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San Diego Reader • September 18, 2003
String Cheese to Ticketmaster: Drop Dead

"We did not want a lawsuit. This is a last-ditch effort. We felt we were up against the wall, and the future of the band was in danger.... People are sick and tired of Ticketmaster."

String Cheese Incident manager Mike Luba says the inability to get a suitable allotment of tickets due to recent Ticketmaster clampdowns is primarily why the band is not touring Southern California this year. The Boulder band headlined UCSD's RIMAC Arena last year and the Navy Pier stage in 2001. The five-piece jam band does well at the box office: they've sold out two nights at New York's Radio City Music Hall, and last week, the band drew 16,000 fans to a two-night
engagement at the Red Rocks amphitheater near Denver.

Luba said his band is united in breaking Ticketmaster of its monopoly and has filed a lawsuit in federal court. They want to force the ticket company to give up its exclusive, binding agreements with venues and promoters. Luba said all San Diego venues-big enough for his band's expected draw of 5000 are tethered to Ticketmaster. Hence, no String Cheese Incident show in San Diego in 2003.

For five years, Luba said his band has been able toobtain tickets directly from venues and promoters and then distribute them to its fans through its company, SCI Ticketing. "It was the same system pioneered by the Grateful Dead.... Then last year the edict went out from Ticketmaster to the venues and promoters that said they had to stop letting SCI get tickets unless we conformed to their arbitrary rules."

Luba said Ticketmaster fees are choking bands that depend on touring.
"The economy stinks.People are hard-pressed to spend money on concerts. We came up with a cheaper way to get the tickets into the hands of people who are supporting the bands. If I can save our fans $10 or $15 every show, more people will likely see us. It's good for the promoters, it's good for the band, it's good for everyone."

He said Ticketmaster charges a $4 to $5 convenience fee per ticket, plus a $3.75 per-ticket service charge and an $18 UPS fee per ticket order. "We charge $4 per ticket and a $6.95 fee for UPS. Why would the UPS charge be three times as much for the exact same service through Ticketmaster?"

Luba maintains that because of the advance of Internet technology, Ticketmaster's technical infrastructure is not as critical as it once was.

"It's as if Ticketmaster spent a billion dollars to put a pay phone on every corner. Then along come cellular phones, and now they want to outlaw the use of cell phones just because they spent all this money on their system.... We're not anti-Ticketmaster. All we want is the opportunity to provide the same ticketing services at substantially less than what Ticketmaster charges."
–Ken Leighton