upcoming was bought by yahoo in 2005. I totally agree that the sites are built for the promoters and not the users. The biggest problem I see how can this be built for the users and make money at the same time, any ideas?

Nope, but if there is an answer, it may look like the difference between expertsexchange and stackoverflow (the later is a good example of building for the users).

Other commenters raise interesting points as to why this problem is harder than others - events have so many niches, there's a new set of them for each new set of users. And unlike on stackoverflow, in a month all of that data has lost almost all of its value and you need new data.