Concerts, ticket prices, bots and scalpers: The ingredients for a watchdog series
For about nine years, spanning the late 1960s and into the mid-'70s, some of the best acts hit the Wollman Skating Rink stage. I ponied up the unheard-of price of $10 to hear Boz Scaggs perform his hit "Lowdown" and other numbers — and got a treat with the opening act, Maxine Nightingale.
If you didn't have a ticket, you could sit on giant boulders nearby for free and hear just fine.
The arena hosted so many shows of my early concert days: Allman Brothers, B.B. King, Marshall Tucker Band, Chicago and dozens of others.
Back then, to get tickets you typically showed up with cash at a kiosk in Penn Station in Manhattan at Korvette's Department Store. The $10 price for Boz Scaggs was at the high end, and just before Dr. Pepper took over the operation. Tickets started at about $2 in the 1960s and jumped to $4.50 soon after — probably sending some concert fans into cardiac arrest.
Today, if you paid a $4.50 fee on one of your tickets, you'd thank the music gods for the clerical error.
MORE: Looming lawsuit could change the way we buy concert tickets - hopefully for the better
MORE: Bots, scalpers send concert tickets through the roof, but look who gets the money
Which is sort of why the Asbury Park Press, led by entertainment writer extraordinaire Chris Jordan, is embarking on a deep dive into the concert ticket world as the season ramps up and ticket prices continue to be an economic decision as much as an aesthetic one.
As part of our commitment to watchdog investigative journalism, the Press is looking at a variety of Shore-related topics as the summer launches. From beach badge fees to beach replenishment, and from boardwalk rides and food vendor safety to tourism dollars, the Press will focus on the heart of what makes the Jersey Shore so special.
And we thought, what is more summer at the Shore, and the rest of New Jersey, than music?
Where once it was a fairly straightforward business transaction, the industry has turned into what is projected to be a $60 billion or so industry in the U.S. alone in 2025, according to IBISWorld.
There have been some notable ugly milestones in the ticket buying milieu of late — Taylor Swift and Bruce Springsteen shows to name just two — that drove fans into a frenzy as ticket prices ballooned, spiraled out of reach for many, or forced some to take out loans (kidding. maybe) to see a show.
But even on a smaller scale, with acts that are not global phenomenon events, it can be a harrowing experience timing your online buying moment to get two tickets to some show at the PNC Bank Arts Center in Holmdel. Minutes after going on sale, tickets can be gone on the primary market and moved into the secondary resale market, where the ticket prices do not resemble the primary prices.
It can drive a fan to listen to Musak in an elevator instead of fighting for the golden ticket.
Which brings us to Jordan's initial stories. First, he looks at the federal government's antitrust case against the music entertainment behemoth Live Nation and its trusty ticket vendor Ticketmaster. The two merged in 2010, but now the government thinks things have gone in the wrong direction, issuing this statement about the case:
'The thrust of the complaint is that Live Nation engaged in a variety of exclusionary conduct to maintain its monopoly over primary-ticketing services, and consumers suffered injury by using those services and getting overcharged,' said U.S. District Judge Arun Subramanian in his ruling.
Our second story explores the roots of the ticket price escalation and its complex system of buying, selling, reselling, bots, scalpers and unenforceable laws because, as one expert said, the software and technology to workaround the rules is so advanced, lawmakers and their enforcement agencies can't keep up.
In addition, our series will look at fan resignation, how showgoers can navigate the murky ticket-buying seas, bitcoin's role in the process, and do politicians have the appetite, as the late New Jersey Rep. Bill Pascrell once exhibited, to go after the ticket brokers and secondary market purveyors?
In the end, we'll be able to look at how the season went, what happened to prices, how did fans react, and what will be the status of the federal lawsuit against Live Nation and Ticketmaster. That case is set for March 2026 in the Southern District Court in Lower Manhattan, ironically, just a few miles from where a young music fan snagged a Boz Scaggs ticket for $10.
This article originally appeared on Asbury Park Press: Live Nation, Ticketmaster: APP series looks at ticket prices
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