Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, July 1, 1994 TAG: 9407010070
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A11 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: Medium
The members of Pearl Jam - on a people's crusade against Ticketmaster - were noticeably nervous playing this House.
They needn't have worried.
``I just think they're darling guys,'' said Rep. Lynn Woolsey, D-Calif.
Darling the grunge band members may have been - Ament in his turned-around Seattle Sonics cap and Gossard in velvet shorts and rope shoes. But their issue was serious.
One of the nation's biggest moneymaking bands has taken itself off tour to battle the country's dominant ticket distributor over what it calls outrageous service charges.
(For baby boomers: This is big. Like Paul McCartney and John Lennon were in the 1960s.)
Gossard and Ament said they weren't doing this for themselves.
``We could make a lot more money going on tour,'' said Gossard.
``The victim is the fan who doesn't have a lot of money to spend on tickets,'' said Ament.
But when Ticketmaster CEO Fred Rosen got his turn at the witness table, he called Pearl Jam's complaint ``a work of fiction.''
The band has filed an antitrust complaint with the Justice Department against Ticketmaster, now virtually the only distributor with nationwide reach.
Rosen said his 12-year-old company doesn't control ticket prices and makes only about 10 cents on each ticket it sells.
``It is frankly a matter of some concern to us that a rock band can, by virtue of their celebrity status, cause this kind of hearing to take place,'' he said.
Pearl Jam wants to hold its prices to $18 a ticket, limit service charges to 10 percent and have that charge separately identified on the ticket. No one should pay more than $20 to see Pearl Jam, the band members said.
But Ticketmaster, which has deals with most of the major concert sites in the country, is ``unlawfully interfering with our freedom to determine the price and other terms on which tickets to our concerts will be sold,'' said the band members.
Supporting that viewpoint at the hearing were managers and attorneys for Aerosmith, the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band and R.E.M.
Pearl Jam has experimented with alternative ways to distribute tickets, but ``Ticketmaster attempted to threaten and intimidate us,'' said Gossard and Ament in their prepared statement.
But Rosen said that of 1.5 billion tickets sold for live entertainment in 1993, fewer than 2 percent were sold by Ticketmaster.
On a $15 service charge, about $10 goes to the credit card company and about $5 to Ticketmaster. And after the company's expenses, the profit is only about 10 cents a ticket, Rosen said.
by CNB