Bruce Springsteen - Classic or Dud ?

We just got tickets for Edinburgh via the Live Nation pre-sale, managing to avoid Ticket Master's dynamic pricing horror show. A bit sad that the front standing area is now allocated via a higher ticket price rather than the system of it going to those who arrived early enough to the gigs and was previously managed by the dedicated fans. We went for rear standing this time as the front area was just a bit too painfully expensive.

Live Nation and Ticketmaster being one and the same, of course.

oof

Tampa mid-floor for $4,400 each, anyone? #catchandrelease

“Ticketmaster's Official Platinum seat program enables market-based pricing (adjusting prices according to supply and demand) for live event tickets, similar to how airline tickets and hotel rooms are sold.” pic.twitter.com/8qyanN0OQA

— Backstreets Magazine (@backstreetsmag) July 20, 2022

Supposedly the *cheapest* seats were going for $165.

Holy crap, I thought the Broadway shows were expensive...

It's the Ticketmaster "dynamic pricing" system at work. Fuck that. And frankly fuck Springsteen for allowing it to happen, fuck him double if he can't fix it. At least the Broadway shows were in a tiny venue. These are in soulless arenas.

I have nothing whatsoever to do with the price of tickets. Nothing. Nada. Niente. Bubkis. Dick. https://t.co/NsDJvoLMWu

— 🕉Stevie Van Zandt☮️ (@StevieVanZandt) July 20, 2022

Dud.

Christ, it used to be, “Hey, I know scalping sucks, but as a performer, there’s not a lot I can do about it.” Now it’s, “I don’t have any control over my ticket prices.” Waiting for, “They told us the venue was ours tonight, but looks like an arena football team called dibs. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ “

"It's beyond my control."

Well you know, Springsteen did just sell off his back catalog, now he's got no way to make money so he has to charge these amounts just to get by.

Brings to mind one of David Letterman's Top 10 Names for the Rolling Stones' Tour.

Number 5: The "$140-Million-in-the-Bank-Isn't-Enough" Tour

If he gave a shit - and I'd like to think he does - he would do what the Weeknd did and refund all these tickets and reschedule everything for stadiums. Tickets would still be expensive, he would still get paid, but maybe it would be a fraction more accessible.

Didn't he used to pride himself on affordable tickets? They did tend to be lower than most big shows.

The prices have crept up over the years. I saw him in 2009 and I was surprised that 1) I was able to get a GA ticket easily long after the show went on sale and 2) how it was still an affordable "splurge" for me even though I wasn't making much money. But to my understanding, that kind of faded away sometime around the early/mid '10s. To be fair, I think he's only done arena shows since then, and I went to see him at a stadium show - one in a series of stadium shows - so there were a lot more tickets to sell. It could have been supply and demand at play.

xpost Yes he did. And for all I know the ticket face values are in line with past tours, somewhere between $70 and $150+. This dynamic pricing shit that raises the price in real time to meet/match demand is Ticketmaster's doing, and Springsteen's at fault for going along with it.

He hasn't really done a full stadium tour since BitUSA, though he's done one-offs here and there in ballparks.

And some of those ballparks are stadiums, of course.

TBF, no one has ever accused Ticketmaster of being anything but greedy assholes.

the $900, or whatever they were, tix for springsteen on bway weren't dynamic pricing, but they were the same principle: instead of charging less and letting scalpers buy 'em and mark 'em up, let's just charge what the scalpers were gonna charge in the first place. charge what the market will bear. they were quite open and explicit about that.

also it goes without saying that dynamic pricing, an idea borrowed from the airline industry, is just plain evil. no one should be borrowing ideas from the airline industry.

xpost True, but that theatre holds less than 1000 people. $900 literally got you within spitting distance of him. Arenas hold 10,000 plus, but even the nosebleeds are costing some people close to "Broadway" prices.

My view from Springsteen on Broadway:
https://i.imgur.com/LFf4ahm.jpg

(And no, it was not like this all night, phones were only allowed out for the curtain call.)

(xpost) oh yeah, i agree that sucks.

Is Springsteen a big/powerful enough figure that he could meaningfully take a stand against all the different kinds of horrible practices re. ticket sales and pricing, if he did want to? I'd love to think he can't be happy about ridiculous surge pricing and all the reselling shenanigans and subterfuge that Ticketmaster get up, but obviously I have no idea what he really thinks.

