back then, when a user selected seats, they were temporarily "locked" (at least from our end). If other users were "browsing" seats, they would see those seats as unavailable. Honestly, we did this because it was easier to "lock" the seats as it made searching easier for other users on the systems. It lessened the e-mails that said: "I thought I had these seats XYZ picked, but I didn't get them...". We weren't really being nice, but it came off that way.

If a user took longer than the 4 minutes or so there would have had to be more users on the system wanting the same type of seats and none available. This really didn't every happen except for insanely popular events, like NYE or some very popular singer, etc. If after 4 minutes, your time was up. You were taken back to search again, but we said "your last seats are still available. Check out now?".

I cannot say now-a-days, if the timer has more importance and I cannot say from a Ticketmaster standpoint technically. What I can say is how we used to do it.

Edit: added the "Honestly" part, first paragraph.