BY ROSS RAIHALA
Pioneer Press
If you bought a ticket from an online broker for Tom Petty\'s upcoming shows
with Pearl Jam at the X, you may be out of luck.
In a move that could be a first in the industry, Petty\'s management and
Ticketmaster have canceled some 460 seats for the June 26 and 27 concerts
that were set aside for fan club members but have since shown up on Internet
sites that resell tickets at a higher price.
The tickets will be offered once again to fan club members under more strict
guidelines that will require a photo ID to pick up the tickets on the night
of the concert.
\"We don\'t claim to have completely eliminated all reselling activity on
these or any other shows,\" said manager Tony Dimitriades in a statement on
Petty\'s Web site. \"But this is definitely a step in the right direction and
a major strike on behalf of the good guys.\"
Like many major touring acts, Petty offers his audience a chance to purchase
prime seats for his concerts before they go on sale to the general public.
But fans took to the Internet, via Petty\'s message board, to complain that
many of the St. Paul tickets supposedly meant for that very purpose were
already available for purchase at inflated rates through online brokers.
\"It was the fan outcry that brought it to our attention,\" said Catherine
Swedberg, marketing director for Jam Productions, the local promoters of the
concerts. \"I think everybody gets frustrated when they see tickets online
going for $300 or $400 each.\"
Numerous scalpers apparently had joined Petty\'s fan club solely to buy
tickets and resell them at a higher price - a violation of the club\'s terms,
as well as Minnesota state law.
Petty\'s management and Ticketmaster worked together to figure out which of
the seats that had been set aside for fans were up for sale online. On
Thursday night, about 460 tickets were canceled. Swedberg said it\'s the
first time she\'s heard of such a move.
\"I think it\'s a step in the right direction,\" Swedberg said.
It\'s also possible other artists will look to this move as a test for
preventing their own fan-club seats from being resold.