I’m not sure but he’s one of the few who would be a possibility. Doesn’t hurt that Democratic politicians love him.

Is this the practice for every event in these arenas now? Like it's only a decent price when the algorithm can "see" it's not going to sell out at the prices it's charging?

As I understand it, the dynamic pricing model was put in place sometime maybe in late 2018 or something, or more or less right before the pandemic, so there have not been that many stories of it going haywire yet. The first of those was maybe Harry Styles in May, where the same thing happened; tickets were priced up to $200 or so, but the dynamic pricing pumped them as high as $1000, even in places like NYC and Los Angeles where he was playing something like 15 shows each (so in theory plenty of supply).

Doubt that Springsteen can do anything about this that Pearl Jam or Radiohead couldn't do, but Pearl Jam and U2 seem to have at least devised ways to mitigate the mess through their fan clubs. Though looking at Pearl Jam's 9/11 MSG date coming up, the only tickets Ticketmaster shows available are $4500 each for the 100 level, and (fake?) secondary prices on Seatgeek are just as insane. PJ prices are a lot lower in secondary markets like St. Louis, but not cheap. My economics-minded Springsteen fan buddy thinks the system will ultimately work itself out on the secondary market, which is ironic: it used to be tix were priced normally and then inflated by scalpers, now they're priced "dynamically" *above* scalpers and come down (hopefully more than slightly) in the resale community. Regardless, not sure there is any advantage to buying early beyond peace of mind, unless you luck into something approximating face value.

Read a good analysis that really highlighted how corrupt this system is. Ticketmaster makes you rank your choices, which means they *already know* the demand for each show and can prepare accordingly. As a fan put it:

I believe the Verified Fan process was actually used by TM to calculate and allocate demand for tickets. Since TM asked fans to prioritize 5 venues during the Verified Fan process, they knew the demand for each show and then were able to allocate codes in a way that ensured that demand was high in all locations. If you were fortunate to be verified and you had Boston listed first (for example) but demand was too high, TM allocated you a code for another venue.

​By doing this, TM made sure there was high demand for all shows. That may seem logical, but TM also knew the number of seats in each arena. By allocating codes to ensure high demand in each venue, TM was assured of selling out each venue. They controlled the supply and allocated the demand as it suited them regardless of fan's preferences.

The conclusion they come to is that it's less a ticket sale than it is an auction.

We ask ourselves, what could Bruce do? But here's an example of good ol' Crowded House doing the right thing:

pic.twitter.com/YGH9hNany5

— Crowded House (@CrowdedHouseHQ) November 17, 2020

Hey now

Thanks Josh!

I wonder if all the acts mentioned get a cut of the house or are they appearing for a set fee?

The conclusion they come to is that it's less a ticket sale than it is an auction.

I don’t get how indicating interest in particular show(s) also tells Ticketmaster what you’re willing to pay. Do the prices come down, if no one’s buying the thousand dollar seats after a few hours? Or does Ticketmaster just know that a certain percentage of fans will always shell out for those?

I don't think indicating interest shows what you're willing to pay, but per that theory above, it does allow Ticketmaster to gauge (and also control!) demand. So like that example shows, say you want to see him in Boston, a popular city. Then say your second choice is, I dunno, St. Louis. Demand for Boston will be higher (in theory), so the Ticketmaster algorithm is already primed to pump up prices based on interest. But then, at the same time, instead of inviting *everyone* interested in Boston to buy tickets to Boston, it starts sending out invites to second (and third and so on) choices, which in turn pumps up the demand for *those* shows. That is, if Boston is "full" and St. Louis is not, and TM starts sending invites to buy tix to St. Louis, then soon enough St. Louis will be "full" too, which is to say, high demand, which is to say, set up for dynamic pricing the second tickets go on sale.

From reading stories, these tickets really do change in real time, too. Let's say you find a ticket for $200, wait a little too long exploring options in other sections, then return back to those $200 seats. It's quite possible that just in those few seconds the $200 tickets have been repriced as $500 tickets. That's how it seems to be working. So no, TM does not know exactly what you're willing to pay, per se, just that people *are* willing to pay, and they keep pumping up the prices as people (including resellers and scalpers and other gamers of the system) pay whatever it is they are willing to pay.

