StubHub and TicketNetwork have removed nonexistent tickets for the much-buzzed-about Bruce Springsteen tour from their websites, New York State Attorney General Eric T. Schneiderman said Wednesday.
Their decision “to respond to the concerns of my office by removing speculative ticket sales is a victory for consumers. Many of those listing resulted in advertised prices of more than $5,000 for Bruce Springsteen tickets that don’t even exist yet,” Schneiderman said.
“Unscrupulous speculators who sell tickets that they don’t have and can’t provide too often leave music fans holding the bag. This kind of predatory behavior drives up prices, hurts consumers, and sows distrust in the ticket industry,” Schneiderman said in his statement.
Schneiderman had sent letters to StubHub Ltd., TicketNetwork Inc. and Vivid Seats Ltd. ordering all three companies to remove all listings by ticket resellers offering tickets that did not yet exist. Schneiderman did not mention Vivid Seats Ltd. by name in his latest missive, which concluded “we will continue to work with this industry to root out speculative ticket sales.”
Sellers of speculative tickets hope to obtain tickets once they go on sale and then sell them at inflated prices, pocketing the difference. Real tickets are set to go on sale today for Springsteen’s two-month tour — which coincides with his release of “The Ties That Bind: The River Collection” box set. The tour begins in Pittsburgh Jan. 16, with a performance Jan. 27 in Madison Square Garden and another at the Prudential Center on Jan. 31.
In 2009, during his “Working on a Dream” tour, Springsteen inveighed against alleged web scalping by Ticketmaster, which routed ticket requests to apartner site, TicketsNow. The company later settled with fans who had sued.
