(For reference, the last time I had seen them, in 1983, the tickets cost $12.50, which at the time I also thought was a lot!)
Well much has changed since then. Scalping has become essentially legal, bands have figured out they can charge a lot more, and concerts have switched from ways to promote your new album to the only way to make money (because everyone is stealing your album for free online.)
Bottom line, tickets are way more expensive, even adjusting for inflation.
I saw Genesis again in 2007. Price for most of the tickets was $250.
Now enter the Rolling Stones. They have seen tickets scalped on Stubhub and ebay for figures in the thousands.
Well, why not get in on the act?
So the tickets for the Stones tour are:
- $250 for the worst seats
- $350 for slightly worse seats
- $600 for all other seats. This means both superb seats and mediocre seats.
While some high rollers might spring for $600 seats in the front row, or even the front section, nobody is going to pay that much for seats that are merely "decent."
The result is that the world's greatest (living) rock band (arguably) is having to go begging for seats:
- There are tons of free tickets being given away on radio to the shows.
- A number of tickets were released at $85, like a special fire sale. (I actually got a pair of these, which sold out instantly. The catch is you don't know where the seats will be, you can't resell them, you can only buy two, and you have to show your ID and credit card at the door.)
- They will most likely sell all the remaining overpriced seats for $85 at the door in this same fashion.
Just look at the Staples Center show, which is next week. If you go to buy tickets right now, this is what you will find:
The colored sections still have tickets. The gray ones don't. You can see the nosebleeds are all gone, as are the primo seats. But there are a LOT of those $600 seats left on the floor and the loge.
Most bands of this stature would sell out Staples in a manner of minutes.....if tickets were say $150 or whatnot. Depeche Mode just sold out 4 nights at Staples just that way.
How can the Rolling Stones be playing a show next week and there are still tickets?
Anyway it will be interesting to see how full the Anaheim show is. That is the one I am attending tomorrow.
I also wonder both where the $85 tickets will be, and of course how good the Stones are.
In my opinion, they really blew it. They have plenty of money - they could have done what might be their final tour playing to big stadiums of people at a low cost - cementing their legacy. Play 4 nights at the Coliseum and charge $50. Now you look like heroes serving the common man (whether it's true or not.)
Or they could have done what U2 and Springsteen do, which is keep the tickets low, and in U2's case, the area in front of the stage is only for people who camp out over night to stand there, and those tickets are $50.
The Stones instead look greedy and foolish. And everyone attending will be thinking, "is this show really worth what we paid?"
But of course I will still attend.
