http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124380795391770255.htmlJUNE 1, 2009.
Scalping Gets a Charitable Spin Start-Up Sells Concert Tickets at a Premium and Do-Gooders Reap ExcessBy ETHAN SMITH
A Boston start-up called Charity Partners Inc. is hoping to wring some social good out of the business of ticket scalping.
The company, run by a co-founder of Priceline.com Inc., has been quietly operating in a pilot mode for more than two years, selling concert tickets at the kind of eye-popping prices routinely charged on the aftermarket, then donating the upside to a variety of charities.
Working with artists including James Taylor, the Rolling Stones and others, Charity Partners says it has raised more than $3 million for numerous causes, including the Boys & Girls Clubs of America and Habitat for Humanity. Now Charity Partners is rolling out a much bigger presence on several summer tours by acts including Coldplay, Santana and Diana Krall.
The closely held company, which is a for-profit corporation, not a charity, pays artists and concert promoters the full face value of each ticket. It then resells them at its Tickets-for-Charity.com Web site and donates the additional revenue to charities, some chosen by the performer, some by the fan who buys the seat. Charity Partners makes its money from a Ticketmaster-style service fee charged on the ticket sale. The ticket and donation show up on a buyer's credit card as separate charges, facilitating tax deductions.
Seats in the first 10 rows to a July 18 Coldplay concert in the Los Angeles area were listed by Tickets-for-Charity at $212.50 each, compared with $190 to $293 on eBay Inc.'s StubHub.com, another aftermarket ticketing service. Tickets in the same section carried a face value of $97.50 on Ticketmaster's Web site, where they have long since sold out.
Tickets-for-Charity, which is allotted only a small fraction of total tickets sold, is ramping up just as the market for reselling tickets has become a hot-button issue.
While Tickets-for-Charity would do nothing to lower prices in aftermarket, Charity Partners founder and Chief Executive Jord Poster argues that the company is merely aiming to redirect money that consumers are already willing to pay.
"If you can capture even a small portion of the billions of dollars worth of inventory trapped in the hands of resellers and divert it to charity, that would be a big win," says Mr. Poster, 52 years old, who earlier in his career co-founded Priceline.com, the travel Web site.
As for Charity Partners itself, Mr. Poster says: "We're currently in no danger of making any money."
The Natural Resources Defense Council says it has received more than $78,000 from Tickets-for-Charity, generated mainly by ticket sales from concerts by Mr. Taylor, a longtime supporter of the NRDC. Indeed, thanks to the singer's introductions, his lawyer, Joel Katz, and agent, Rob Light, of Creative Artists Agency, are now on the company's board of directors. The board also includes William Shatner, whom Mr. Poster knows from the actor's role as the campy Priceline pitchman starting in the 1990s.
After a public outcry over the way brokers offered tickets to Bruce Springsteen concerts, Sen. Charles Schumer (D.,N.Y.) recently vowed to introduce legislation regulating the practice. The attorney general of New Jersey reached a settlement with Ticketmaster Entertainment Inc. before suing three ticket brokers.
