not discuss the company’s services in detail, saying such information was proprietary. He added, “Ticketmaster isn’t losing any money — they’re getting paid full dollar for every ticket sold.”

A hearing on Ticketmaster’s suit is scheduled for Oct. 15.

The fact that tickets to popular events sell out so quickly — and that brokers and online resellers obtain them with such velocity — is clouding the business, many in the music industry say. It is enough, some longtime concertgoers say, to make them long for the days when all they had to do to obtain tickets was camp out overnight.

Joseph Freeman, the assistant general counsel for Ticketmaster, said that in some cases, demand for tickets simply exceeded the supply. Even in large arenas, a certain number of tickets are reserved by the artist, the promoter and the concert site and some may also be set aside for fan clubs or presales, like ones frequently held by American Express or Visa. But thousands of tickets are still typically left to be sold to the general public.

In Kansas City, for example, there were “only 11,000 seats available for the Hannah Montana concert,” Mr. Freeman said. “We got about 8,400. Of those, half went to the fan club while the other half was sold to the general public.” Mr. Freeman added that more tickets are often released after the initial sale date once the stage configuration is known.

While Ticketmaster refused to disclose how many hits it receives when tickets go on sale, Mr. Freeman said the company had the ability to sell several thousand seats a minute.

But how do hundreds of tickets show up on online sites minutes after individuals have been shut out? Officials at resellers like Stubhub.com, now owned by eBay, guarantee the authenticity of the tickets. “What’s often mistaken about our marketplace,” Sean Pate, a spokesman for Stubhub, said in a statement, “is that we procure and price tickets when, to the contrary, we simply provide a secure and managed online marketplace for those who wish to sell tickets they possess.”

The Ticketmaster suit includes a statement from a former ticket broker, Chris Kovach, who was originally named as defendant but later settled with Ticketmaster. He said that he used RMG’s “automated devices to enable me to access Ticketmaster’s Web site.” Mr. Kovach said in the statement that he paid a monthly fee for access to RMG’s site and that its software enabled him to simultaneously search and request tickets — sometimes more than 100 sets at a time.

Mr. Kovach asserted in the statement that RMG’s system is “specifically designed to navigate or otherwise avoid various security measures on Ticketmaster’s Web site,” including what is known as the Captcha feature — those squiggly letters in a box that users must retype before they can proceed.

In denying the allegations, Mr. Coggan, RMG’s lawyer, said, “Ticketmaster didn’t get it right.”

So what’s a dedicated fan to do? If tickets sell out within minutes, keep checking the online ticketing company for tickets in case additional seats are released. Don’t rush to buy from brokers or online sites because prices sometimes come down if resellers find they have acquired too many seats, Mr. Pate of Stubhub said. And sometimes, the artist decides to add an extra show, which can provide extra tickets — at face value — to satisfy demand.

In the meantime, potential ticket buyers continue to try various means to capture their prey. Lisa Nicholls of Houston, for example, had already been unsuccessful last winter in buying tickets to a Hannah Montana concert for her children, Alexandra, 10 and Robbie, 8. When the Toyota Center, the Houston arena, announced a new concert, her husband, Rob, sat at home with three computers logged on to the arena’s site at precisely 10 a.m., when tickets were to go on sale.

Mrs. Nicholls, meanwhile, had left the house hours earlier to wait at a ticket outlet at a local supermarket. Despite arriving at 7:30 a.m., she was not the first on line. Still, within minutes, she and her husband were both out of luck.

“I went there thinking we would hedge our bets and do it every which way,” Mrs. Nicholls said. “But only the first person on line got tickets — and I was 10th.”

Jessica Fricke, a Minnesota mother who also failed to get Hannah Montana tickets, tried to put the best face on it. “We are trying to teach our children the law of supply and demand. It’s a lesson for our family. It’s a hard one for an 8- year-old, but a good one.”