Seatview on entertainment tickets: a problem that can be solved?

That photo there is from the seating chart site for a Boxing match at Madison Square Garden. Pretty great huh? I know exactly where I'll be sitting should I decide to watch a bloody bloody boxing match. I'd pull up a similar one for a Knicks game but I don't know where they moved it. (or are they not posting it because of the STUPID DELAY?)

Anyway, I've always liked how MSG gives you a sense of where you're actually buying your tickets and what you can expect. In the age of transparency for the customer, it seems only natural that one would be able to see exactly what they're getting when purchasing something that costs likely between $70 and $200.

But it's not the case.

For many events, you're lucky to find an up to date seating chart that gives you an overhead sketching of where your seats are. They look like the one above. What can you learn from that? You know how many rows of people are in front of you and how close to the aisle you are if you have to pee. Kind of helpful but there's a lot missing.

We look at reviews and images of items we purchase on Amazon before clicking BUY and expect nothing less, yet when we buy a ticket for a Broadway show upwards of $120, we go in with little knowledge and a "hope" that an Orchestra ticket will be great just because it's Orchestra.

Ken Davenport wrote an interesting blog post about marketing in theater and what it would be like if they marketed to people how McDonalds does with the annual Monopoly game. His point compares how you can only get the game pieces if you buy a large fries---so people order the large fries. (#thisiswhyyourefat) He then poses the question about doing this within theater by, for example, telling the TKTS buyers ""Want a better view? Buy tickets in advance on Telecharge.com."


I think it's smart---but it's also disconnected because people just don't know. Seating charts are visible on one of the most major purchasing items. Airlines. You take a trip for 1 hours or 9, you know what seat you're in and can, for the most part, change it to your liking. Why not for entertainment events?

There is a fascinating answer on Quora to this question here. Some of the highlights as it relates to Broadway tickets specifically:

• Make lesser quality seats appear more attractive to a potential consumer.---we bitch and moan about our coffee being too hot on Starbucks, yet I've never heard a real complaint about this!
• Seating charts are proprietary. ---Can't this be challenged because you are purchasing something within the space? I'm not up to speed on the rules of this, but would love to know more.

It really comes down to one of the last points though. Someone tried to solve this and it of course got messy. At one point about ten years ago there became an active "anti-broker" effort by many venues and ticketing providers who somehow felt that they should copyright their seating charts to keep them from appearing on ticket broker websites. The broker sites such as ticketsnow then licensed recreations of those maps from third party providers. These recreations were simplified in order to save money, it was from these that many of the actual venues moved to a simplified seating chart format.


This is a problem. Why can MSG do the whole "seatview" feature when others are tricking the system to prevent questions from customers and sell seats that just aren't that great. We should know what we're purchasing and be able to have as much detail about it as we can. Agree? Disagree? Know more about this topic? I'm interested in learning the restrictions.