Ticketmaster might be a poor choice. They're a middle-man company that connects consumers to venues. The service charge is their piece of the pie to pay for ticketmaster's existence. Now, why this isn't just built into the price of the ticket is similar to this...

If you haven't noticed, the airlines are relying on ancillary fees which "de-couple" the charges that are normally lumped into the price of the ticket. The plus side is that if you don't want to pay for something (a free soda, for instance) you don't have to and therefore safe money.

The downside is that it can really **** off your customers. You can theoretically have a free ticket on an airline but then charge cutomers for everything (fuel surcharge, safety system surcharge, pilot-usage fee, etc etc). It's simply marketing the low ticket price. If you buy a ticket, first thing you look at is the price shown. The fee's attached after you select the flight are usually not considered by the flying public. So if you can't raise cash by raising fares, if you use hidden fees and ancillary revenue during the flight, you can make it up.

So to sum it up, up until now the airlines have asked for fees on take-it-or-leave-it items like soda and bags. JetAmerica is taking it one further by asking for fees for things like buying tickets. You can't get around the fee but it makes for the awesomely-low fare of $9. Nobody cares that they tack on fees that you can't get around afterwards.