New Ticket Agency Hoping To Be Much, Much Worse Than Ticketmaster Ever Dreamed

Screw Ticketmaster! Right? The ticket giant has pretty much scooped up every venue from here to Turkmenistan, charging high services fees and generally making sure that concert and sports tickets cost approximately as a few years at a small liberal arts college.

Well, Ticketmaster is going to be out of Philly! Sorta! The Ticketmaster deal with the Wachovia Center and related places finally expired recently, and Comcast-owned ComcastTIX will soon begin selling tickets for the Wachovia Center and Spectrum, the Borgata, the Liacouras Center and the Sovereign Bank Arena. And you’ll be able to buy tickets at the Ack-a-mee, too!

Surely, this new competitior to Ticketmaster wll have cheaper service fees, right? After years of being under the monopoly of the ticket giant, customers will finally have a break?

As ticket buyers are painfully aware, service charges can be sky-high on some concerts and sporting events, and that’s not going to change much, conceded the execs.

“When someone’s making a $1,000 charge for Barbra Streisand tickets, just the 2 percent fee we have to pay to the credit-card company is going to be steep, and that’s built into the service fee,” said Luukko.

Ohh, I see, it’s the credit card company’s fault! Which is why every business who takes credit cards charges enormous surcharges. There are perks, of course, like discounts for Comcast customers and the ability to give tickets to kids with a food, drinks and a t-shirt already on it. (”The bar code might even stipulate only nonalcoholic drinks,” the Daily News warns. Y’know, so the 12-year-olds can’t buy beer.)

But, hey, at least this company isn’t worse that Ticketmaster. Right?

Comcast-TIX will be able to build profiles of the service users and put that information to use, said Comcast-Spectacor President Peter Luukko.

“Say, you’ve purchased tickets to a Metallica or AC/DC concert. Now we know you’re a metal music fan and can send you an e-mail alert when Slayer is coming to town,” said Luukko. “We’ll be able to set up preferred-users clubs, maybe even offer half-price tickets to some shows.”

Of course, Ticketmaster did that, too, but, man, at least they weren’t so damn publicly gleeful about it.

Gee. I miss Ticketmaster already.

New ticket service vows to offer perks [Daily News]
ComcastTIX.com