NEW YORK (CelebrityAccess MediaWire) — Tickets for Bruce Springsteen's upcoming tour have once again sparked controversy for Ticketmaster after New Jersey Boss fans found tickets sold out after long delays in processing their orders, only to reappear on secondary ticket sites at inflated prices.
When tickets went on sale on Jan. 27th, Ticketmaster.com appeared to struggle under the load of excited fans seeking tickets and leaving many empty handed at the end of the day. The following day, Ticketmaster announced in a press release that they had been overloaded "highly suspicious sources" hinting that scalpers may be using bots to harvest tickets for secondary market speculation.
A brief check of StubHub revealed more than 1,200 tickets available for both shows at the Izod Center at prices starting at $112 and ranging as high as $7,200. There are more than 1,000 available at the Prudential Center in Newark, starting at $153 and up to a high price of $8,300.
Springsteen's last outing in 2009 also provoked ticket-related controversy when Ticketmaster was accused of feeding tickets to their own secondary ticket market website TicketsNow. Some fans sued Ticketmaster, alleging that Ticketmaster had mislead them into purchasing tickets from Ticketsnow at a higher price. Ticketmaster eventually settled the class action suit for $16.5 million.
"Ultimately, this is Springsteen's fault," wrote Bob Lefsetz. "Bruce should take a stand. Bruce should be an agent for change. But he's afraid of looking greedy. But the end result is all that money goes to scalpers and fans have to buy tickets on the 'black market.' All that money should go to Bruce, he deserves it. So, the whole arena should be paperless. Or tickets should be scaled. Bruce could have been a leader here." – CelebrityAccess Staff Writers
