COLUMN ONE : U2 Ticket Blues: Same Old Song : Most fans will be shut out of the year’s hottest shows. But that’s nothing new in a city of high demand for seats, thousands of freebies to insiders and legal ticket brokering.

Twenty-five-dollar tickets for Irish rock sensation U2’s first Southern California concerts in five years will go on sale tonight at 7. But chances are you will not get one. And if you do, you could wind up paying a ticket broker as much as $600 for it.

Demand is so high for seats at the band’s two shows at the 16,000-seat Los Angeles Sports Arena on April 12 and 13 that they could sell out in the time it takes to read this article.

U2’s “ZOO TV” tour is the hottest rock show of the year. It opened last month in Lakeland, Fla., and all the opening night tickets were snapped up in four minutes. The group’s Miami show sold out in 12 minutes. There were similar instant sellouts in New York, Atlanta and Boston--where scalpers were said to get as much as $1,000 for prime seats.

It is a common occurrence on the rock concert circuit. Moderately priced tickets sell out in minutes only to reappear for sale days later for as much as 20 times their face value. At the moment, Los Angeles-area ticket brokers are selling prime $35 seats to Van Halen’s May 1 concert for $250 and $16 Ozzy Osbourne tickets for $150. Brokers are selling top--$250--tickets to next week’s star-studded environmental benefit, “Concert for Walden Woods,” for $500.

In the past, fans have paid brokers as much as $600 for $30 Madonna tickets, $500 for $25 Bruce Springsteen seats, and $400 for $30 Michael Jackson tickets.

“Why is it that every time a superstar puts on a big arena show in Los Angeles the same thing happens?” asks Des Giffen, a U2 fan who lives in Woodland Hills. “I’ll tell you what I want to know: I want to know how these shows all sell out so fast. How do the brokers get so many good seats? Where do all the tickets go?”

Good questions.

High consumer demand combined with thousands of freebie tickets handed out to entertainment industry insiders and a legal ticket brokering system that allows individuals to sell tickets at whatever price the market will bear have forced the vast majority of fans of average means to stay home. U2 management, which is trying to limit the access of brokers to tonight’s sale, expects 2 million phone calls for just 26,000 tickets.

“There is a very strong perception in California that all the good seats go the ticket brokers,” said U2 manager Paul McGuinness. “And in many cases that does seem to be true.”

“When a really big show, like Madonna or U2 or Springsteen goes on sale, a huge number of tickets are put on hold for use by the manager, artists, agent, record company, fan club, promoter and building,” said Brian Murphy, president of Los Angeles’ Avalon Attractions. “There is not a checks-and-balances system to enable any one person to determine that every one of those seats ends up in the hands of the people for whom they were intended. There are holes in the system that allow some tickets to be funneled to brokers.”

Broker Brian Harlig, co-owner of Good Time Tickets and president of the California Assn. of Ticket Agencies, is tired of hearing complaints about his business.

“Nobody forces anybody to shop at a broker,” said Harlig, whose organization lobbied intensely last year to defeat an anti-scalping bill in the Legislature. “I’ve been listening to people criticize brokers for a long time, but no matter what anybody tells you, a business cannot survive without satisfied customers. And we’ve got lots of them.”

There is no law in California that bars an individual from reselling a ticket as long as it is sold away from the site of the event. Ticket scalping--defined as reselling a ticket on or near the grounds of a show--is a misdemeanor.

California Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Bill Lockyer (D-Hayward) introduced a stringent ticket bill last session that would have made it illegal to sell tickets for profit anywhere. The proposal died in committee, and Lockyer doubts that there will soon be new anti-scalping legislation.

“The brokering of tickets confers an advantage to the wealthy and the well-connected that the fan of average means does not have,” said Lockyer. “I still believe we need a law to stop the practice.”

Depending on whom you believe, the 45 brokers regularly doing business in Southern California control between 2% and 20% of the best seats for big shows at most major regional venues--the Forum, Universal Amphitheatre, Sports Arena, Irvine Meadows and others.

“The minute a ticket leaves a promoter’s hand, it seems to take on a life of its own,” said Claire L. Rothman, general manager of the Forum. “You assume that when you sell or give a ticket to someone that they intend to use it, but honestly, you have no way of knowing where it’s going to end up.”

Although brokers say they acquire their ticket inventory from season ticket holders or by hiring people to phone or stand in line at ticket outlets, sources say the bulk of brokers’ best seats are obtained on the sly from industry insiders.

“Nobody seems to be able to resist the temptation,” said Jerry Pompili, vice president of operations at the venerable San Francisco-based promotion company, Bill Graham Presents. “You can’t believe the stories we hear about how many people in the ticket chain turn tickets over for profit--especially down in L.A.”

On the average, at least 15% of the tickets for each big show in Los Angeles are reserved for entertainment industry insiders. At city-owned venues, such as the Sports Arena and the Coliseum, about 230 of the best seats are saved for government officials.

While estimates vary from concert to concert, a typical breakdown of industry ticket “pulls” for a 16,000-seat superstar event generally includes: 500 seats for the manager, 500 for the record company, 300 for the promoter, 300 for the tour sponsor, 300 for the venue operator and about 100 for the agent. In addition, at least 300 tickets are usually given away to radio and other media outlets.

