Knowing full well that there was plenty of money to be made once the sale of tickets to the mammoth 12-12-12 Benefit Concert for the victims of Hurricane Sandy went on line, scalpers didn’t miss a beat.

Tickets that had a face value of 150 to 2 thousand dollars were immediately put on line at StubHub for multiples of their face value.

Unscrupulous? You tell me.

While StubHub had decided to list sales of the tickets, they’ve instituted a policy stating that their usual fee for resale of the tickets will be donated to the Robin Hood Foundation to benefit Hurricane Sandy victims.

Would you still buy tickets from scalpers knowing that they’re profiting from the misery of thousands of victims?

After days of complaints from music fans, the producers behind the 12-12-12 benefit concert for Hurricane Sandy victims denounced scalpers on Friday for reselling tickets to the event on StubHub and other Web sites for many times their face value.

The producers — James Dolan of Madison Square Garden, John Sykes of Clear Channel and the film producer Harvey Weinstein — urged people to shun the tickets popping up in the secondary market and to give to charity instead.

“It’s despicable,” Mr. Weinstein said. “Don’t buy them.”

Their comments came at a news conference at which they also announced that the Rolling Stones had joined the lineup for the concert, next Wednesday at Madison Square Garden. That addition makes the concert one of the largest gatherings of major rock musicians in recent memory, with Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band, Dave Grohl, Eric Clapton, Billy Joel, Eddie Vedder, Roger Waters, the Who, Kanye West and Paul McCartney, among others.

On Thursday, Senator Charles E. Schumer sent a letter to StubHub and three other major online ticket exchanges, urging them to not allow sellers to profit from the demand for the concert.

A spokesman for StubHub, Glenn Lehrman, said it did not have the technology to require sellers to give their profits to charity. He said StubHub had decided the best policy was to give its fees to the cause, rather than reject the tickets altogether.

Tickets for the concert sold out on Ticketmaster within minutes of going on sale on Monday at noon. (Chase Bank customers were allowed to buy tickets at 9 a.m.) That same day StubHub was flooded with tickets to the show at inflated prices. The face value of the 13,500 tickets sold on Ticketmaster ranged from $150 to $2,500, but they have been listed on StubHub for much more.

On Thursday afternoon tickets for the floor in front of the stage were listed for as much as $48,000 while those in the upper level were going for $525 to $3,000.
Mr. Lehrman said StubHub had decided even before the tickets went on sale that it would donate its fees on these sales to the Robin Hood Foundation, which is distributing the money raised by the concert. He said his company had rejected the idea of barring sales because the tickets would have been resold through Craigslist or other sites in any case.

“This is going to take place regardless of whether we enable it or somebody else does, and at least by us enabling it, we can give a good portion to charity,” Mr. Lehrman said.

By Friday afternoon, StubHub, which gets a commission of about 25 percent of the selling price on tickets, had given more than $500,000 to the charity, he said.

So while it seems they (StubHub) seem to be encouraging the scalping of tickets…fact is, they’re right in saying that scalpers would still find other outlets to resell the hotly sought after tickets.

Question is: would you still buy tickets for the 12-12-12 concert from a scalper knowing a portion of the money is not going to where it’s intended?

 

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