Earlier this week we told you that Louis C.K. had decided to forgo Ticketmaster and sell tickets for his upcoming standup tour himself – directly from his website.

Here’s what he said about the venture in an email to fans:

We are selling tickets to this tour exclusively here on louisck.com. I only wanted to do this if there was a way, like with LIVE AT THE BEACON, that it could bring the price of tickets down and make them easier and less complicated to buy. We figured out a way.

Making my shows affordable has always been my goal but two things have always worked against that. High ticket charges and ticket re-sellers marking up the prices. Some ticketing services charge more than 40% over the ticket price and, ironically, the lower I’ve made my ticket prices, the more scalpers have bought them up, so the more fans have paid for a lot of my tickets.

By selling the tickets exclusively on my site, I’ve cut the ticket charges way down and absorbed them into the ticket price. To buy a ticket, you join NOTHING. Just use your credit card and buy the damn thing. opt in to the email list if you want, and you’ll only get emails from me.

The tickets are going for $45 – a flat rate for all shows across the country.

Now, a few days in, it appears that Louis C.K.’s direct ticket sale move is paying off. Apparently, fans have paid over 4.5 million dollars in just 45 hours of the sale being live:

Follow @louisck

Louis C.K.
@louisck

well. after 45 hours, my tour has sold 100K tickets, box office gross of 4.5 mil $ (not all mine). I guess it was a good idea.

 Reply  ·  Retweet  ·  Favorite
16 hours ago via web · powered by @socialditto

That tweet came Wednesday evening, so we can assume the numbers are even better now.

If you remember, this isn’t the first time Louis C.K. has found success in bucking the trend. Last year, he distributed his standup special “Live at the Beacon” on his site, free of DRM, for $5. In just one week, proceeds hit the $1 million mark (of which he gave about 75% of to charity).

Other big-name comedians like Aziz Ansari and Jim Gaffigan followed suit, relasing their new standup specials direct to fans.

I can only express happiness and enthusiasm about this trend. And the more success “cutting out the middleman” finds, the more likely we are to see other content producers trying it out in the future. Of course, like I’ve said before, Louis C.K. is a huge star, and many think that he’s the best living comedian. It will be interesting to see if others who are maybe not at star-powered can find success following the Louis C.K. model.

And just for good measure, here’s why this funny son of a bitch is succeeding in all of his ventures:

He did something similar with his comedy special “Live At The Beacon”, selling downloads of the show for 5 bucks apiece. The idea was so popular–making a million dollars in about two weeks–that other comedians followed his lead, including Aziz Ansari.

C.K. insists that now that he’s able to make a living doing what he loves, there’s no point in overcharging his fans if its not necessary. He announced on Monday that he will offer tickets only through his website, louisck.net, to his upcoming October tour for a flat rate of $45.

Besides cultivating a hugely successful stand-up presence, the comedian has also found a hit in his FX show, “Louie”, which is in turns odd, sad, hilarious, and insanely addictive. His observations on the people and world around him have hit home with a big fan base, who have all been clamoring for his presence on Twitter. He obliged, but only to insult them. That’s why we love you, Louis.

The new season of “Louie” begins this Thursday on FX.

In order to strike back against Ticketmaster, the band forwarded a handful of fans $20,000, which allotted to secure a handful of seats for their upcoming performance at the Greek Theater in Los Angeles. After 400 tickets were acquired, the fans then sent them back to the band, who, in turn, put them for sale on the website at face value. Minus the service charges, of course. String Cheese Incident devotees obviously get the better end of the deal, though I doubt the band makes enough money to sustain such a practice for very long.

“It costs us money to sell the tickets. 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,” explained bassist Keith Moseley.

Of course, it would make more sense for the band to find another location in which to perform. Unfortunately, Ticketmaster has exclusive rights to a lot of the larger venues, which makes acquiring a place big enough to hold their fans almost impossible. To prevent their fans from having to fork over extra cash just to see them perform, String Cheese Incident decided to simply eat the extra cost and save their followers a little scratch for CDs, t-shirts, and whatever else the band might be peddling at their shows.

If you’re unable to attend the Greek Theater performance, fear not — String Cheese Incident intends to do the same thing for every concert scheduled this summer.

SCI has a history with Ticketmaster. In 2003 the band sued Ticketmaster, accusing the company of “abusing its market power by denying the group more than the 8 percent of tickets it customarily makes available to acts.” The two parties reached a settlement that let the band continue to handle tickets for five years, but the agreement expired in 2009. “I would argue that on some level they are our tickets,” Mr. Luba said. “If people in a free market find that Ticketmaster’s service is easier and more effective, by all means go for it. But we have found a group of people who are used to buying tickets directly from the band’s Web site.”

