Tom Waits takes on ticket scalpers

Becomes first artist to use paperless ticketing




Paperless ticketing is emergent as a potential weapon in the efforts of some touring acts to eliminate resellers from the ticket-buying equation.

Tom Waits became the low gear recording artist to enjoyment Ticketmaster's paperless ticketing technology during his 13-date U.S. theater tour of duty earlier this summer. Ticketmaster first offered paperless tickets during the NBA's 2007-08 season, when they were used by the Phoenix Suns, the Orlando Magic and the Miami Heat.

Ticketmaster's expansion of its have secondary ticketing business this year through and through its $265 million attainment of TicketsNow raises questions about how motivated the ticketing giant would be to promote other touring artists to drop paper tickets. But even if paperless ticketing doesn't needfully pose a threat to the overall secondary ticketing industry, it does provide a new option for artists keen on fracture down on resellers.

Ticketmaster senior vp music David Marcus said that more touring artists "are exploring this and trying to translate how it fits into their touring mix. ... I expect over the approach year we'll see it implemented here and there."

For Waits' sold-out Glitter and Doom spell, which visited 1,400 to 4,600-seat theaters in June and July, fans were given deuce options to buy tickets -- via Ticketmaster.com or Ticketmaster charge by phone. To win access to the show, concertgoers were required to bring the credit bill of fare they secondhand to make the transaction, along with a valid photo ID. Only 2 tickets could be purchased per home, and both guests were required to be submit at the time of entry. Ticket prices averaged about $85, plus regular service fees.

The idea to go paperless was a conscious conclusion to "take the secondary market kayoed of the mix," said Stuart Ross, Waits' engagement agent at Music Tour Consulting. For the singer-songwriter's 2006 U.S. tour, the Waits summer camp instituted a will-call-only routine where either the entire venue or just the best seats were only available for pickup at the box office. The process was effective in keeping tickets out of resellers' workforce but created long lines at the venue that delayed performances, Ross said.

With paperless ticketing, "we ar now able to retrace a 100% will-call pickup with no lengthy lines, ensuring that all of the tickets are sold to the end exploiter at face value," he said. "Everyone wins, except for the brokers."

Ross admitted that a handful of tickets in each market place were posted for cut-rate sale on Web sites such as Craigslist and eBay. "But it was pretty minor," he recalled. "You're talking some two or three per city, and I don't even know if they sold them."

A notable drawback to paperless ticketing is that concertgoers can't give them out at the 11th minute. "People own legitimate problems that come up, and a concert becomes secondary to a more pressing situation," said Danny Zelisko, chairman of the Southwest for Live Nation, which promoted Waits' June 17-18 stand at Phoenix's Orpheum Theatre. "If it's an ironclad deal and you can't get out of it, it will scare certain people off from buying tickets."

Wendy Garrett, director of theaters at the Plaza Theatre in El Paso, Texas, says her venue faced a different problem for Waits' show. "There are some people here world Health Organization don't possess credit cards, so they couldn't grease one's palms tickets to the event," she said. "I don't know if they were able to come."

These types of challenges lead some secondary ticketers to believe that paperless ticketing doesn't pose a direct terror to their business. "It certainly takes some of the power to resell out of the particular venue, but at the end of the day it brings no real added value to the fan," says Sean Pate, head of communications at StubHub, the leading participant in the secondary marketplace. "The industry is talk about what is charles Herbert Best for (itself), and never thinking about the winnow first."