Finally, Ticket Brokers Exposed

from a different version of the article:

Where once their success was measured in how quickly tickets could sell out, they know they’re going to fill the venues and can, in just one example, throttle sale prices up or down, such as pricing the best seats high enough that risk increases and reward diminishes for secondary-market sellers.

“We manage it in a way that the money goes to the artists, not to the brokers, bottom line,” says John Meglen, co-president of Concerts West, producer of the Rolling Stones’ “Zip Code” tour last year.

For the Grateful Dead’s “Fare Thee Well” reunion tour, producer Peter Shapiro battled the “ticket bots” waiting for the 210,000 tickets to go on sale for three Chicago concerts by reverting to old technology: Buyers could order them by snail mail. The designated post office in Stinson Beach, California suddenly received 70,000 envelopes seeking 500,000 tickets. But then another 100,000 tickets went up for online sale and were gone in an hour—just what the scalpers wanted.

Two more shows were added in Santa Clara, California, and the producers tried an online lottery through Ticketmaster’s TicketsToday division, and five days later approximately 300,000 fans were notified they’d won.