Ticket Fees – Let Your Voice Be Heard!

Also, I urge everyone to do as Bruce Springsteen suggested to his fans on his Web site (per the article linked to above) – CONTACT YOUR ELECTED REPRESENTATIVES in Washington & ask them to do everything in their power to stop the TicketMaster / Live Nation proposed merger!

If you do not know your Representative in the U.S. House of Representatives or your State’s two U.S. Senators, or how to contact them, go here:

http://www.govtrack.us/congress/findyourreps.xpd

This site will identify these elected officials for your Congressional District & State, AND will provide links to their Web sites where you can submit e-mails to their staffs / offices.

PLEASE be courteous & respectful. I have included below the text from the e-mails I sent to Representative Nathan Deal (Georgia 9th Congressional District) and Georgia Senators Saxby Chambliss & Johnny Isakson as an example. You can cut and paste my message if you’d like (please change the name of the elected official & change my name at the end to yours!! :wink:), but I encourage you to instead use your own words:

Dear Senator Chambliss,

As an avid music lover and concert-goer, I am greatly concerned about the proposed merger between TicketMaster and LiveNation. Please allow me to direct your attention to a recent article in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution at the following Web address:

http://www.ajc.com/services/content/printedition/2009/02/11/tickets0211.html

As the article states, the proposed merger of these two huge corporations would mean that “(t)he combined Live Nation Entertainment would be deeply entrenched in concert ticketing, venues, promotion and artist management.” Gary Bongiovanni, editor in chief of Pollstar.com, a concert tracking Web site, is quoted in the article as saying, “it’s looking a lot like a vertical monopoly.”

A case in point of the abuses in ticketing “convenience charges” that will occur with the creation of such a powerful monopoly is the recent (February 17, 2009) concert at Atlanta’s Tabernacle venue given by Americana music legend Lucinda Williams. TicketMaster originally sold the $27.50 tickets for this show in December of 2008 with additional fees of $8.75. Then, with the announcement of the proposed merger, effective January 1st, tickets for the same show were instead offered at LiveNation.com with fees increased to $13.50 – 49.1% of the ticket cost of $27.50! This example is cited at the end of the AJC article.

This merger will need approval from the Justice Department and the Federal Trade Commission before it can proceed. I urge you to do everything in your power to see that this merger is stopped. The consumer abuses that will result as a result of this new monopoly are something that must be avoided.

I thank you Senator for your kind attention to this matter.

Signed,

Tom Tracy
Georgia 9th Congressional District Resident & Voter

LET YOUR VOICE BE HEARD!!! We cannot stand for these outrageous ticket fees any longer!

Tom

No problem, Lefty. Just looking out for my wallet, ya know? 😉

Also, anyone who wishes to cut & paste my e-mail above, PLEASE NOTE: If you are including the link to the AJC article in your e-mail, please note that it has been shortened as displayed by the forum software. So, to send the correct Web address (URL) in your message, you’ll need to go to the article yourself & copy the entire URL from your browser’s address bar then paste it into your e-mail…

Tom