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Madonna Reinvents Herself As a Ticket-Scalping Profiteer


Camacho

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Stubhub is just a place where buyers and sellers meet and Stubhub charges a commission for every sale and the commission is in turn shared by Stubhub, Madonna & Live Nation.

Umm yea sure! Bullshit! You sound like an employee of theirs honestly.

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Erm, Live Nation is ending its contract with Ticketmaster this year, they are now the sellers.

No, Ticketmaster is still the seller of S&S tour tickets.

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But again, this already exists before Madonna & Live Nation made a deal with Stubhub. These ticketbrokers get their prime tickets from Ticketmaster, not the artist or the promoter. It's Ticketmaster who is to blame for this. And these ticketbrokers will sell their tickets through every avenue available. Through their own websites, through Stubhub or even Ebay. But now that Madonna & Live Nation have annointed Stubhub as the official reseller of Madonna tickets, for protection and reliability, most buyers will now go to Stubhub. Again, neither Stubhub, Madonna or Live Nation are the sellers. Stubhub is just a place where buyers and sellers meet and Stubhub charges a commission for every sale and the commission is in turn shared by Stubhub, Madonna & Live Nation.

Thank you for your insight on this matter. The "ray of light" amongst the dark clouds if you will...lol. I like many felt like I was going to jump out of my skin in anger after reading the very first posts of this thread but it's all coming together and it makes sense now. Now, if May 19th (or whenever tickets go on sale for the venue you are trying to get in) and we all are empty handed or all of us have to deal with crappy seats via ticketmaster THEN we should REVOLT!!! lol Until then though, it looks as though nothing is different than it has ever been for the fans.

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Umm yea sure! Bullshit! You sound like an employee of theirs honestly.

Read the Wall Street Journal article. It states it clearly.

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Umm yea sure! Bullshit! You sound like an employee of theirs honestly.

She is the only one who has made any sense in this whole damn thread. Everybody else is just bitching blindly without any explanation to back it up and forming their own conclusions.

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Guest northernlad
No, Ticketmaster is still the seller of S&S tour tickets.

They're selling them directly as well - to begin the conversion. My point was this announcement pertains to her future tours, in which Ticketmaster will play no part. Either way, this is all about LN.

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Guest dicktracy
Its not like EBAY, those are all SCALPERS selling, Nobody is selling Madonna tiks on Ebay right now.

No one can stop ticket scalping except the government. Madonna surely can't do it. Ticket would be sold at those exorbitant prices regardless if people (extremely wealthy, corporations, etc...) are willing to pay for it. She's performing and coming up with the millions of dollars to get the show on the road, why not get a share of the profit from people that will make money off of her hard work?

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Guest groovyguy

http://us.ft.com/ftgateway/superpage.ft?ne...820082121303108

Madonna endorses secondary ticket markets

By Roger BlitzThursday May 8 2008 20:10Madonna is endorsing the sell-on of concert tickets, condemned by some concert promoters as scalping or touting, by making two leading companies in the secondary ticket market official partners for her forthcoming Sticky & Sweet tour of North America and Europe.

StubHub will be able to trade tickets for her North American concerts, while Viagogo has been given the rights to be secondary ticket partner in Europe, as well as handling VIP packages and all premium tickets.

The deals mark a breakthrough for a practice which has been strongly opposed by leading concert promoters in the UK, such as Harvey Goldsmith, but which state politicians in the US and the UK government have rowed back from making illegal.

Secondary ticketing companies enable the public to trade their tickets online with customers who are prepared to pay above their face value. The company takes a cut of about 10 to 15 per cent.

Many sports promoters complain that they are not getting any share of the premium on these ticket sales and concert promoters in the UK have pressed unsuccessfully for the government to outlaw the practice.

The tabular content relating to this article is not available to view. Apologies in advance for the inconvenience caused.

Viagogo has paid a rights fee to Madonna and Live-Nation, the concert promoter which last year signed a 10-year contract with the artist for her albums, tours and merchandise.

StubHub declined to discuss the terms of the deal, while Viagogo described its deal as similar to the partnership deals it struck with Premier League football clubs, including Chelsea and Manchester United.

Eric Baker, chief executive of Viagogo and founder of StubHub, described the deal as "truly groundbreaking" and the first time that a major artist had endorsed secondary ticketing.

The deal allows both StubHub and Viagogo to set up links with Madonna's website and fanzones and to be included in press releases and promotional material.

While Mr Baker expected Viagogo to make a profit from the Madonna deal, he described the promotional value of the deal as "truly priceless".

He expected Viagogo to be trading double or treble the number of tickets it would have otherwise exchanged unofficially.

