Lettie Holman swears on Bruce Springsteen's soul patch that Ticketmaster automatically kicked her over to its high-priced TicketsNow scalper site when she was trying this week to buy seats for The Boss' tour stop at Washington's Verizon Center.
Ticketmaster says she and others who make similar claims are misremembering or lying.
So it is that, even before it starts, Springsteen's newest tour has become a public relations disaster for him and America's best-loved concert-ticket monopoly.
Springsteen is "furious" at Ticketmaster, he said in a prepared statement. Ticketmaster denies forcing Internet buyers to TicketsNow, where one is helpfully offered seats at $500 a pop, and says problems experienced by Springsteen fans have been exaggerated.
A New Jersey congressman is demanding an investigation. New Jersey's attorney general has asked Ticketmaster to stop doing what it says it didn't do.
Ticketmaster is scrambling, overnighting free tickets to aggrieved Springsteen fans, compensating people who mistakenly bought marked-up seats on TicketsNow and doing its best to imitate a caring, progressive mega-corporation.
"We sincerely apologize to Bruce, his organization and, above all, his fans," wrote Ticketmaster boss Irving Azoff.
Because he's worried about losing future business from rock fans and impresarios?
Heck no. Ticketmaster owns 70 percent of the concert-ticket market, estimates Scott W. Devitt, who follows the company's stock for Stifel Nicolaus. There's really nowhere else to go, Ticketmaster's notorious "convenience charges" notwithstanding.
Azoff, who grew to fame and riches managing Dan Fogelberg and the Eagles, is probably more concerned about what the Springsteen debacle spells for Ticketmaster's reported merger plans with concert promoter Live Nation.
That deal would make Ticketmaster even bigger and more powerful, which is hard to imagine. Given that the administration of President Barack Obama was already likely to frown on such a combo, the Springsteen episode couldn't have come at a worse time for the company.
It began at the Super Bowl. Springsteen's Sunday halftime show was a glorified ad for his tour. Tickets went on sale at 10 a.m. the next day.
Jonathan Kandell of Catonsville, attendee of 54 Bruce shows, wanted seats for the Verizon Center on May 18. But as Boss Hour struck he couldn't complete the purchase. Then he tried searching for Springsteen seats in Philadelphia. That was when, he said, Ticketmaster's software automatically sent him to TicketsNow.
