Digital Programs Cyber-Snatch Hannah Montana Tickets Away From the Kids
By Rod Lockwood, The Blade, Toledo, Ohio
Oct. 17–Alexa Loar-Tenney can perform karaoke to almost any Hannah Montana song, but she won’t be singing along when the Disney Channel TV character hits the Palace of Auburn Hills stage in early December.
Despite her mom’s best efforts to get tickets to the show, the Berkey 6-year-old will be at home — just like little Reagan Gallehue of Edon, Ohio — instead of seeing her favorite singer.
Both northwest Ohio girls were shut out of the concert featuring Miley Cyrus, who portrays 14-year-old teen idol Hannah Montana on the TV show of the same name, thanks to ticket brokers who use sophisticated software to bully their way to the front of the line for prime shows and cyber snatch tickets away from kids like Alexa and Reagan.
While it’s too late for them, a federal judge’s ruling Monday may prevent future concert-goers from suffering a similar fate. The judge in California ordered RMG Technologies to stop selling software that lets users flood the Ticketmaster Web site with requests and snap up tickets in bulk, beating the humans who log in manually to buy tickets.
“We will not allow others to illegally divert tickets away from fans,” Ticketmaster Chief Executive Sean Moriarty said in a statement. Ticketmaster is a leading seller of concert and sporting event tickets.
U.S. District Judge Audrey Collins issued a preliminary injunction in Los Angeles on Monday.
Reagan’s mom, Chandra Gallehue, said her daughter is a member of the Hannah Montana fan club, so she was able to log into the Ticketmaster system a week ahead of the general public to try to purchase two of the limited number of tickets available at that time. The tickets were gone almost instantly and when she tried a week later with everyone else, she had equally bad luck.
“As long as it took my computer to get in, they were already sold out,” she said. “I just couldn’t believe that as soon as you clicked on they were [gone]. And I’ve checked eBay and they’re selling these tickets for $2,000.”
The list price for the show was $59.50 and a chance to see Montana was going to be a special treat for 7-year-old Reagan.
“She was very disappointed. She had just gotten her tonsils out that day and we were trying to get her a gift and it was going to be her birthday gift too,” her mother said.
Shannon Loar-Tenney said she and Alexa were equally upset.
“So this is what happens to little kids that want to see people they like and want to hear the music — we have to pay a fortune,” she said.
Abuse of the popular ticket-retailing system by brokers and resellers has grown “more and more brazen” since then, said Joe Freeman, a lawyer for Ticketmaster.
Ticketmaster says RMG software enables digital scalpers to breach its Internet box-office system and electronically cut in line ahead of regular human customers to scoop up large numbers of tickets that can then be resold at highly inflated prices.
“They’re cheating consumers out of a fair shot at these tickets, and we’re not going to stand for it anymore,” Mr. Freeman said.
The practice has come under investigation by the attorneys general of at least three states — Missouri, Arkansas, and Pennsylvania — who are looking into whether ticket resellers are violating state consumer protection laws.
State authorities were reacting in large part to a public outcry over crushing demand for seats to the Hannah Montana tour — and soaring markups of those seats as they showed up for sale in the secondary ticket market on Web sites like Ticketliquidator.com, StubHub.com and Gotickets.com.
The 54-date “Best of Both Worlds Tour,” which opens tomorrow in St. Louis, has become the hottest show of the year, with average ticket prices rising to $237 earlier this month, exceeding the going rate for adult acts such as the Police, Bruce Springsteen, and Van Halen. Scalpers and brokers were reported to be seeking as much as $2,500 to $3,000 for a Hannah Montana ticket.
The starting face value of those tickets for two Los Angeles-area shows ranged from $26 to $66 a seat, according to Ticketmaster.
Ms. Gallehue said there’s no way she could afford the scalped price of the tickets.
“It’s really disappointing to not even have a chance,” she said. “I’m not expecting a front-row seat, just a seat, you know.”
Ms. Loar-Tenney said she hopes a DVD of the concert will be made so that her daughter can at least see what she missed. But it won’t be the same as being there, she said.
“From a parental level you get to see a different level of joy and excitement in your daughter when she can see it live.”
Information from The Blade’s wire services was used in this report.
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