Gig Ticket Prices

[dotdash79]

I still like the fact that delivery is free.

[guypjfreak]

My daughter in law wanted to go to this but the prices are crazy 

 

[jump]

5 minutes ago, guypjfreak said:

My daughter in law wanted to go to this but the prices are crazy 

 

What's the show and venue?

[Suprefan]

6 minutes ago, jump said:

What's the show and venue?

Thats Fugees at The O2.

[jump]

4 minutes ago, Suprefan said:

Thats Fugees at The O2.

Ah, my bad. I should of realised that.

I've just had a look and you can get some tixs at the o2 for £86 here;

https://www.gigantic.com/fugees-tickets/london-the-o2-arena/2021-12-06-19-30

[Suprefan]

20 hours ago, jump said:

Ah, my bad. I should of realised that.

I've just had a look and you can get some tixs at the o2 for £86 here;

https://www.gigantic.com/fugees-tickets/london-the-o2-arena/2021-12-06-19-30

Right. In the end, you guys are lucky because they arent legally allowed to charge what they are in the u.s. The best thing is the it seems the audience knows better now and wont be fooled. Resale market will tank and we’ll get ticket discount offers in a couple weeks.

[sedra]

Just wait til nearer the time and get them cheap on Twickets ? 

[Suprefan]

A Chili Peppers hometown show is a must

[gigpusher]

18 hours ago, Suprefan said:

A Chili Peppers hometown show is a must

There are a lot of reasons I am glad I don't live in America but seeing these ticket prices is fast putting it into the top 5 reasons I am glad I don't live there. 

[jump]

On 9/25/2021 at 9:54 PM, sedra said:

Just wait til nearer the time and get them cheap on Twickets ? 

Getting cheap tixs for sold out shows doesn't really happen and I don't think taking advantage of fans who can longer attend so they have to sell their tixs for a loss is the solution.

[Suprefan]

11 hours ago, gigpusher said:

There are a lot of reasons I am glad I don't live in America but seeing these ticket prices is fast putting it into the top 5 reasons I am glad I don't live there. 

Fighting the algorithm is half the battle. Upper level seats were $80 before fees.

[John the Moth]

Backed out of buying GNR tickets... $250ish for GA.

[John the Moth]

Prices aside, the worst ticketing dick move for me is the ‘extra date added due to demand’ trick when:

a) it’s obvious the extra date was already locked in before the original date went on sale, and;

b) the extra date is a weekend when the original is a weekday. I’m pretty certain this is just to crank up demand/ensure a sellout on what would be the least favourable date.

Billie Eilish’s agents just pulled this, adding a Friday date in Auckland after the original Thursday.

However... the ultimate dick move was Tool 2020. Adding an extra Saturday night gig after the Friday night original, announced and on sale FORTY FUCKIN MINUTES after the first date sold out.

[dentalplan]

41 minutes ago, John the Moth said:

Prices aside, the worst ticketing dick move for me is the ‘extra date added due to demand’ trick when:

a) it’s obvious the extra date was already locked in before the original date went on sale, and;

b) the extra date is a weekend when the original is a weekday. I’m pretty certain this is just to crank up demand/ensure a sellout on what would be the least favourable date.

Billie Eilish’s agents just pulled this, adding a Friday date in Auckland after the original Thursday.

However... the ultimate dick move was Tool 2020. Adding an extra Saturday night gig after the Friday night original, announced and on sale FORTY FUCKIN MINUTES after the first date sold out.

I don't agree that it’s a dick move. It might be less convenient but people snapping up tickets first are obviously less elastic to the day of the week, given that they bought the ticket.

There are folks who can’t make weeknights work at all so if they put them both on sale at the same time, some people who find it more convenient would just go to the weekend gig and some who can’t go on a weeknight would just not go.

[Quark]

On 10/9/2021 at 11:51 PM, Suprefan said:

A Chili Peppers hometown show is a must

Somehow it's the $5 processing fee I find the most insulting in there. It's obviously the least ridiculous cost on the bill, but it's the absolute final kick. 

