Nice to see Bob Lefsetz touch upon some topics I have written about a few times lately: the practice of setting aside a block of tickets for artists and managers, which parties get to share in ticket service fees. Ticketmaster Entertainment CEO Irving Azoff went on the record about these practice in his testimony before the Senate Judiciary hearing a few weeks ago. Unfortunately, the Senators didn't pose follow-up questions that would have put a spotlight on artists and promoters.

From Bob's post:

The public is ignorant. The public thinks if a show goes on sale, they’re entitled to pay face rate and sit in the front row. The public doesn’t know the ticket fees are kicked back from Ticketmaster to the promoter, the act, the building…

Then again, some people aren’t ignorant. They don’t even deal with the original on sale. They go straight to the secondary market.They know what’s available, the price is clear and they make a reasonable decision, not influenced by the heat of the moment. ...

But, the game should be defined. How many of the overall tickets being sold are available through Ticketmaster? Are any good seats ever put on sale?

Forget the Springsteen hysteria. That’s not the real issue here. The point is, in a country where you can look up what someone gave to a politician on the Internet, where you can research seemingly each and every fact about individuals and companies online, why can’t there be a map showing what tickets are actually available? Furthermore, why can’t there be an accounting of where the "missing" tickets have gone?

If the Ticketmaster-Live Nation merger is struck down, it won't be because of the Springsteen incident in which customers were sent to TicketsNow, Ticketmaster's secondary ticketing (read: scalping) site. But it's clear that people want a "fair" disbursement of tickets at face value and Ticketmaster is seen as acting in an "unfair" manner when it diverts tickets away from the primary market. (I put those words in quote because what is fair and unfair is very subjective. What I think is fair is not what Senator Chuck Schumer thinks is fair is not what Mr. and Mrs. Kenny Chesney Fan thinks is fair.) It's also clear that artists and promoters have a hand in what tickets are and are not sold at face value. Ticketmaster is taking all the heat. It's time for others to take some heat as well.