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Posted on 10/23/2007 5:33:39 AM PDT by suspects
There are people paying $250 this week for Hannah Montana concert tickets with a face value of 25 bucks. For those of you not blessed with 13-year-old daughters who watch the Disney Channel, Hannah Montana is a fictional pop star played by the daughter of Billy Ray Cyrus - also known as the Achy-Breaky Heart guy.
Anyone who’d pay 10 times face value for tickets to watch a cable TV actress sing bad pop music for pre-teens is a dope who shouldn’t have access to a checkbook without adult supervision.
On the other hand, there are people prepared to pay $500 to sit in the worst seats at Fenway Park [map] tomorrow night to watch a game they could see on HDTV for free. That person can be reached in care of this column. ASAP.
No questions asked.
How much is a ticket worth? Like everything else in life, it’s worth what a willing buyer will pay for it. Regardless of whether the state of Massachusetts likes it.
This is why so-called ticket scalping is illegal. The Legislature sees happy buyers doing business with contented sellers and concludes that something terrible must be happening:
“All these people, happily doing business and making money without government supervision? Where the hell do they think they are - New Hampshire?”
This is why the term “scalping” is so ludicrous. When I pay you $200 for Springsteen tickets, I’m getting something I want more than I want the 200 bucks. You’re getting something you want more than the tickets - my money. Who’s getting “scalped” here?
Scalping only makes sense if I’m being forced to pay for something I don’t want - say, like Deval Patrick’s drapes. But nobody’s putting the governor behind bars. Yet.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.bostonherald.com ...
Some years ago , Alan Jackson appeared in Las Vegas. My wife wanted to see the concert. Upon arrival at the ticket office, I sped-read the prices and asked her if we were going to sit in the $120, $130 or $140 section. She wisely decide she'd watch CMT---
I thought the economy was in shambles? How are parents paying for these tickets? I keep reading stories in the MSM about kids with no insurance, not being able to educate the kids, schools falling apart, but this story is about parents paying $250 for their children to be entertained?
***
Years ago, I worked with this woman — divorced with two children — who was always whining about money — ex-husband wouldn’t pay support (she claimed), always broke, etc. etc. This was when the Cabbage Patch Kids were all the rage. This woman stood in line somewhere and paid a hundred bucks or so for this Cabbage Patch Kid for her daughter. When I suggested to her that perhaps if she would refrain from buying an ugly doll for her child at an inflated price, she might actually have money for all those necessities that she whined about, she pitched a fit. I wouldn’t know, she said, because I don’t have children. I told her that true, I don’t have children, but I know how I was raised. My parents did the best they could for my brother and me — we always had the basic necessities, plus more than enough toys and what not — but if they didn’t have the money for some toy or game we wanted, we didn’t get it. That simple. But I guess that’s not how it’s done now. People will go into bankruptcy to buy their kids everything they “need.”
Their tastes run more towards comedian Brian Regan, who we are going to see in December at $39.50 a head.
Take luck...
If concerts are primarily promotional, then it can be counterproductive to have your customers feel they are priced out of the product. If this weren’t the case the tickets would be getting sold for much higher prices to begin with.
The true problem is that we now have a market of 300 million, where the demand for live performances is often far in excess of realistic availability. But up to the point where that occurs, doing more performances in one location would be the answer for the performer/promoter.
They could also sell tickets at the entrances only (first come first serve), but that too would likely also have a negative effect.
The true value is in the "promotion", which is killed when the customer feels the product is too elitist for them.
There are ways you can get tickets to concerts.
The first is join your local radio station’s “clubs” so have access to PRESALE tickets through Ticketmaster.
The second is to join the groups/bands fan club. It may cost $25/year but it will also give you access to “presale” tickets.
The third is purchasing tickets for a Boston show at the ticketmaster location in some other city where there will not be a line on that date potentially.
These may still not get you tickets to Buffett or Springsteen but may work for most other acts.
The ticket agents in Toronto aren’t as clean as you’d like to believe but they also aren’t really the main part of the probelm. Their role is mostly just to efficiently distribute the tickets and provide a third party accounting for the ticket sales. It’s the promoters that have the most power as they are the ones who can get around the block purchase limits, they are actually the ones that set them in the first place since it is usually part of the performance contract.
If you really want to see the scalping industry in action, go down to a concert club like the Guvernment before a concert and observe the street action. The promoter at the club usually has a couple of scalpers working the crowd on sold out shows. They will also actually strong arm anyone else trying to scalp on “their” turf.
Actually, it’s a bit more insidious than just paying people to stand in line. That’s the old way.
The new way involves software that apparently lets the ticket brokers (read: scalpers) to cut in line and buy hundreds of tickets, shoving the ordinary user to the back of the line. Very not cool. There is a court case going on currently about this.
http://www.ajc.com/news/content/news/stories/2007/10/15/Ticketmaster.html
Now, for me, this is not an issue. My tastes don’t tend to track with the trends (LOL), so the brokers don’t mess with me too much. The last show I attended was Friday night, at the firehall in Arcadia MD, Del McCoury Band with David Grisman as a special guest.
My own episode was long before the era of online sales- we had to do it manually. We also had to walk ten miles to the ticket office, in the snow, uphill both ways...
My favorite high-priced ticket story involves no tickets at all:
Two fellows from my town went to Tempe to watch the Buckeyes play in the 2003 national championship. They went expecting to buy tickets, but when they got there, the cheapest price they could find was $1200 and up.
Unwilling to spend this, on game day, they walked up to the gate and told the gate agent, “We’re getting in. You just have to tell us how much it’ll cost us.”
$800 a person later, the gate agent got in.
My favorite high-priced ticket story involves no tickets at all:
Two fellows from my town went to Tempe to watch the Buckeyes play in the 2003 national championship. They went expecting to buy tickets, but when they got there, the cheapest price they could find was $1200 and up.
Unwilling to spend this, on game day, they walked up to the gate and told the gate agent, “We’re getting in. You just have to tell us how much it’ll cost us.”
$800 a person later, the gate agent let them in.
Even worse, I understand that they have special programs that automatically log in and snatch up all the tickets before regular customers can buy them.
Our daughter loves the show (HM), and having watched it with her, I think it is wholesome fun. Not suggestive, crass, or political in any way.
Although we were disappointed to tell her we were unable to get tickets to an upcoming concert, there is no way that we'll pay exhorbitant scalpers' fees, just to attend. In the long run, having that mindset will help cut down on the high prices of tickets to these shows.
All Hannah Montana fans come from "the other America!" LOL!
The undercover cop we approached let us go with a warning and followed us to the door. The game was sold out. I still don't know what the problem was. The team sold out for years so they had their sales, but we had to eat the tickets.
That’s actually her singing voice, grouch.
The prices aren't "jacked up" by the seller. They are jacked up by the buyer...to what ever level they are willing to pay.
I realize that may infringe with some folks inalienable right to Hannah Montana tickets, but it really is the best way.
They digitize her voice, sweetie
Same story here with a family friend. The game she played was to spend her money on frivolous stuff for her kids, then cry to friends and the church that she didn't have money for rent or groceries. It took her 20 years to run out of friends to play. She was telling the truth, she really didn't have any money to buy groceries.
Imagine if she had spent here money wisely and then whined about not being able to afford Cabbage Patch dolls. She wouldn't get the money. She *might* have some friends left, though.
Politicians do the same. Cut their budget and they will continue to spend on frivolous stuff and attempt to cut important services (fire or police or roads, maybe).
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