Normally the band band is able to make private deals with individual box offices for large ticket allotments to its shows, but was unable to make such a deal with the Greek. For those tickets, the band took advantage of a loophole that says the Greek waives surcharges on walk-up sales of its tickets. So if there are no surcharges then Ticketmaster doesn’t get anything. There is only one catch though. If you buy the tickets from the band’s website. There is a $12 charge for shipping. Even with the shipping, it is still cheaper than buying from Ticketmaster.

Check out a String Cheese Incident playing Austin City Limits here:

Interactive Seat Maps allows users to navigate and choose from all seats and configurations. Ticketmaster’s traditional "best available" searches uses computers to search availability one row at a time, the upgraded maps allows people to look for tickets in any part of a venue.

"This is a major step in improving the fan experience of buying a ticket online," said Kip Levin, Ticketmaster’s Senior Vice President of Product & Digital. "Ticket buyers can now choose from all available seats and highlight seats by the price range they want to spend or by the type of specials and packages being offered by the artist, team or show.

"They can also pick seats from the exact location they prefer, pick groups of seats that aren’t all in the same row, or buy single tickets that might be separated only by an aisle or row – all options that have not been available until now."

Searches start with a view of the venues seat map and by scrolling over rows and sections seat summaries and availability are displayed.  Users can highlight and select the seats they want to buy. Other features include zoom and the ability to click on search filters to view price range, quantity, special promotions and discounts offered by some events.  Ticketmaster said it plans to roll-out the new maps throughout next year.

The Interactive Seat Maps are available at the following venues:

The San Antonio Spurs, Edmonton Oilers, Sacramento Kings, Phoenix Suns, Orlando Magic, Marquette University Basketball @ Bradley Center, Rochester Americans, Iowa State Cyclones, as well as select events at the Nokia Theatre at Grand Prairie, and the Heymann Performing Arts Center.

Related Articles:

> MapQuest Launches Navigator iPhone App

> PC–Based Mapping Sites Attracting More Visitors

> MapQuest Launches Missing Children Widget

Anne Milgram
NJ Attorney General

New Jersey Attorney General Anne Milgram said that more than two thousand complaints were filed by consumers with the State Division of Consumer Affairs this month in connection with online sales of tickets to Springsteen concerts.

"Everyone deserves an equal chance to buy tickets on a primary ticket selling website and shouldn’t be steered to a re-selling website where the prices can be substantially higher," said Attorney General Milgram.

Under terms of the settlement, Ticketmaster must put up a virtual wall between it and its ticket re-selling subsidiary TicketsNow. Ticketmaster has agreed that all tickets it sells to the public will be sold on its primary website.

Ticketmaster also agreed not to allow the sale of any tickets on its TicketsNow re-selling website until initial sales begin on its primary website.

The settlement creates a random drawing for 1,000 people who will be allowed to purchase two tickets for Springsteen concerts in New Jersey in May. In addition, people who filed complaints but are not chosen in the random drawing for the chance to buy tickets will receive a $100 gift certificate from Ticketmaster and the chance to purchase two tickets to a future Springsteen concert in New Jersey.

People who purchased more expensive tickets at TicketsNow will receive a refund from Ticketmaster that will make up the difference between the purchase price and the face value of the tickets.

And everybody knows it was you.

TicketMaster Logo
(Photo Credit: TicketMaster)

Remember when Wal-Mart had to fight all of the bad PR from blog-faking with $4 prescriptions*? Well, Ticketmaster may have to fight it by dropping some arbitrary fees.

Or, admittedly, they could just wait it out until the next controversy pops up to distract the blogosphere; you can count on there being one as sure as the sun coming up.

But the truth is there are many truths, and many possibilities. The sooner that is realized the better. Until then, we talk about accusations that Ticketmaster manipulated its Facebook account until it had the sixth-most fans on the social networking site. With 156,643 Facebook fans, Ticketmaster is more popular than Hillary Clinton.

Okay, not so hard. But more popular than Linkin Park, Chris Brown, and Justin Timberlake?

Well, I suppose that’s a matter of taste.

But Chris Carrara, author of EastVillageIdiot.com, says it’s all a charade. Carrara dug through Ticketmaster’s friend base and discovered many of them had blank profiles and no other friends except Ticketmaster.

"None of them have pictures in their profiles. And honestly, Tom Jones? It’s not unusual to have the name of a famous pop star, I guess, but that name seems a little generic….

"That’s a strange coincidence. All of them are ‘fans’ of Ticketmaster, yet none of them have any friends. This seems suspicious."

