From the sounds of it, Ticketmaster is losing it’s grip on the ticket sale/resale marketplace. The Plain Dealer had an interesting article today regarding the ongoing legal dispute between the Cavaliers and Ticketmaster, who owns exclusive rights to all Cavs single-game ticket sales until 2010 (they paid 4.3 million dollars to the Cavs to obtain those rights). It’s a safe bet, regardless of the outcome of the suit, that the relationship will not be one either party wishes to renew, and Damian Guevera of the Cleveland Plains Dealer detailed the main point of contention between the Cavs and Ticketmaster:
The Cavs and sister company Flash Seats are being sued in U.S. District Court in Cleveland by Ticketmaster, the leader of the ticket-sales industry. Ticketmaster says the Cavs violated their contract with the company when the basketball team established Flash Seats as a way for people to buy, sell or swap tickets. “For each ticket sold through Flash Seats that otherwise would have been sold through Ticketmaster, Ticketmaster loses revenue,” lawyer Robert Platt said in the lawsuit.
The central issue in the case is whether an unsold ticket in an area designated for season tickets should be classified as a season ticket or a single-game ticket.
If it’s a season ticket, the Cavs control the rights to it, but Ticketmaster has the rights to selling single-game tickets.
About 60 percent of The Q’s 20,500 seats are set aside for season tickets. Ticketmaster contends that for games in which season tickets go unsold, the Cavs sell those seats directly through Flash Seats, instead of releasing the tickets into a pool that would be sold through Ticketmaster.
The Cavs and Flash Seats, both owned by Dan Gilbert, countersued Ticketmaster, saying the corporate giant is trying to squash Flash Seats’ expansion in the competitive ticket-vending industry. They say the Flash Seats Web site is simply a convenient way for season ticket holders to get rid of ducats they can’t use, rather than scalp them, sell them on eBay or let them go to waste.
I’m certainly not a legal expert, but to me, it sounds like the Cavs are in the wrong. If I read correctly, they are taking unsold season tickets, which to my understanding means seats that nobody has purchased even one time, and they’re selling them off on an individual game basis simply because the seats are in a section which they had intended to save for season ticket purchases. If that’s the case, what’s to prevent them from designating 80% of the arena as “season ticket seating”. I agree with Ticketmaster that those seats should be dumped back into the pool that they would be selling. Now as a consumer, if the prices stay largely the same, I don’t care who’s getting what commission, but if the 4.3 million dollars was my money, you better believe I’d be angry.
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