In theory prices might settle and go down, but that assumes the tickets are all being bought by fans and otherwise honest brokers, not people planning to flip them. Which is ironic, because the higher the price, the *greater* the temptation may be to resell them, depending on how high demand/prices goes. Of course, the same goes for anything lower price once someone realizes they can sell them for 10x the price. And so it goes. It seems like the worst of every world, from a fan perspective.

xtreme capitalism has already ruined network news --> politics --> democracy so that we all (or exactly half of us, or as close to half as their algorithms can estimate) huddle around our tvs hoping they through the "other" side in jail while meanwhile the earth melts. this is a failed system. why not music too? you can't fight it. bruce springsteen is not the avengers.

through --> throw

i saw springsteen for $7.50 in the cw post dome, which is presumably the experience all the people paying $4000 are trying to recreate, and it was super but i'd take the $4000.

Yeah, nothing is worth that much money. Hell, it's cheaper to get a ticket to see him in Europe and pay for a flight and place to stay!

Honestly, what is also being overlooked by some is that Springsteen is 72. It will have been 7 years between tours, and even then, the days of 3 1/2 epics are long gone. His voice isn't what it once was, his guitar playing isn't really what it once was, his eyes often remained glued to a teleprompter, he doesn't tell stories. Are these dealbreakers? Of course not, he's still a great performer *despite* all these things that happen to any performer as they age. He was good on his last tour, and Broadway was almost nothing *but* stories. But Bruce in 2023 is not worth $4000. Or $400, really. No one is, unless you have rich person rock star seats.

Or good connections. I've been extremely catching a few high-demand events simply because I knew someone who was a client or an employee for a company that owned a suite at a stadium or ballpark.

*extremely lucky

probably goes without saying, but I didn't have to pay for those shows, I was just invited along as a guest.

I dunno if this’ll happen with Bruce, but on the recent Stones and Who tours decent tickets could be found for under $100 (sometimes way under) on Stubhub days (and sometimes weeks) before the shows.

But what the fuck with Bruce charging $400 face value? I’m not saying he could afford to rent every tour venue for the night, charge $50 a ticket, and come away from the tour with a massive loss, but…he probably could, and still be left with seven figures in the bank.

(Of course, I know even an artist as big as Springsteen can’t just rent out Dipshit Loans & Yogurt Arena for a night; I’m sure all those venues are shackled to LiveBastard contracts or something.)

https://variety.com/2022/music/news/bruce-springteen-ticketmaster-ticket-prices-rise-thousands-dynamic-pricing-1235321657/

Yet it wasn’t a downer day for all Springsteen fans. Some of those who made their way through the queue when the doors opened, and before prices skyrocketed, were pleased with the initial ticket costs. The original base price for the tickets was reported to be a not-so-out-of-line $299-399 for floor seats and a reasonable $60 for the most distant sections; indeed, some satisfied fans who purchased upper-level seats early in the day reported being able to get out the door for less than $100, even including fees.

So what percentage of the seats are these dynamically-priced "Platinum Tickets"?

(That’s an amount that included $3,819 in face value plus $569.50 in fees.)

Adding insult to injury, they don't even cap their service fees. Like there's $570 worth of processing for an electronic ticket sale.

xp
I got the impression they all were, but if you happened to buy right when they went on sale the algorithm hadn't had time to gauge the demand.

How much demand is there for Crowded House tickets?

Well, it's hard to say in the States, but they are playing a 3600 seat venue here. If anything, dynamic pricing would be even more destructive for any band in a small venue, where capacity is innately limited.

xxp That’s kind of what I thought too… but does that mean every seat in the house is a “platinum ticket”? Or just those being sold through this specific presale? (Has the word “platinum” lost all meaning??)

OKAY ASSHOLES

I'm blasting Tunnel of Love. Shut up.

Solid record.

Best album, probably. It's ironic that as good as Springsteen is, "Tunnel" and "Nebraska," his two outliers, may be his best.

Anyway, "platinum ticket" is apparently whatever TM wants to call platinum tickets. As the Variety piece writes, they "may be placed anywhere in the arena, from the front section to the back rows."

"Darkness" for the trifecta.