Dear Live Nation and Ticketmaster:

Since your merger, you have taken the breath and energy out of the concert ticket buying process.  And due to the fact that you have acquired the majority of music venues in the country, you have not only become a monopoly where you can charge any amount in processing fees you like, but you have also allowed a sophisticated criminal enterprise to flourish.  We feel you have not tried hard enough to prevent this nightmare from happening, and we demand that you start doing something now to fix a problem that you have been ignoring for far too long.

As dedicated Widespread Panic fans for over 25 years, we are finding ourselves shut out of pre-sale tickets to shows almost all the time, and even sometimes when they go on public sale.  All we can assume is that a huge network of sophisticated scalpers have found a way to overload the system with their complicated and extremely fast computer programs.  The fact that tickets are for sale online for hundreds more than the sales price weeks before tickets go on sale proves our point.  

We understand that you are a publicly traded company and have obligations to your investors, just as many Americans have obligations to their customers or investors.  It’s not that we don’t want you to make money, and we understand that online ticket ordering is necessary these days.  We just want a fair shot at getting tickets for the initial price that was agreed upon by you and the performer.  

We think it’s unfair that you restrict bands like Widespread Panic from using a mail order system, or some other form of fan appreciation program, so that their most loyal fans have early access to tickets.  We propose that you reserve 10% of ticket sales for any show in any venue to the fan club of any performer that requests it, and allow that performer to decide how to give their fans access to those tickets in a mail order, pre-sale or similar program.  We are certain that you could determine a way to still get your much-desired processing fees, while also allowing dedicated fans to have a fair and honest chance at seeing their favorite bands.

And for this fan club sale, we feel there should be strict membership requirements and accountability to prevent scalpers from gaining access to tickets early.  If they do somehow penetrate the system, there should be a way to report them like on cashortrade.org, and you should prohibit them from all future Ticketmaster sales.  Since scalping is against the law, you should also report them to law enforcement.  

We love music and don’t mind paying for it.  Over the years, we have spent tens of thousands of dollars seeing live music, and all the travel, food and lodging that comes with it.  But enough is enough.  If you and the band agree a ticket should cost $80, then that’s how much it should cost, and you should do everything you can to control that cost and protect us as consumers.

We hope you agree that something has to be done to stop this illegal scalper system now!  You know it's there, and we demand that you recognize it!