SOLD! (but not to you): The battle for tickets

Rolling Stone, Mick Jagger, once sang "You can't always get what you want" and it may prove true if you're gunning for a premium ticket to one of their upcoming shows. In what's being touted as a deterrent to ticket scalpers, Ticketmast has started to offer some tickets to some shows by way of its new online auction system.

Here’s the basic principle: The most desirable seats for popular shows are offered in timed auctions to the highest online bidders, with no limit on how high prices can go. Ticketmaster introduced what it calls “dynamic pricing” three years ago for tickets to a boxing match in Los Angeles, and there have long been isolated auctions for front row seats benefiting charities. But the practice started to catch on more widely only last year when Ticketmaster clients began putting more tickets for more shows up for auction.

While thus far only the hottest tickets are being auctioned this way, Ticketmaster anticipates that tickets will be sold this way more and more, as the tickets are being sold at "the price people are willing to pay". Some competitors believe that Ticketmaster is bascially "scalping its own tickets". However LiveNation and Ticketmaster believe they are putting the power in the hands of the consumers by letting them pay what they deem is fair for tickets, but with the most expensive Rolling Stones tickets going for $450, it seems that to the craziest and/or the richest always go the spoils. Nothing new about that.

Full article here.