Ticketmaster sells tickets via four kinds of channels: The box office, outlets (walk up windows at retail stores), telephone, and Internet. Box offices generally only sell their own tickets (or when they sell for other's, they are functioning as outlets.) Box Offices own their own information and TM doesn't (or at least didn't) claim any ownership or right to reuse that information. Tickets sold at outlets are usually sold without collecting any personal identification from the customer. Most outlets take cash. If a credit card is used at the outlet, it is a credit card transaction of the outlet store, not of TM. For example, if you buy a Bruce Springsteen ticket at SportMart with a credit card, SportMart processes the credit card and captures that information, Ticketmaster never collects the information. [At the time I was at TM and for sometime thereafter, the TM database had no fields to hold such personal or credit information on an outlet sale. I can't speak authoritatively about what the database looks like today, but I suspect it is the same.]

If you purchase a ticket over the telephone [and I *think* the Internet uses the same database structure], an account is built and your address, phone, and credit information are kept. There are appropriate internal security checks so that minimal people have access to that information. Ticketmaster [at the time I was there] used to assert that it owned this mailing list info, rather than the Box Office for whose event the ticket was purchased. From the statments Ed has posted, it seems that TM still asserts this and that this assertion has been extended to Internet sales. There isn't really a question of legality of ownership here, as it is simply a question of what the contracts between TM and its client box offices say. If the box offices aren't complaining, they must agree TM owns this information and the box offices feel they have been appropriately compensated.

If TM owns this information, it can do with it what it pleases. Only the power of the open market will limit its use.

What the TM statement [quoted by Ed] says is appropriate and accurate. You have a choice of not buying your tickets through Ticketmaster. You can go to the box office and do your transaction with them. Whatever information they collect (even if they generate a TM ticket for you) is wholly their information - and subject to their rules for use. You can pay cash if you like. I can also vouch for the second part of the TM statement: if you buy your ticket at an outlet, you can use cash or credit card. If you use credit card, it is only the retail store who retains that information.

Ticketmaster only captures and owns your information if you purchase by phone or Internet. If you don't like this, don't buy that way.