Thats to stop DOS attacks by putting all seats in a shopping cart and having the next guy who logs in see no seats available. You need to hold them somehow as i

Thats to stop DOS attacks by putting all seats in a shopping cart and having the next guy who logs in see no seats available. You need to hold them somehow as it takes a couple minutes for most people to pull out their credit card and fill out the form, so you use a timer. If they don't finish, the seat gets listed as open again. I don't think its a sales tactic at all, but certainly can be made to look more urgent than it needs to be to. Back when I was a teen we had to get up at 6am to buy tickets for popular shows and go wait outside our local reseller, which was usually a department store in the mall and join the long line of people ahead of us. I much prefer the web based system. Also its worth mentioning that TM is only as evil as venues allow them to be. A lot of the fees and charges are kickbacks to the venue. That's why there's no competition. Venues say, "Look we're getting an extra $7 per ticket with TM, can you beat that?" They're not interested in less fees as these fees are free money for them.