Moderator: Scott Mullen, iWireless Center
Hank Abate, SMG
David Goldberg, Ticketmaster
Chip Hooper, Paradigm
Jane Kleinberger, Paciolan
Ian Noble, Metropolitan Talent Presents
John Page, Global Spectrum
Derek Palmer, Tickets.com
Brenda Tinnen, Sprint Center

John Page, Scott Mullen, Hank Abate, Ian Noble, Jane Kleinberger, David Goldberg, Derek Palmer, Brenda Tinnen and Chip Hooper.

From the Hannah Montana ticket crisis to collective marketing efforts to, even, RFID technology, the Arena Ticketmania panel wasn't lacking for topics. Sprint Center GM Brenda Tinnen said she found herself at the center of the Hannah Montana ticket scan-dal when the attorney general of Missouri demanded more tickets be released for unhappy parents who'd failed to snag seats.

"It's one of the only times in my career that I had been called in front of the city council, written about in the Kansas City Star, and talked to promoters about selling out too fast," she said. "Usually you have a lot of explaining to do - why shows aren't selling and how you can get the tickets to sell."

And another huge problem came night of show, when Tinnen said the venue had to deal with all the people who'd been scammed on the secondary market. Some panelists touched on the idea of finding the happy medium between primary and secondary ticketing and trying to embrace exactly what it is the consumers want.

Ticketmaster's David Goldberg explained that fans don't necessarily care what primary sales or secondary sales are and simply want to buy tickets at comfortable prices. And, in light of TM's increasing acceptance of the secondary market, he issued a warning to those who think it can be stopped.

"The lesson we ought to learn from the record labels is that if you start to try to deny consumers, you're going to end up in a world of hurt," Goldberg said. Derek Palmer of Tickets.com agreed.

"The more rules you put around using your product, the easier it is for people to go to StubHub and TicketsNow," he said. "At the end of the day, people don't care who sells the tickets, they care about what [event] they're going to."

David Goldberg and Chip Hooper

"Most of my specific clients generally try to keep ticket prices lower and keep tickets out of brokers' hands," Paradigm's Chip Hooper said. "It's my job to carry out their desires and values and how they feel about it. Maybe I'm old-fashioned but I'm not into a $65 ticket being resold for $200."

But Metropolitan Talent Presents' Ian Noble countered that if the public wants to pay those prices, it's "foolish not to get that money."

"I have all the tickets in my hand before they go anywhere," he said. "My plan is to take those seats and price them so the rich people that want to pay that money will buy them from me."

Hank Abate of SMG said that one of the major problems with the secondary market is its disjointed state.

"If you can create a way to better control the process for the secondary market, and get it out of its fragmented state ... I think that it'll work really well," he said.

Various ticketing technologies, including cell phone ticket deli-very and tickets linked to credit cards and IDs, were floated during the discussion, but the most unusual came from iWireless Center's Scott Mullen.

"What about radio frequency identification, similar to EZ Pass, where there's a chip embedded in the ticket?" he asked. Not only could a ticket seller keep track of the physical location of the ticket, but there's the added benefit of tracking a consumer's movements inside a venue - e.g., trips to merch tables, concession stands, etc. However, there's a stigma with RFID technology.

Jane Kleinberger

"Somebody's going to say it's Big Brother at its finest," she said, instead recommending more easily available technologies such as tickets sent to cell phones.

Global Spectrum's John Page steered the idea of RFID-embedded tickets to one that some venues are beginning to embrace: the pre-loaded ticket. Page explained that the ticket's bar code carries a pre-loaded dollar amount that the consumer adds at the time of purchase that can be used later for concessions or merchandise at the venue.

And on the plus side, Kleinberger added, that gives an opportunity to see what consumers are buying and develop psychological profiles to better serve those consumers in the future.

In the end, panelists agreed that for all parties involved in ticketing, there is a fine line between embracing technologies to make things easier for consumers and dehumanizing the concert experience.

"Technology has to be a tool, not a solution," Palmer said. "If it's hard to go, people won't go."