[Gogar]

Some of it's a scam, some not.

Premium tickets are held from general sale by lots of people. The promoter, the band/management, and ticketmaster itself.

Ticketmaster will hold back it's own premium seats all over the venue for later auction on TicketWeb, a subsidiary of Ticketmaster. Nice, huh?

The promoter will hold back seats for their own guest list, and what's called a "will buy" list, industry folks who need/want to get into a show where tix are hard to come by can call the promoter and maybe get 'will buy.'

TM also holds back seats for the band to sell on their website; typically not more 10% of available seats at any show are sold by the band to the band's fanclub, etc.

The band usually has its own 'guest list', which usually pulls numbers from the GA section of a show.

Corporate sponsors of shows, if there are any, will receive tickets held back from general sale as part of their sponsorship.

Anyway, if you're seeing the Offspring in SoCal, there's probably a zillion people with their hand in the ticket jar, so it's probably pretty tough.

I recommend you always try the band's website long before the 'onsale' date, and if there's no extra money committment to buy tickets from the band's fanclub or something, you usually can do pretty well that way.

We sell tix on our website with a $2 service charge and NO TM fees, so depending on the show you can save anywhere from $5 to almost $15 from ordering from the band directly.