To deter scalpers, these tickets are up for auction
A growing number of rock bands and sports teams are auctioning some of their best tickets to the highest bidder in an attempt to increase their revenues and deter scalpers.
Ticketmaster, which has helped pioneer the concept, said the number of tickets being auctioned online right now is tiny but growing fast. Of the 58 million tickets Ticketmaster sold through the first half of this year, only 2,945 were auctioned, but that's up from 860 during the same period last year.
''It grew out of what our clients were telling us they wanted," said David Goldberg, executive vice president of strategy and business development at Ticketmaster. ''They were tired of seeing the markups on tickets in the secondary market that scalpers and brokers were getting."
Groups like Bon Jovi, Coldplay, Motley Crue and teams like the Indianapolis Colts and Chicago Bulls are auctioning only a small portion of the seats they sell, Goldberg said, but he predicts it won't be long before the price of nearly every seat for a concert or sporting event will be set at auction.
''At some point, you'll see all parts of a venue dynamically priced," Goldberg said.
The British band Coldplay is auctioning off a handful of the better seats to its upcoming Twisted Logic tour through the Ticketmaster website. For the April 3 show at the Verizon Wireless Arena in Manchester, N.H., tickets for the second row on the floor that normally would have sold for $75 had a high bid of $210 as of Friday evening. The auction closes Tuesday at noon.
On its website, Coldplay said a portion of the proceeds from the ticket auction would go to charity, but Dave Holmes, the band's manager, said in an interview that all of the proceeds would be going to charity.
In forums on the band's website, some fans have been grumbling about the auction process.
''I guess the best way to fight scalpers is to scalp the tickets yourself," said one fan who went by the name of scfanscfan on the Coldplay forum. ''It's just an excuse to scalp the best seats to the highest bidder."
''I guess you could look at it that way," Holmes said. ''But we did this because as soon as we put our tickets on sale, a lot of them would end up on eBay or scalper sites online. A lot of our fans were also complaining about getting stuck with counterfeit tickets."
Some Coldplay tickets still ended up on www.eBay.com. On Friday, the Internet auction site had 30 ticket packages for the Coldplay concert in Manchester, with prices for seats on the floor ranging from $87.50 to $400.
Sports teams are also experimenting with auctions. The Indianapolis Colts regularly conduct what the football team calls sideline auctions, basically packages that include two tickets and two pregame field visits. The NBA's Chicago Bulls regularly auction off four seats in a sold-out section behind the visiting team's bench.
The Boston Red Sox at the end of last season auctioned off 10 seats to a handful of baseball games in a new seating area near the Green Monster. The winning bids ranged from several hundred dollars to more than $1,000 per seat. Only members of Red Sox Nation, a club that costs $9.95 to join, were eligible to bid on the seats plus some extras like T-shirts and VIP tours of Fenway Park.
Mike Dee, the Red Sox chief operating officer, said the club would probably auction the same seats next season, but he said details haven't been worked out yet.
''At the present time, we're not contemplating anything more extensive than that," Dee said. ''But we're monitoring it."
Massachusetts law, which requires auctioneers to be licensed and meet certain standards, does not apply to online auctions, according to Charles Carroll, assistant deputy director of the state's Division of Standards, which regulates auctions.
The ticket auctions are part of a broad campaign by bands and sports teams to undercut the burgeoning secondary ticket market and garner more revenue. Initially, the bands and teams ratcheted up prices for the best seats in the house to make ticket resales less attractive. Now they are experimenting with auctions, and many have even created their own secondary markets.
Lots of sports teams, including the New England Patriots, Boston Celtics, and Toronto Maple Leafs, provide resale websites to help season-ticket holders unload unwanted seats. Most of the websites limit how much sellers can mark up the price of their tickets.
But Ticketmaster is now experimenting with a no-holds-barred secondary market concept. For a Dec. 29 Celine Dion concert at Caesar's Palace in Las Vegas, it is allowing people who have purchased tickets to the show to resell them at whatever price they can get through its TicketExchange link at ticketmaster.com.
Ticketmaster says what makes TicketExchange superior to eBay is that it guarantees the legitimacy of the tickets being sold, and guarantees that the seller will be paid. Ticketmaster collects a processing fee from both buyers and sellers on each transaction. Ticketmaster official Goldberg said Nevada law places no restrictions on the resale of tickets.
Massachusetts law requires ticket resellers to be licensed, and limits their markup on each ticket to $2 above face value, plus certain service charges. This antiscalping law is rarely enforced, but state officials are exploring making major changes in the law.
Jeff Fluhr, the chief executive of StubHub.com, one of the nation's leading online ticket resellers, said he doesn't think any of the steps being taken to stamp out the secondary market will work. In fact, he thinks the auctions will actually help the ticket resale business.
''What it does for us and the secondary market is it gets customers comfortable with the concept of paying a fair market price for tickets," he said. ''It really gives the secondary market a boost."
Fluhr said he isn't worried about auctions eliminating the need for companies like his because he doesn't think it's feasible to auction off more than a handful of tickets to any event.
He also said ticket prices tend to change over time, while auctions generally run for only a short period before being concluded. Ticket resale websites allow buyers and sellers to strike deals almost right up to showtime, Fluhr said.
The Coldplay auction on ticketmaster.com, for example, closes on Tuesday, but the concert itself won't be held until April 3. ''A lot can happen between now and then," Fluhr said.
Bruce Mohl can be reached at mohl@globe.com. 
