City Council to review Essar Centre ticket distribution

Sault Ste. Marie City Council will tonight review what Trevor Zachary, the Essar Centre's marketing and events manager, is calling a "a full report on ticketing."

The last-minute addition to tonight's agenda comes amid widespread outrage among Saultites who were unable to obtain tickets for Elton John's July 12 concert when they went on sale last Friday. In an unscientific poll conducted over the weekend, 62 percent of 1,275 SooToday.com readers indicated they had little or no confidence in the fairness and integrity of the process by which tickets were made available for the Elton John event.

Only 10 percent of our readers expressed full confidence in Essar Centre ticketing.

Many readers have contacted our newsroom to express concern about widespread availability of tickets offered by resellers at exorbitant markups.

Some online resellers were advertising available tickets days before official ticket sales began on Friday, but Zachary points out that it's not unusual for resellers to offer tickets prior to actually having them.

SooToday.com does not allow our classified ads to be used for ticket-scalping purposes.

Readers spotting scalper ads are encouraged to notify us, using the Report This Ad link that appears at the bottom left of each classified ad.

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To e-mail your feelings on this issue to Mayor Rowswell and every member of City Council except Ward 6 Councillor Frank Manzo, please click here.

Councillor Manzo cannot be reached by e-mail, but you can phone or fax him at 945-9971.