String Cheese Incident Beats Ticketmaster on Service Fees
Many bands have been challenging the enormous fees charged by ticket-service providers like Ticketmaster, but one band may have figured out a way around the ticket selling system.
The String Cheese Incident, a band from Colorado, was formed in 1993 and has tried to stay true to their fans over the years. This means trying to minimize the service charged added on by ticket selling services. One way they have managed to minimize the cost to their fans is by selling the tickets directly to their fans from their website.
The band decided that they would buy $20,000 worth of tickets from the Greek Theater in Los Angeles and then take the tickets back to Colorado and sell them directly from their website, circumventing the service charge implemented by Ticketmaster.
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With the money advanced by the band, family and fans were able to buy eight tickets each at the listed price of $49.95 apiece for an upcoming show in July.
"We're scalping our own tickets at no service charge," Mike Luba, one of the group's managers, told The New York Times. "It's ridiculous."
It has been an ongoing battle with Ticketmaster ever they filed a lawsuit against the ticket provider in 2003 for not allowing the band to sell more than eight percent of the tickets available.
The two sides settled and signed a confidentiality agreement. Ticketmaster claimed they had the right to sell the tickets because they had contracts with the various theaters.
It does cost money to sell tickets to their fans but the band said it was the right thing to do to show how important their fans are.
"It costs us money to sell the tickets," bassist Keith Moseley said.
"But we are going to eat that cost this summer in order to make a better deal for our fans and let them know how much we appreciate them," he added.
