My how the times have changed. Having recently gone through the hassle of buying concert tickets to 2 major stadium tours this Summer, I discovered just how convoluted the whole process has become, and also how shady it now is to try to score good seats to a big show.
My history of buying tickets is fairly limited. I spent years with free tickets to many shows, and my experience with buying premium seats was somewhat limited. However, those limited experiences were quite successful without ever paying outrageous prices to get seats from a sleazy broker.
Basically, I never had to find this guy at the mall to score Blue Oyster Cult tickets. Damone is selling tickets all over the net now.
Less than 20 years ago I was able to land front row tickets to the HORDE Festival by sending a money order and self-addressed stamped envelope to Blues Traveler and then waiting and hoping I’d get tickets in my envelope and not my money order returned. Sat front row for a full day of well-known acts for about $25. As recently as 1997 I scored seats in the 13th row to a Rolling Stones concert at Veterans Stadium in Philadelphia for about $50 simply by switching the long distance on my home phone to Sprint, who was sponsoring the tour. That was the beginning of the end for fans getting equal treatment in the concert ticket game. The internet was in every home and it’s where all the tickets were sold.
Enter 2015, and the brokers have already taken over. Not only are they selling premium seats for thousands of dollars, but they’re selling those seats before the show has even been announced. Rock legends AC/DC are in the midst of their Rock or Bust Tour, covering parts of Europe, Canada, the United States, and their home turf in Australia and New Zealand. The promoter of an upcoming AC/DC show in Auckland, New Zealand is threatening legal action against ticket reseller Viagogo (a rough equivalent to StubHub and similar broker sites), sending them a cease and desist, for offering tickets on their site before the tickets even exist. Viagogo claims it’s due to pre-allocation programs (what that actually entails is a mystery), and says it’s all perfectly legal. But is it fair? Can anything be done to change it? Remember Pearl Jam’s attempt at a boycott of Ticketmaster? Noble? Yes. Effective? Nah. Nothing changed in the Ticketmaster monopoly on the ticket business. Will AC/DC’s threat make a difference? Maybe, but it’ll be awhile to see any change.
But even when going through legit (or close to legit) sources like Ticketmaster, you’ll have to figure out when the pre-sales are, which pre-sale you can use, which pre-sale actually gives you a shot at good seats and not a block of seats in a urinal or behind a wall with no view that a small-time sponsor might get for their “Exclusive luxury super premium pre-sale seats”. While buying AC/DC tickets in February (for a show at the end of August), it was relatively pain-free, but still pricey, to score some floor seats at Met Life Stadium in the Meadowlands. However buying Rolling Stones tickets was like an obstacle course. Four different pre-sales with different start dates and different passwords, followed by special packages with names like Diamond, Sapphire, Ruby, Emerald, etc. Am I supposed to know the order of preciousness of these gems to decode if I want to spend $2,800 on a ticket or $3,100 for a ticket, and do I want a special tour laminate or am I good with just the special limited edition lithograph? Actually, all I wanted was a decent ticket. Which I got for a much higher price than 15 years ago for a much LESS desired seat. The confusion is actually a nice tactic to make me forget about how lucky I’m gonna feel when I can buy some decent seats for a hand and a foot instead of an arm and a leg.
Put Fans First, a UK movement that has the support of rockers like Black Sabbath and Iron Maiden is making some headway in changing the laws in the UK regarding the reselling of tickets, but again, the effectiveness of these campaigns remains to be seen. The bands and management involved in the biggest tours have to be more pro-active in the process. I understand that if someone is going to pay $3000 for a ticket to see The Stones, then The Stones should get the cash instead of the Cyber Damones of the world. The problem is that now the bands price 99% of their fans out of the best seats by selling the $3000″Diamond Package” themselves instead of selling it for $150 to a broker who will make the $2,850 profit.
Is there a solution to it? Probably not, unless they want to reserve a few rows up front and let the hardcore fans send in some money orders and pray to the rock Gods they get those coveted seats, just like bands such as The Grateful Dead, Blues Traveler, and even The Stones themselves did back in the day. Wayyyyy back…in the 90’s.
More details on AC/DC’s legal threats at Classic Rock.
thegeekflux 