Ticket scalping has been a problem in the music industry since the dawn of live performances. So this story comes as no surprise. 

The Backstreet Boys have accused concert promoters, House of Blues Concerts, of unauthorized distribution of tickets to the "groups" Oct 31st sold out show at the Denver Pepsi Center. The tickets allegedly landed in the hands of ticket brokers, who turned around and sold them to the public at inflated prices.  

There is still debate on the number of tickets involved. Representatives of the Backstreet Boys claim that the number is close to 1,500. HOB claims that only 400 tickets were sold from their offices and another 600 tickets were sold to a diner party, which was taking place in the same building that night. 

This story broke when the Backstreet Boys called upon HOB to make a donation of $75,000 to a Columbine High School scholarship fund to make amends. HOB agreed to make a donation to a charity that benefits Columbine, but questions the legitimacy of the organization named by the Backstreet Boys management.

Backstreet Boys Tour accountants began to smell a rat, when they randomly polled ticket holders and found that many had paid up to $350 for tickets with a face value of under $40.00. 

That this took place is no surprise. These kind of side deals occur all the time when promoters attempt to make money for staging these shows. When the artist demand such a high percentage of the shows, promoters are sometimes faced with losing money on even sell out shows. So they sometimes have to resort to tactics like this incident in order to break even or make a profit on promoting these concerts. 

This is nothing new in the concert industry, what is new is an artist management questioning the promoter in this way. In the hey-day of live concerts during the 70's artist regularly took 50% of a concerts earnings. Now they can take as much as 80 to 90%. Which has forced promoters to increase ticket prices to a point where they can make a profit on these shows. Sometimes they resort to so-called shady deals to make the concerts worth taking the gamble on. 

It is the promoters who take the risk with these shows, they have to put up the money for the venue and promotion and offer the artist a guarantee for the show. With this incident coming to light in the public forum in just might be the concert goers who suffer. Not the ones who paid $350 to see the Backstreet Boys, we are talking about music fans in general. If promoters begin to feel too much pressure from artist management, they may decide that taking on these tours is not worth the risk of losing their money. I neither condone or criticize promoters for doing side deals. It is simply a fact of the business, when the promoters take all the risk and the artist take home most of the money from these shows, side deals are inevitable. 

In the age where Barbara Steisand charges $2500 a ticket for her New Years Eve concert, fans paying $350 does not seem extreme. If we want to clean up the concert industry, lets start with these major artist giving the promoters more of the take for these shows. Ticket prices will drop, promoters will take on more shows and we will see less of these shady deals occur. In the end the fans would be the winners, not just the artist.

antiGUY
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