It all looks very bad for Ticketmaster’s PR strategy, except that on the Internet you can never be certain. In the comments of Carrara’s post, a few mention a Ticketmaster promotion offering five free iTunes downloads as incentive for signing up as a Ticketmaster Facebook fan.

This could explain why there are 33 Kjjkh Jkhjkk’s, at least one of whom are now Ticketmaster buddies. "It’s a common name in Kjjkhkhstan," says David Utter, whose biting wit reminds you not to believe anything you read, see, or hear.

There’s also one Sdfjskfj Sklfjslfk, apparently an Eastern European native.

Ticketmaster wisely refrained from comment. This could be more of a Facebook issue.

A spokesperson for Facebook said, "Facebook removes any content that is in violation of our Terms of Use, including fake profiles. We encourage users to report any violations of our Terms.  Since Facebook is based on real-world connections, users must use their real name when creating an account. Impersonating anyone or anything is prohibited."

It will be interesting to see if Ticketmaster’s profile falls from its lofty position in the top ten after purging quite a few fake profiles.

That doesn’t take Ticketmaster off the hook. It’s still possible they faked it. It’s definitely possible they weren’t vigilant enough in policing their Facebook profile and promotion to be sure everybody they offered freebies to was legitimate.

It also illustrates the dangers of not ensuring such things. It doesn’t take much in the multidirectional and forever-archived communications world to taint an image already widely tainted by blogorrheal detractors. For marketers and PR pros, it means making sure everything you do is legitimate and being ready for surprising developments. For bloggers and New World Journalists, it means looking at a situation from every possible angle before posting your expose.

_{*Okay. Admittedly, the PR team faking a blog wasn’t the only PR problem for Wal-Mart. Busting every town in America’s block, lowering wages, and finding every benefit loophole in the book probably had a lot to do with it, also. Here are some cheap scripts to help ease your mind about our presence in your community. Hopefully Kroger won’t follow suit. Oh, wait.}
 

Hat tip to TechDirt and Valleywag, the latter of which jumped on the juiciness, not the boring truth.

TicketsNow is a ticket reseller, and in that field, comes in second only to eBay’s StubHub; Chief Executive Cheryl Rosner said her company sold $202 million in tickets during 2006.

2007 figures remain unavailable, but it looks as if TicketsNow is destined to remain on an upward trend.  Ethan Smith reports, "Ticketmaster President and Chief Executive Sean Moriarty said the company plans to share revenue from its new division with clients that own venues or promote events," and that’ll certainly be a popular way of handling things among potential customers.

This is a fairly tumultuous time for IAC, however, with a switch at the top level of Ask.com taking place less than a week ago.  Looking farther back, a year-long view of IAC’s stock is downright depressing, and in the near future, there’s the impending five-way split of the corporation.

The TicketsNow acquisition won’t be a cure-all, then, yet it should help bring in a few more dollars.

The multiyear deal with the National Football League includes branding and promotion for the site, according to Ticketmaster. Financial terms of the deal were not released. Ticketmaster currently runs separate ticket exchange sites for 18 NFL teams where fans can resell their game tickets online.

Ticketmaster trails other online ticket resale outlets such as StubHub, which is owned by eBay, and auction sites like eBay. "It’s fair to say we’re an underdog in the category right now," said Eric Korman, Ticketmaster’s executive vice president. "We need to really aggressively compete to win dollars and grow ahead of the competition."

Ticketmaster will guarantee the resold tickets, which are sent to buyers through email, the same way it does with regular ticket sales. The company is relying on that security feature and the NFL branding to attract potential ticket buyers and sellers.

"It’s going to be safe, it’s going to be reliable, it’s going to be efficient," Korman said. "When you show up at the gate, you’re ensured that ticket is going to be valid."
 

Reuters reports IAC will keep Ask.com, Match.com, Evite, Citysearch, and Excite, while spinning off its HSN home shopping network, Interval time-share business, Ticketmaster ticket service, and its mortgage referral business LendingTree.

IAC’s Barry Diller said, "We’ve been a complex enterprise almost from the very beginning 12 years ago, with hundreds of transactions over those years. And while we’ve created a lot of value, I’ve always believed our complexity and many mouthfuls of sentences to explain who we are and what our strategy is have hampered clarity and understanding with all our constituencies, particularly investors."

Sure, it makes sense to spin-off those units that don’t gel together, but it seems that IAC will retain a mishmash of companies: search, dating, invites, local. Not a whole lot of synergy there.

No, wait! I get it….

• Find a date on Match.com
• Check they’re not a criminal using Ask.com
• Find a restaurant for that first date using Citysearch
• Invite a few friends using Evite–in case he is a psycho
• Over dinner, reminisce about the days when people actually used Excite.

Makes perfect sense.

Comments

Tag: