Letting the Net do their bidding

Once upon a time, concertgoers enjoyed first-come, first-served access to tickets, initially by waiting in line at ticket outlets, later by telephone and in recent years via the Internet. The best seats for the most popular acts always cost the most, and to get them you had to camp out or dial and type quickly.

Then came the scalpers and later, ticket brokers. Together, they created an unauthorized secondary market for tickets to concerts, sports, theater and other live events that’s estimated to have annual sales of $10 billion.

The Internet has pretty much legitimized scalping, making it easier for speculators to snap up tickets when they go on sale and resell them at online sites such as EBay, Craigslist, StubHub, RazorGator and TicketNetwork at huge markups.

Now, through Ticketmaster Auctions, the traditional players are looking to regain control in what may well be the future of ticketing.

Here’s the basic principle: The most desirable seats for popular shows are offered in timed auctions to the highest online bidders, with no limit on how high prices can go.

Ticketmaster introduced what it calls “dynamic pricing” three years ago for tickets to a boxing match in Los Angeles, and there have long been isolated auctions for front-row seats benefiting charities. But the practice started to catch on more widely only last year.

Right now, auctions tend to involve the most popular acts, particularly veteran acts with longtime, hard-core fans willing to shell out the big dollars.

What is thought to be the first “all auction” concert will take place Wednesday at the 650-seat Lobero Theatre in Santa Barbara, with all tickets for an INXS-Scott Stapp show sold in an open auction opening at $1. According to StubHub spokesman Sean Pate, non-auction tickets for 2006 INXS events on StubHub have been selling for about $148 apiece.

Exact numbers of tickets are not being divulged, but Ticketmaster is auctioning the best seats to many of this summer’s top tours, including Madonna, Tim McGraw and Faith Hill, Shakira, Red Hot Chili Peppers and Roger Waters.

“Auctions are a solution and option in the market,” says Ticketmaster President Sean Moriarty. “... We’re creating an opportunity whereby fans have the ability to get tickets to the shows they want at prices they’re willing to pay in a safe, open and transparent environment ... “

Ticketmaster Auctions are being sold with the pitch that auctions let customers set their own prices, even if the bidding process results in prices that rival even the greediest secondary sellers.

Of course, it’s a thin line between what people are willing to pay and what they feel they have to pay to get premium seats, and critics worry that auctions will skew away from ordinary fans and toward wealthy ones.

The best seats for Madonna’s current Confessions on a Dance Floor world tour have a face value of $380 (including Ticketmaster fees), but minimum Ticketmaster Auctions bids for them range up to $800 a ticket, while some on eBay are going for $3,000 and StubHub has a few listed at $4,000.

When Barbra Streisand tours this fall, it’s been rumored that top tickets are going to be priced at $1,500.

And that’s before any auctions.