Neither StubHub nor Viagogo was willing to discuss the terms of the deal.

Mr Baker said the Madonna deal showed that Viagogo and other secondary marketing companies were "here to stay for ever", adding that they were providing ticketing solutions across the board to artists.

StubHub said it was the first partnership with a leading performing artist and an endorsement of the secondary market.

Chuck LaVallee of StubHub described its agreement as a landmark deal, made with a forward-thinking and progressive artist.

"I applaud the Madonna and LiveNation teams for leaping with the industry leader into what will obviously be the future of the concert ticketing industry," he said.

Will Muirhead of Tixdaq, which monitors secondary ticket sales on websites, said the only previous examples of official endorsements of the market was The Eagles' partnership with Ticketmaster.

Agents representing performing artists in the UK have been working on a voluntary agreement with secondary ticketing companies to ensure that a share of the profits they make from the exchange of tickets is returned to the artists.

But Mr Baker said the Madonna deal signalled that such an arrangement would become irrelevant if performing artists continued to deal directly with secondary ticketing companies.

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Disgusted by this deal.

If no good tix are available on presale or thru ticketmaster i will not be purchasing

hopefully others will do the same thing

i can guarantee you the casual fan and every other artist will be turned off by M's endorsement of this fucked up scalping practice :thumbsdown::thumbsdown::thumbsdown::thumbsdown::thumbsdown::thumbsdown::thumbsdown:

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Guest dicktracy
Either you really don't understand hte point or you just react before you read. Probably both. I made it pretty clear that we all understand that this isn't going to affect us as ticket buyers. What it does reinforce however, is that Madonna would rather align herself with awkward business tactics like this rather than taking the high road and simply becoming more in control of how her show is sold and distributed. She chose not to do that. Instead it becomes an opportunity to simply rake in more money. It's not like she'd be taking huge losses if this was all business as usual. But because she's chosen this route, she'll be making more money than ever and it just looks greedy and tacky. I think it's cheap and dumb of her and I'm not gonna sit here and say that I support it because I don't. End of story.

She is an employee of Live Nation.

Check this out http://www.reuters.com/article/musicNews/i...325809620071013

There is a lot of pressure on her to deliver. It's not like there's isn't 120 million dollars at stake here. Remember Mariah was fired because they thought she would not be able to deliver profits. She's an artist but Live Nation is a business and they depend on her being extremely profitable in order to afford Jay-Z and U2.

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It seems to me like the Live Nation deal itself, which a lot of people didn't understand either this is just something she's ahead of the curve on. Remember the shares sold after LN announced their Madonna deal?? People just aren't understanding it yet. Once the dust settles and we see how it works, things will calm down.

Madonna was never going to pull a "Pearl Jam" or "Nine Inch Nails" type thing though with her fans....that's just not her, never has been and never will be. She's ALWAYS been about making as much money as possible, let's face it. With that said, I don't think she would take her fans for fools and rip us off so blatantly like some are suggesting.

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It seems to me like the Live Nation deal itself, which a lot of people didn't understand either this is just something she's ahead of the curve on. Remember the shares sold after LN announced their Madonna deal?? People just aren't understanding it yet. Once the dust settles and we see how it works, things will calm down.

Madonna was never going to pull a "Pearl Jam" or "Nine Inch Nails" type thing though with her fans....that's just not her, never has been and never will be. She's ALWAYS been about making as much money as possible, let's face it. With that said, I don't think she would take her fans for fools and rip us off so blatantly like some are suggesting.

Might as well put a porn tape out with her and Guy, lots of money to be made in that. or maybe her giving a BJ to Justin, i think she might make billions, since the defense here is she will do anything to make CASH.

She signed a deal with scalpers, shes ripping off her fans.

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Might as well put a porn tape out with her and Guy, lots of money to be made in that. or maybe her giving a BJ to Justin, i think she might make billions, since the defense here is she will do anything to make CASH.

She signed a deal with scalpers, shes ripping off her fans.

I don't plan on paying more than face value for a ticket, I don't think most here are. The fans she's "ripping off" are the fans who would've gladly paid those prices ANYWAYS because they CAN! Money speaks, the more fortunate ones can avoid the hassle of dealing with ticketmaster and rabid fans vying for the best seats and just pay the crazy prices and have their tickets and be happy. I don't think ANYBODY here is going to turn to StubHub if they can't get a decent seat through ticketmaster and pay those atronomical prices. Again, this is nothing different, she's just making money this time whereas before she wasn't. Is it more fair for the scalpers to make all of this extra money or should the actual artist who is investing the time and energy into the show get a share of it? Unless she (or any artist) finds a way to completely STOP scalpers altogether then it's something fans and artists have to live with and make the best of.

