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Book Excerpt: Ticket Masters (The String Cheese Incident vs.Ticketmaster)

“We were trying to be nice and be artist-friendly,” says Pleasants. “I didn’t want to go out and sue String Cheese. I wanted to say, ‘Listen, let’s figure something out. We understand—we want you to have a fan club.’ But a fan club selling six percent in the corner, we can kind of look the other way. You taking the inventory everywhere you go? We’re not going to look the other way. Why? Because then everybody’s going to take half the inventory, and our business is destroyed because we’re not standing up to our law. Either you defend the law or you don’t.”

National newspapers like the New York Times, popular culture magazines like Rolling Stone and publications like Mother Jones all covered the story. It was typically framed as Pearl Jam, Round II. And while the String Cheese Incident was certainly righteous in its decision to fight Ticketmaster, it didn’t really talk about it from the stage the way Eddie Vedder had during Pearl Jam’s fight.

As fall gave way to winter, behind-the-scenes conversations between the band, SCI Ticketing, Madison House, Ticketmaster, Clear Channel and various others continued. As a group whose success was dependent upon touring, there was concern about String Cheese’s future livelihood in regard to upsetting promoters with whom they had longstanding relationships. There was concern over legal costs. There was concern that no other band or organization had stood up in support. As the band began making tour plans for 2004, the strains of the fight were being increasingly felt.

“We got hamstrung enough to the point where it became so distracting that, at the end of the day, as willing as we were to go pretty fucking far, these are dudes who just wanted to make music,” says Luba now of the band’s growing uncertainty about a protracted battle. “This was taking over everyone’s life.”

The band and management’s persistence, however, was paying off. As time wore on and the fight faded from the papers and the public eye, Ticketmaster became increasingly willing to negotiate with SCI Ticketing by early 2004.

“The reality was—and we were really clear about it—all we wanted to do was be able to sell fifty percent of the tickets to our fans,” says Luba. “It got to the point where they came back and said, ‘OK, look us in the eye and tell us you’ve been lying to us the entire time, or we’re going to give you everything that you need and go do what you need to do.” In addition SCI Ticketing would also be allowed to resume sales for other clients, though the allocated allotments would be at or below previous percentages, likely in the ten percent range, which was in line with most of MusicToday’s clients.

As part of the proposed settlement agreement, SCI Ticketing, Madison House and the band would have to agree that there would be no fanfare or press releases; there could be no announcements of how they beat Ticketmaster.

Says Glazer, “There were a lot of meetings, a lot of conversations, a lot of soul-searching because the band had staked out a very strong position and had decided to carry the torch on behalf of themselves and everybody else out there, and all of a sudden this was just going to disappear.”

Mastrine for his part, as head of ticketing, was not in favor of settling. “I think ultimately there was the determination that there could still be a business model based on an out-of-court settlement, and that was not where I stood on it,” he says. “I love those guys dearly and care about them a lot—and still do work with them—but there was a difference of opinion there internally. Mine was that ticketing is my professional life, and getting involved with an antitrust lawsuit with Ticketmaster is significant; it’s career changing in a lot of ways. If we’re going to do it, let’s do it.” Mastrine’s bottom line was that if “you take on a lawsuit, you do it because you’re going to take it all the way. You don’t do it because you want an out-of-court settlement.”

Luba’s opinion was that if Ticketmaster was giving SCI Ticketing exactly what it wanted, what was the case? “Neil and I were sitting there,” he recalls, “and the Ticketmaster lawyer was going, ‘Look, we’re all big boys. As soon as we stand up in front of the judge and say we’ve given in to everything you guys asked, obviously this suit is about something else.’ We were like, ‘Yeah, they’re probably right.’”

To learn more, visit Ticketmastersthebook.com .