About 3,000 tickets have been set aside for each of the two U2 Sports Arena shows.

Even fewer seats are available to the public for shows presented at the 17,500-seat Forum, where a sophisticated season ticket holder system called the Senate Seat Program has been in force for years. About 3,800 people pay the Forum $8,500 a year each to lease prime seats for every sporting and concert event staged there. Some Senate Seat holders regularly resell their tickets to brokers.

After deducting Senate Seat and industry ticket reservation tallies from a Forum show, only about 70% of the seats--12,250--for each concert are offered to the general public. Ticket brokers are believed to regularly buy another 1,200 or so of those tickets.

Last week, Los Angeles rockers Van Halen reportedly sold 16,000 tickets to their May 1 show at the Forum in 20 minutes. Although TicketMaster does have the capacity to sell about 1,500 tickets per minute, in reality, about 20% of the Van Halen seats were pre-sold to season ticket holders or set aside for industry insiders before a single fan got to the gate.

Plenty of the best tickets seem to end up in the hands of brokers. Allegations have been raised over the years that brokers sometimes purchase seats from employees working for ticket agencies and concert venues. Last April, TicketMaster filed a $1-million lawsuit claiming a broker enticed one of its employees to sell the broker tickets. The case is pending in Los Angeles federal court.

Radio stations, which are often given large blocks of tickets, have been implicated as sources for brokers. Brokers also have been known to deal with concert hall employees, who sell them so-called “phantom seats,” temporary seats put in for a show and not counted as part of the venue’s seating capacity. Even artists and their managers have been accused of cashing in on the scalping market.

In January, the New York Daily News reported that Rod Stewart’s co-manager, Randy Phillips, regularly scalped huge blocks of tickets to the British pop singer’s shows.

According to the newspaper, Phillips pulled 5,000 tickets for two shows last November at New York’s 16,000-capacity Nassau Coliseum. Hundreds of those tickets ended up in hands of brokers, the paper said.

Phillips and the show’s promoter denied the newspaper’s allegations. The promoter told the Los Angeles Times that he took back 3,700 tickets and sold them to the public.

Insider scalping charges also plagued the Jacksons’ much ballyhooed 1984 “Victory Tour.”

In Los Angeles, the Jacksons reportedly pulled about 6,500 tickets per show during their five-night 1984 stint at the 40,000-capacity Dodger Stadium, many of which, sources said, ended up in the hands of brokers. Manager Frank Deleo and representatives of the family denied the allegations.

While rumors continue to circulate in music circles about several managers, promoters and venue owners who scalp large blocks of tickets to their own events, most brokers reportedly acquire their cache of good seats by accumulating tickets from a variety of connections.

“What seems to happen is that small numbers of tickets bleed through the cracks,” said Avalon’s Murphy. “And the brokers know where to look. Whether it’s through an employee at a TicketMaster terminal or a box office or a record company or a promoter, these guys work this job 365 days a year. They dig up two tickets here and three tickets there. They’re hustlers.”

Another steady ticket source, brokers say, are fans themselves.

To prevent brokers from buying up huge blocks of choice seats, promoters often set limits on the number of tickets consumers are allowed to purchase--the maximum is usually six tickets per customer. But according to brokers, many fans buy six seats, keep two and sell the remaining four to them for a profit.

“The kids do it all the time,” said the Bill Graham organization’s Pompili, whose company lobbied unsuccessfully last year to pass an anti-scalping bill in the California Senate. “Nobody seems to realize that its their own brother who’s getting screwed in the end. I guess they figure, ‘Hey, so what, I got mine.’ That’s why we’re in the mess we are right now.”

Fans are not the only ones being squeezed by the brokers, said Alex Hodges, vice president of Nederlander, the company that books the Greek Theatre and Pacific Amphitheatre.

“A lot of people don’t realize it but when a big arena show doesn’t sell out, a promoter can lose $50,000 to $75,000 a night,” Hodges said. “It can be a real bitter pill when you lose money on a show and you see these brokers making substantial profits. Especially when the back of the building is empty and you know they’re selling the best seats for two to 10 times what we’re allowed to charge.”

Hoping to thwart brokers and other resellers, U2 has instituted an unusual telephone-only order policy in Los Angeles. And callers may order only two tickets each.

Organizers plan to cross-check orders to ensure that no customer buys more than two tickets on the same credit card. Money order addresses also will be cross-referenced, and fans picking up telephone orders at the box office will need photo identification.

“Setting policy in this area is the band and their management’s job,” said U2’s McGuinness. “It’s not enough any more for an act to just throw their hands up in the air and ignore the issue. We owe it to our fans to fight back.”

Nonetheless, brokers still expect to sell tickets to the April shows.

Sunday’s Times Calendar section, which frequently carries brokers’ ads, included pitches for U2 tickets. One broker’s ad even touted “guaranteed seats.” No broker contacted claimed to have tickets in hand before they officially went on sale. But all said they would have them in time for the concerts.