The Truth About Overpriced Tickets

People are saying that the industry ticket prices are in line but I think that most people are missing the picture here. There is always going to be a class of people who will pay an inflated price for anything. There are people who fly first class anywhere they go, they will also over pay for property, cars, vacations and dozens of other things. You should never begin a business model based on the extremes. You should judge a business model by what the norm is. Yes, there are websites selling tickets for artists anywhere from double to ten times the face value of the ticket. Guess what, the number of people who actually pay that much for the ticket is not as high as you would imagine. Most times these brokers either lose money on these tickets or often wind up using the tickets themselves. I myself have used ticket brokers close to ten times in the last two-years, however, it should be noted that never once did I pay over face value. This is their game. Let's use Justin Timberlake as an example. The face value on his tickets was $95 and with service fee's it came to $112 per ticket. There were brokers and individuals charging five times that and yes, some people were desperate enough to buy the tickets at that price. However, if you go to many of these broker websites the days before a performance, don't you find it odd that they still have so many tickets left? They make a lot of money from people who pay far over face and often can't unload over half of their inventory and many times wind up selling these tickets below face the day of the show. So when an artist hears about someone paying $1,000 for a ticket, it was probably one very foolish fan that had expendable income or didn't know any better. This is not the norm. In fact, I know of a slew of friends who buy tickets from brokers and often get them for face value or below because they have such a hard time selling large quantities of tickets at inflated prices (The Rolling Stones, The Who and The Police all come to mind as acts brokers have often sold tickets the day of far below face). Go on eBay and search Police tickets and you will see that 80% of the auctions have not had even one bid.

Almost every act on the road today has tickets overpriced. Let's take Bon Jovi as an example. Last tour their cheapest ticket was $45 in most markets. After the service fees these tickets wound up being $60 each and this is before parking and travel expenses. A band like Bon Jovi should have a $25-$35 ticket option. How can they do this while still making a hefty profit? Simple�dump the larger than life screens that line the back of the stage and sell behind the stage. U2 does this and it was where I saw the majority of their shows on the last tour. Opening up the back of the stage would mean anywhere between 2,000 and 4,000 more people see your concert, which can not be a bad thing in anyone's book. That is more people who may buy merchandise, more people who may buy your album and most importantly, more people who may be hypnotized by the live performance and will want to see you over and over again. This ladies and gentleman is where most top tier acts fail. Seeing a band in concert is a thousand times more powerful than catching them on Letterman as you drift to sleep or on the Today show as you rush the kids out the door to school. Sure, when you are on TV you have a potential audience of millions, but it's rare to have even 5% of that audience's undivided attention. Whereas when you're at a concert you went to at the last minute because of a good bargain on tickets, you are completely focused on the show at hand with minimal distractions. Bands that don't make it affordable to younger generations will have a hard time in ten or fifteen years because these will be the people with expendable income as they reach their late 20's and early 30's.

The future of the concert industry lies with the younger generation spending money and so far, most of them can't afford these shows because of the extremely high ticket price. A perfect example is Bruce Springsteen's 2006 tour in support of the �Seeger Sessions' album. There was only one ticket price for every show; $90. My ticket in Chicago after service fee's was $110 (once again, not a typo). How many people are really going to be willing to spend $100+ on an evening with Bruce Springsteen in an outdoor shed performing music that is not his own? Not many as I found out. Both the Milwaukee and Chicago shows had fewer than 10,000 people at each performance and in the case of Chicago not only was the lawn empty but the back of the pavilion was empty as well.

Bruce should have done one of two things. First off, he should have made lawn tickets dirt cheap (between $10 and $25) so that anyone who wanted to enjoy the music could. Secondly, he really should have price tiered the tickets so that the back of the amphitheater was more affordable ($45-$65). This would have at least interested of those who didn't have a desire to go. The most frustrating aspect of Springsteen's 2006 tour was that I saw a truly inspired man backed by a bigger than life band performing songs that say so much about not just the country's history from yesterday, but where we are today and hopefully headed tomorrow. What about the future leaders of this country in high school and college? They were shut out from seeing what could have potentially been a life altering event. They may have been inspired by the desolation in Pete Seeger's songs and may have decided to do something about it by going into politics. But none of this probably happened because Bruce wanted to get paid mega millions even though the material he was performing wouldn't appeal to the masses at $110 a ticket. If he demanded the big payout he at least should have respected his core audience and performed in theaters where fans would have had the desire to see an artist of Springsteen's caliber up close.

People can not buy merchandise, tell their friends about the experience and are unlikely to seek out the artists catalog or newest album if they aren't at the concert to hear it. As far as I am concerned an empty seat is a potential loss of thousands of dollars at every concert. When thinking about fans who get shut out by overpriced tickets, I can only think of an metaphorical phrase; If a tree falls and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound? The same goes for a concert, if no one comes to see it because it's too expensive, did it ever really happen?

Anthony Kuzminski can be found at The Screen Door

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