[John the Moth]

1 hour ago, dentalplan said:

I don't agree that it’s a dick move. It might be less convenient but people snapping up tickets first are obviously less elastic to the day of the week, given that they bought the ticket.

There are folks who can’t make weeknights work at all so if they put them both on sale at the same time, some people who find it more convenient would just go to the weekend gig and some who can’t go on a weeknight would just not go.

I take your point, but for it to be completely meritorious, you’d have to believe that ticket sellers care about what’s best for the punters.

Maybe they do, I personally doubt it, but that aspect is subjective and not something we’re likely to resolve here.

But the end result is the same, maximum ticket sales.

Say the shows are 2x 15k capacity, 40k people want to attend, split 50:50 between inelastic/elastic.

If the midweek show goes on sale first, it sells out with all inelastic. Then when the weekend show goes on sale, it has a total punter pool of 100% of the punters who didn’t get tickets first time; 25k trying for night 2, guaranteed sellout with a positive PR scramble.

Switch so weekend date is on sale first, it sells out with a 50/50 mix of elastic and inelastic punters. Then when the weeknight gig goes on sale the pool of punters is zero elastic plus the remaining inelastic who didn’t get tickets for the first night, 12.5k, not enough to sell out.

Now I’ll grant you that most tours where ‘extra date’ happens are likely to always have the demand to sell out, but I still think the driving force is maximising of the number of people trying for tickets over trying to make things convenient for the fans. Maybe I’m just an old cynic (ok scratch the maybe 🤔)

Well... that got me grey matter firing at least 🙂

 

 

Edited October 11, 2021 by John the Moth

[charlierc]

On 10/9/2021 at 11:51 PM, Suprefan said:

A Chili Peppers hometown show is a must

Cheapest face value tickets I could find for their New York show was already something like $130-150 (it was same with Rage Against the Machine, who are also in NYC that week), which I thought was both ludicrous enough and a bad sign for the fees they'll want for their UK dates going on sale later this week. But that Ticketmaster Platinum service is fucking outrageous. I'd want the VIP experience of all experiences for that kind of price, but I bet that's not what this is offering.

[maelzoid]

Surely those second nights are only announced once they know the demand is there. Would be terrible to only sell half the tickets to each of two nights, rather than all of them for one night. I truly believe the acts and bookers don't really know the demand for each venue until they start selling.

Sure, they put a provisional booking on a venue, but would release it if they didn't get the demand. And as for the day of the week, I don't think that really figures too much. I'd guess they will choose which date to sell first based on their own logistics of moving the tour to the next city.

[jump]

2 hours ago, John the Moth said:

Prices aside, the worst ticketing dick move for me is the ‘extra date added due to demand’ trick when:

a) it’s obvious the extra date was already locked in before the original date went on sale, and;

b) the extra date is a weekend when the original is a weekday. I’m pretty certain this is just to crank up demand/ensure a sellout on what would be the least favourable date.

Billie Eilish’s agents just pulled this, adding a Friday date in Auckland after the original Thursday.

However... the ultimate dick move was Tool 2020. Adding an extra Saturday night gig after the Friday night original, announced and on sale FORTY FUCKIN MINUTES after the first date sold out.

They do pencil in dates but that's often because they can't gauge the acts popularity to warrant extra dates straight away. Like TOOL are a band who are hard to engage how actually popular they are because they are a big deal but do enough people still care through long periods of inactivity from them and Billie Ellish who overnight become mega popular so you don't know what her limit is or if she will keep growing between now and the gigs.

I remember seeing Elbow on their second night at The 02 gigs they did around the time of The Seldom Seen Kid and they had to close off the upper seating with a giant curtain to hide how poorly it sold. They were white hot at the time so on paper they should have sold them out so maybe the promoters should have seen how the first night sold before adding a second date.

[Suprefan]

9 minutes ago, charlierc said:

Cheapest face value tickets I could find for their New York show was already something like $130-150 (it was same with Rage Against the Machine, who are also in NYC that week), which I thought was both ludicrous enough and a bad sign for the fees they'll want for their UK dates going on sale later this week. But that Ticketmaster Platinum service is fucking outrageous. I'd want the VIP experience of all experiences for that kind of price, but I bet that's not what this is offering.