Like I said if we all come back empty handed or all of us here who plan on using the "traditional" ticket buying method come back with a bunch of crappy seats after tickets officially go on sale THEN we can REVOLT. Until then though, when you really look at it this is nothing different at all than what has been going on for years. I would do the same thing if I were in her shoes. Say if she were to join forces with PJ and NIN to try to stop scalpers....it doesn't do anything. It encourages the scalpers to find craftier ways of doing what they are going to do anyways. Kind of like when Metallica sued Napster....sure they had it shut down. But then 100 more file sharing services just like it (or even better) popped up. So what did it accomplish? NADA.

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I don't plan on paying more than face value for a ticket, I don't think most here are. The fans she's "ripping off" are the fans who would've gladly paid those prices ANYWAYS because they CAN! Money speaks, the more fortunate ones can avoid the hassle of dealing with ticketmaster and rabid fans vying for the best seats and just pay the crazy prices and have their tickets and be happy.

I disagree with you even people with alot of money are not going to dish out more than $5,000 per ticket for Madonna.

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I disagree with you even people with alot of money are not going to dish out more than $5,000 per ticket for Madonna.

Not $5000, more like $2000-$1,000. The problem I see here is that once LiveNation/Madonna sees they can sell a good chunk of tickets at that price, they might start to use those prices on ticketmaster. Right now the 390 section is huge, they could make just the best 390 tickets more expensive. Front row could be $2000, 2nd row $1000. I think that's what's going to happen in the future, or Madonna will stop using ticketmaster :confused:

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I disagree with you even people with alot of money are not going to dish out more than $5,000 per ticket for Madonna.

I'm not so sure about that. The most expensive CT ticket sold was close to $4,000 for front row. So you just never know. $10,000 for someone who makes millions a year is NOTHING. But if they didn't sell them that would be fine. At that point the tickets go back to ticketmaster days before the show and magically the show you've been searching for tickets for for weeks that has been "sold out", suddenly has Floor seats available for you at face value. Haven't you ever noticed that shows will be "sold out" almost immediately and then 2 days before the show all of a sudden all of these great seats suddenly pop up?

PBG I don't see that happening in the near future with her ticket sales. I wouldn't be surprised if next tour the best seat are $500, but 1-2,000....no way.

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Well lets see what happens during the presale, hopefully it wont be awful.

Let's hope. Also the day when the tix go on sale to the general public will be the real test. I truly think in the end this going to be much ado about nothing though.

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I guess we can all safely say now that this is not as nefarious as it looked in the beginning but it's still a shitty move in my opinion. I guess I was a fool for thinking she was a TAD more fan friendly than this. And I don't buy the whole argument of this being good because we'll be indirectly helping Madonna give back to charitable causes. I don't buy that for a second. I highly doubt this business arrangement was preceded by Madonna saying to Guy Oseary: "Ugh, Guy, I need more money. I need to give more to charity. Let's see if we can partner up with Stubhub so I can do this." This woman is worth hundereds of millions of dollars. She doesn't need extra money to help people. If she wants to help people she could do it while on the toilet if she wished. She already has the money and resources.

This is all just Madonna's way of making sure she's raking in a lot of cash while she tours - because let's face it, that's what her career is going to be now. Her recording contract is in the dust, and her albums are going to serve as mere promotional tours for her concerts. It's pretty obvious - I mean look at how unpreoccupied she is with promoting Hard Candy. She's not making tours to promote her music. She's making music to promote her tours.

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Suckers? More like the old queens and pompous rich people. Madonna has a lot of older gay fans that have a lot of disposable income. They don't have to pay for kids, so that money can go to Madonna. The young fags can be in the back and the older ones that can pay thousands for a ticket will be in the front :confused:

thats right!

and dont be yelling at me to sit down when i'm blocking your view from the front row!

:thumbsup:

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bitch plzzzz

that much money to see her sing 4 minutes flat

I'll watch someone's front row video on youtube for $free.99

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Let's hope. Also the day when the tix go on sale to the general public will be the real test. I truly think in the end this going to be much ado about nothing though.

Yea the real test will be the public sale. In my honest opinion i think the whole thing will be sold out in 20 minutes, and most people wont be able to get through to ticketmaster.

But Im going to judge this whole thing according to what happens on presale monday.

I still think its awful-the whole deal..

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bitch plzzzz

that much money to see her sing 4 minutes flat

I'll watch someone's front row video on youtube for $free.99

:thumbsup:

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