Concertgoers are all too familiar with that annoying $7-or-more service charge that ticket outlets often tack on to the price. So when Augustana College decided to book up-and-coming roots-rockers O.A.R. at its Sioux Falls, S.D., campus, it wanted to offer buyers a cheaper route.

The student-run Big Event Committee set up an eBay Web site -- easy to get to with a click from Augustana's own Web site -- and sold the $25 tickets online with no other fees added.

About 2,000 tickets were sold online, more than half of the nearly 3,700 tickets sold.

"We didn't have to charge people that extra service charge Ticketmaster would have gotten," said Jeff Venekamp, director of student activities and Big Event Committee supervisor for Augustana. "We figured $25 a ticket was spendy enough."
If Ticketmaster had handled the sales, online fees would add nearly $20 to the price for two tickets. That's almost the cost of another ticket.

The promoter for a Nickel Creek concert in Sioux Falls last month also tried an alternative sales route: In addition to Ticketmaster, a local business also handled sales. The local outlet added only $1.50 to the face value of the $26 ticket.

Ticketmaster spokeswoman Bonnie Poindexter said fans might underestimate the cost of the event sales business, keeping up with and maintaining computer and call-center technology, and offering new services such as the ticketmaster.com/ticketexchange method of re-selling tickets securely.

The world's leading ticketing company also is one of the largest e-commerce sites on the Internet and has 6,500 retail outlets and 19 worldwide telephone call centers.

"If there was no Ticketmaster, and you had to drive to the venue, in the old days you might stay there overnight or get there when it's still dark out in hopes of getting a ticket," Poindexter said from the company's Hollywood, Calif., corporate headquarters. "That hasn't changed. The venues are still located where they are. Ticketmaster has just made the process of getting a ticket a lot faster."

But it costs more. That's why Deb McIntyre of Sioux Falls bought her two tickets for the Nickel Creek show at Last Stop CD Shop for $55. If she had bought them online from Ticketmaster, the bill would have been $71.53 for the same two general admission tickets.

"You could spend the cost of the fees on food and drink, or on a CD of the band," McIntyre said. "You could practically get another person into the show for that cost."
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