String Cheese Incident Sues Ticketmaster

By Waldo Jaquith
Popular jam band String Cheese Incident filed a federal lawsuit against Ticketmaster yesterday, claiming that the ticketing giant tried to prevent the band from selling tickets directly to their fans. String Cheese Incident sells tickets directly to members of their fan club, much like Dave Matthews Band's Warehouse, avoiding putting their fans through the myriad problems that accompany dealing with Ticketmaster. It was a little over a year ago that Ticketmaster sent out demand letters to band fan clubs, setting forth standards for those fan clubs and limitations of how many tickets that they could sell direct to fans. Among other restrictions, direct sales would be capped at 8% of venue capacity; Dave Matthews Band, as of early 2002, sold as much as 50% of seats via the Warehouse. Dave Matthews Band management told nancies.org that, as of May 28 of 2002, they had received no such demands, although it's not known if they did eventually receive such a demand letter. Thanks to Chris Tashjian for the tip.