It's all well and good to quote "supply and demand", but the current situation where tickets are sold once at a "fixed" price regardless of demand only serves to enrich intermediaries (including ticketmaster). Perhaps as mentioned above the performers should directly auction most or all of the tickets. Then they can either keep all the money or donate some of it to charity. If the tickets sell the first time for what buyers are actually willing to pay, then there won't be such a huge opportunity for scalpers, etc to enrich themselves. One downside is that the tickets will go to buyers willing (and able) to part with the most money. If performers want to support the "old fashioned" method of getting tickets, then perhaps a portion of tickets could be sold at the venue only, based on the good old fashioned standing in line, with a restriction on the number of ticket (2, maybe 4), AND the requirement that the tickets are INVALID unless the same person who purchased them is present at the event in one of the seats.

I bet the place is packed with pedophiles.

So what exactly is the problem here? The people who are whining seem to be the ones who think they're entitled to buy a scarce and highly desirable commodity for far less than other people are willing to pay. Funny, but I don't seem to remember seeing that right enshrined in the Constitution. If you don't like the laws of supply and demand, tough. The bottom line is this-the tickets are either worth it to you at the price offered, or they aren't. If they are, then buy them, and if they aren't don't...in either case, why all the whimpering? These are luxury items, not necessities of life.

Who be Hannah Montoya?

The cost of tickets to show is why I never go to a live concert. I haven't been to one in probably 25 years. It's just way too expensive. And this whole scalping thing is just making it worse. I live in Minnesota where they just legalized scalping tickets. Recently I priced tickets throught Ticketmaster to go see Celtic Woman who are coming to Minnesota in November. The price, with all of Ticketmasters add ons, was almost two hundred dollars. Then you add in dinner and parking at the venue you are way over the two hundred dollar mark. I love Celtic Woman, but I just can't justify that price for one evening of entertainment. I'll just have to be happy with watching them on Youtube or getting their CDs and DVD's which are expensive in their own right, but not out of reach.

This is really goofy. There is a scarcity of Miley Cyrus, demand outstrips supply, so of course the price is going to increase.

There's nothing you can do about it. The Law of Supply and Demand is as irrevokable as the Law of Gravity.

The only people who think they can ignore the most basic law of economics, are either monumentally arrogant or profoundly stupid.

Ticketmaster is the worst thing to happen to concert ticket sales since people paid to see performer with ducats. RMG is just taking advantage of a terribly flawed system for selling tickets, a system weighted heavily against the average concert-goer. "The fix is is" is the best way to describe Ticketmaster; all the good seats are gone by the time you log in and try to buy. I believe local venues should have exclusive rights to sell tickets for at least the first 2-3 days before Ticketmaster gets its grubby fingers on the event.

It didn"t take long for the Garth Brooks concert tickets for his one-show performance at the Sprint Center in Kansas City to sell out. Just as quick was the time it took for people to begin listing those tickets on online auction sites at incredibly inflated prices.

Garth Brooks tickets had a face value for $27.50 but have already been listed for more than $2,300 for a set of four on auction site eBay.

TransWorldNews (press release), GA - Oct 6, 2007

The fact that anyone knows who this person is and will pay money for tickets is sad.
The ticket business is a scam...if you or I charged double the face value we would be arrested..but ticket companies which have absolute monopolies charge at least twice face value.
Don't Pay it people. I have given up going to shows that charge so much....if you have to go ,get tickets at the venue and screw the ticket dealers.
Little girls must have lost most of their intelligence to like things like Montanna bananaa and the winxBrats etc. they all want to grow up and be paris Hilton spears or something I guess.

There are no best seats in the system. My brother works for House of Blues concerts in Canada and I get comps for every show from him in the first 5 rows. Guess what? I see the same people in those seats show after show after show because they're set aside loooooong before they go on sale. There's NEVER been any fairness in how tix are distributed.

Who is Hannah Montana?

Simple solution: Increase the risk.

1. Set a base price for the tickets.
2. Auction the tickets.
3. Donate any money above the base price to charity.

Now you have a system where demand sets the price. If Mr. and Ms. Doe won't buy the tickets with a base cost of $63 for $228 at auction, then they are not likely to buy them later from a scalper. A scalpers margins will be razor thin with much higher capitalization costs. 100 tickets now = $6,300 cost, resale at $22,800 for an expected profit of $16,500, a risk well worth taking. Paying $22,800 for tickets that *might* sell for $25,000 for an expected profit of $2,200 makes the risk/reward margin very narrow.

until folk get tired of overpaying for tickets and boycot the ticket brokers, this will continue. Go see local acts and you wont have to put up with this crap.some of the best talent around don't get national air play and so are under the radar for the scalpers.

Kind of a shame really.

One can only hope that this 30 minute sell out of her show, shows what really happened. Ticket scalpers were the ones who sold it out with their swarming bot program.

AND the real problem is parents who will willingly bend to their child's screaming demands to see the show.

IF they were really able to do what is right, NO ONE would buy the scalped tickets and then watch Hannah Bobannah play to an auditorium with a couple of hundred people and then see how fast she and her management crew actually start making the tickets available to the kids who really want to see her.

Maybe it really is time to go back to standing in line at the venue. And none of this crap of wrist bands either.

First come, first served. I was second in line a loooong time ago and a couple of assholes came out and handed out wristbands and it was beyond obvious who the ticket scalper guys were, because they got ALL the wristbands first and thus front row seats. The deal where I lived was you could get six tickets. The scalper company would give you money for six tickets and you could keep two and give them the other four, OR give them all six and they'd give you 30 or 40 bucks for your time. They'd actually advertise on the radio stations that were advertising the performance.

Go figure that shit out.

I pitched a fit and was thrown out.

The Love of money is indeed the root of all evil.

Oh yes Ticketmaster is just sooo concerned about how the ticket buying fans are being ripped off! Ha! Whats really pissing Ticketmaster off is that they're not getting a "cut" of the profits that the scalpers (just like Ticketmaster itself) are squeezing out of the paying concert goers!