another ticketmaster incident
i’m still wading through the ever-expanding pile of reading material, and today i found this, which is ticketmaster’s response to the string cheese incident’s lawsuit.
quick background: string cheese incident is a jam band. and a popular one. with a whole set of businesses wrapped around their music and performances. one of those businesses is a ticket-service business. as you might imagine, bands like to sell tickets, it’s kinda how they do business.
now all this is news, but it’s an old story (pearl jam went one round with ticketmaster in 1994 and lost). so, i’ve been following, but not commenting, until now. it just got interesting (and i’m a couple weeks behind). in an august 11 press release, ticketmaster makes the following statement in response to the sci lawsuit:
SCI’s ticket demands have forced Ticketmaster’s clients to make an unfair choice: either breach their contracts or lose the ability to host the band’s performance. SCI’s unfair leveraging of its popularity to achieve its for-profit ticketing goals is both improper and illegal.
leveraging popularity to achieve for-profit ticketing goals is both improper and illegal? someone remind me: how did ticketmaster get these venues to sign these contracts? i’m sure it had nothing to do with leveraging popularity, because that would be improper and illegal. right?