Scalper Shutdown

Tom Petty has a message for scalpers buying tickets through his fan club and marking them up for the secondary market: Don't come around here no more.

In what may be the most concerted effort yet by an artist to stop the practice, Petty's team identified and voided more than 1,400 tickets purchased at the tompetty.com presale that were to be resold.

The tactic was first applied with late-April presales for Petty/Pearl Jam in St. Paul, Minn., and then a few days later with Madison Square Garden in New York.

Minnesota Petty fans had complained that many tickets for the June 26-27 shows with Pearl Jam at St. Paul's Excel Energy Center intended for fan club members via a Web site presale quickly showed up on secondary market sites at prices several times face value. Tickets at most shows on the tour range from $30 to $89. With the help of Ticketmaster, promoter Jam and site administrator Signatures Network, Petty's management killed 600 scalpers' tickets from the Minnesota show.

For a June 20 Petty concert (without Pearl Jam) at Madison Square Garden promoted by Live Nation, more than 800 tickets raised red flags. Secondary seller stubhub.com is listing a pair of tickets for $9,000, according to Petty's management.

By purchasing tickets through the fan club, a privilege granted as part of the $30 membership fee, fans agree to not resell tickets or use automated "bot" software that repeatedly purchases tickets. Fans are informed that violating the rules can result in revoked tickets and being tossed from the club—it just had not happened on this scale until now.

Fan club presales have become an important part of the overall ticket-selling dynamic, letting promoters and artists determine the relative "heat" of a show before going on sale to the general public. But for a profiteer, a $30 membership fee is a worthy investment when tickets can be sold for several times face value.

David Marcus, Ticketmaster VP for strategy and business development, says the fan club members brought the situation to light with frustrated postings on the tompetty.com message boards.

The Petty team reacted. For tickets in New York and St. Paul, tompetty.com posted the seat locations of voided tickets, and Ticketmaster sent notifications to ticket buyers. It is then up to the original ticket buyer to notify whomever they sold it to that the ticket is no longer valid.

The fan club announced that it would create a fan club-only "postsale" for tickets flagged as resold and require postsale ticket buyers to show ID to pick up their tickets at will call night-of-show. Additionally, all fan club members who buy tickets through the fan club beginning May 2 will be required to pick up their tickets at a specially designated will call window and show ID.

Marcus declines to reveal exactly how the resold tickets were flagged. "We work with the fan clubs and collect as much information as we can to make those decisions," he says. "We don't want to really talk specifically about how we go about it because it's a constant battle with the brokers to try and stay a step ahead of them."

The fan club and Ticketmaster are left hoping that those who purchased voided tickets will get the message. "By posting the seat locations that were canceled online at tompetty.com, we try to make sure anyone who's holding a Tom Petty ticket that didn't buy it from Ticketmaster has a place where they can go to check and see if the ticket they bought is listed," Marcus says. The original purchaser from tompetty.com can get a refund for the voided ticket per Ticketmaster's usual refund policy.

While it is not uncommon for artists to go to extreme lengths to thwart scalpers, Marcus says he knows of no act that has gone to such effort as the Petty camp.

"It's a risk for an artist to cancel a sold ticket and have to put it back on sale," he says. "It speaks volumes for Tom Petty and his management and their sincere interest in their fans."

Jerry Mickelson, co-president of Jam Productions, promoter of the Petty/Pearl Jam Minneapolis show, says Jam will now implement a similar practice. "For any hot show, Jam is having the best seats picked up only at the box office by the person that purchases the tickets," he says. "We just did this for Radiohead in Chicago."

Petty's folks know they haven't entirely solved the problem. But as Petty manager Tony Dimitriades said in a statement on Petty's Web site, "This is definitely a step in the right direction and a major strike on behalf of the good guys." ••••