Platinum is not vip. Ticketmaster clearly explains that but nobody ever bothers to read up on it. I just dreaded this when I was part of a beta test group for dynamic and platinum pricing years ago. 
 

The true crime is that any artist has the power to stop this from being implemented. Its literally a mouse click of a difference and you can clearly see that most acts do not care or are not as involved as they could be when it came to this sort of thing.

[DeanoL]

Yeah I've definitely seen tours where there are gaps for extra shows but those gaps get filled in places where the first show sells out but then not in other cities.

[charlierc]

2 minutes ago, jump said:

I remember seeing Elbow on their second night at The 02 gigs they did around the time of The Seldom Seen Kid and they had to close off the upper seating with a giant curtain to hide how poorly it sold. They were white hot at the time so on paper they should have sold them out so maybe the promoters should have seen how the first night sold before adding a second date.

Sounds similar to one of my experiences. I saw Kasabian in 2011 at London O2 and from what I saw on YouTube, the first night had upper tier all sold out. When I went for night 2, it was not. It had a fair amount of curtained off seating on the upper tier and some other areas did look more sparsely filled. Seem to recall the row in front of me was empty, for one. Somewhat paradoxically that was the night filmed for a live DVD that came out the following summer.

I guess it depends on the act. With some, it will be a guaranteed sell out, while with others, it seems more of a guess.

[John the Moth]

16 minutes ago, maelzoid said:

Surely those second nights are only announced once they know the demand is there. Would be terrible to only sell half the tickets to each of two nights, rather than all of them for one night. I truly believe the acts and bookers don't really know the demand for each venue until they start selling.

Sure, they put a provisional booking on a venue, but would release it if they didn't get the demand. And as for the day of the week, I don't think that really figures too much. I'd guess they will choose which date to sell first based on their own logistics of moving the tour to the next city.

 

10 minutes ago, jump said:

They do pencil in dates but that's often because they can't gauge the acts popularity to warrant extra dates straight away. Like TOOL are a band who are hard to engage how actually popular they are because they are a big deal but do enough people still care through long periods of inactivity from them and Billie Ellish who overnight become mega popular so you don't know what her limit is or if she will keep growing between now and the gigs.

I remember seeing Elbow on their second night at The 02 gigs they did around the time of The Seldom Seen Kid and they had to close off the upper seating with a giant curtain to hide how poorly it sold. They were white hot at the time so on paper they should have sold them out so maybe the promoters should have seen how the first night sold before adding a second date.

There’s extra context which might help understand why I think it’s particularly rough.

I am of course in New Zealand, and when the big overseas acts come here, it’s to 1 or 2 cities usually, rarely 3. Tool and Eilish played / is playing Auckland only. The demand comes from all over the country, so for many, attending gigs means taking 1 or 2 days off work if it’s midweek (flights and hotels too, but of course day of the week is not so relevant).

Most folks try for the first announced date for fomo. Needless to say when Tool’s second date (Saturday) came on sale less than an hour after the first, the ire on social media was palpable.

[incident]

45 minutes ago, jump said:

They do pencil in dates but that's often because they can't gauge the acts popularity to warrant extra dates straight away. Like TOOL are a band who are hard to engage how actually popular they are because they are a big deal but do enough people still care through long periods of inactivity from them and Billie Ellish who overnight become mega popular so you don't know what her limit is or if she will keep growing between now and the gigs.

They can gauge demand wrong with presumed "safe" ticket sellers as well - About 3 or 4 years ago Robbie Williams announced a tour where all the larger cities had their shows on a Friday, with very obvious gaps left for second nights on the Saturday - in the end I think only one of those extra shows actually got added after the first shows struggled to shift tickets.

[Suprefan]

Lets add this to the mix. Holiday radio show which will give the artists performing between 20 - 30 mins of stage time each. This is standard pricing, no platinum or dynamic. Pricing still bad in other sections too. Also, seats are being sold BEHIND the stage and theyre labeled to not include a view of the stage, just a screen to watch for $60. And its done in the name of charity.