Working On A Dream Tour - Ticket Sales

Ticket Sales

Even before any official tour announcement, tickets went on sale in Norway and Sweden. The heavy demand caused a crash in the Scandinavian ticketing system. A similar situation due to heavy demand occurred in Finland with the Lippupiste ticketing system.

On January 27, 2009, the day of the Working on a Dream release in the United States, the official announcement of the tour came.

On February 1, 2009, Springsteen & the E Street Band performed at halftime of Super Bowl XLIII. The following day, February 2, 2009, tickets for many of the U.S. shows went on sale. Despite the ongoing global financial crisis of 2008–2009, demand was heavy in a number of areas, both due to Springsteen's continued popularity and the high visibility from the Super Bowl appearance. Other areas failed to show the ticket fervor of past outings. The pair of shows in both New Jersey and Philadelphia sold out in about an hour. East Coast online sales through Ticketmaster, including the New Jersey ones, were especially troublesome, as many customers endured long waits or were in the middle of a purchasing transaction, only to be hit with screens saying the site was down "due to routine maintenance". Ticketmaster acknowledged that the technical problem with the sales "wasn't our finest hour." Tickets for the New Jersey shows were in limited supply to begin with, as some 27 percent of them were held back from sale by the venue, the record company, Springsteen's organization, and others. Indeed, for one of the shows Springsteen's management held back all but 108 of the 1,126 seats in the four sections nearest the stage.

Frustration became a public outcry when many of Ticketmaster online customers, upon being informed shows were sold out, were directed to TicketsNow, a Ticketmaster-owned site, where tickets were sold on the secondary market at extremely inflated prices. Ticketmaster even pushed fans to TicketsNow even when there were still tickets available for a given show. Bill Pascrell, the member of the U.S. House of Representatives from New Jersey's 8th congressional district, asked the Federal Trade Commission and the U.S. Department of Justice to investigate the relationship between Ticketmaster and TicketsNow, saying, "I am concerned that the business affiliation between Ticketmaster and TicketsNow may represent a conflict of interest that is detrimental to the average fan. There is a significant potential for abuse when one company is able to monopolize the primary market for a product and also directly manipulate, and profit from, the secondary market."

Springsteen issued a statement on his website where he chastised Ticketmaster and made it clear that he had no affiliation with them (the venues had the affiliation). Springsteen's organization, as well as record companies and promoters, held back substantial numbers of tickets from public sales and made their supply even tighter, especially for New Jersey shows. On the same day that New Jersey State Assemblymen Gary Schaer and Wayne DeAngelo called for an inquiry, New Jersey Attorney General Anne Milgram also said that her office and the New Jersey Division of Consumer Affairs would investigate the sale of Springsteen concert tickets amidst a number of complaints. As the matter gained national attention, it became what The Washington Post described as a "public relations nightmare" for Ticketmaster. On February 5, Ticketmaster issued an "open letter of apology" to Springsteen and his fans, saying that it would no longer link to TicketsNow from Ticketmaster during high-demand sales and promising it would refund customers who inadvertently bought secondary market tickets. Pascrell, whose office received over 1,000 complaints on the matter, and Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal also used the sales tales to indicate concern with the possible merger of Ticketmaster with Live Nation. Springsteen also voiced his objection to the merger, and his comments also gained national attention.

On February 23, 2009, Ticketmaster agreed to an out-of-court settlement with the New Jersey Attorney General. Ticketmaster agreed to refund payments made to TicketsNow and reduce its visibility, and made some 2,000 tickets to the New Jersey shows available to complaints via random lottery, with promises of additional reparations if Springsteen scheduled a third leg to return to the U.S. in the summer. The company was not fined, but did reimburse the Attorney General's office $350,000 for investigatory expenses. Over 1,800 people qualified for the March 31 lottery, and those that got them eventually picked up their tickets at an amusingly named "Attorney General Will Call Line" before the shows. In March 2009, Springsteen manager Jon Landau emphasized that Springsteen never directly releases tickets into the secondary market, in the wake of revelations about other artists doing so. In May 2009 – and on the same day that Springsteen would perform at the local Xcel Energy Center – Governor of Minnesota Tim Pawlenty signed into law "the Bruce Springsteen bill", which forbade online ticket sellers from sending frustrated customers to resale sites that offer inflated-price secondary market tickets.

Different but similar Ticketmaster drama occurred on March 20 when tickets went on sale for Springsteen's two Asbury Park Convention Hall rehearsal shows a few days hence. Dozens of fans said that the Ticketmaster automated lines gave messages that no shows were on sale, while those using the human operator lines were able to make purchases. Ticketmaster denied that anything had gone wrong.

The secondary markets ticket saga re-emerged in mid-May during the first leg of the tour when TicketsNow announced they had oversold by some 300 persons the date at Washington, D.C.'s Verizon Center. TicketsNow offered double refunds and inferiorly located tickets to other Springsteen shows, but Springsteen manager Landau was quite unhappy: "We would like our audience to know that this is a problem caused entirely by Ticketmaster and its wholly owned subsidiary TicketsNow. Neither Bruce nor his management have any control whatsoever over these two troubled entities but we deeply resent the abuse of our fans."

When Springsteen's autumn Giants Stadium shows were announced in late May 2009, secondary market sellers began advertising steeply marked-up tickets before they went on sale. This caused Attorney General Milgram to file suit against three such sellers for fraudulent behavior, especially given that some of the advertised seat locations did not even exist. On June 1, Congressman Pascrell announced proposed federal legislation, titled the "BOSS ACT" (Better Oversight of Secondary Sales and Accountability in Concert Ticketing), which would require primary ticket sellers to disclose how many tickets were being held back from sale, prohibit ticket brokers from buying tickets during the first 48 hours on sale, and prohibit primary ticket sellers, promoters, and artists from entering the secondary market.

In February 2010, Ticketmaster reached a settlement with the Federal Trade Commission, which denounced the company's "deceptive bait-and-switch tactics" regarding phantom tickets, and made reference to an example in which the same 38 tickets to a tour show in Washington were sold and resold 1,600 times. Ticketmaster conceded no wrongdoing but agreed to stop the practice; they also agreed to $1 million in refunds for overcharges for secondary market sales via TicketsNow.