Should PJ consider a "Beat the Bots" box office only pre-sale strategy like the Foos?

Given2Fly-Fish

So for the FF North American tour, they have established box office only pre-sale (old school) at the venue - http://consequenceofsound.net/2014/11/foo-fighters-announce-north-american-stadium-tour/ to beat on-line scalper bots. I like this for a few reasons - give hometown fans a better chance to see a show in their backyard and help reduce scalper access to tickets. 10C could also continue, I believe, to have the lottery as well (since pre-sale is through the box office). Love to hear everyone's thoughts on this as I think it is a cool idea...

Mercury

How about just paperless? This gimmick doesn't take into account fans who wish to travel to another city or that scalpers are perfectly capable of standing in a line.

cmarch007

Personally, I love the idea. I'll be waiting in line for the Noblesville show tickets on Saturday. It's great that the Foo's are looking out for the fans to keep scalpers away. I like the old school feel of having to physically get up and get tickets, rather than hope the computer allows you in to buy them. I'm just hoping that if I get there in line, they don't pull a lottery to determine the order of who gets to purchase first. I'm hoping it is first come, first serve...

Zod

I'm against it. Pearl Jam never plays the town I live in. I have to travel by car/ferry to Vancouver or Seattle to see them play (3.5 hours to vancouver, 5 to Seattle).

Pearl Jam tours are so small your screwing the majority of the fans in the same fashion. There's way more places PJ doesn't play than they do play. If you have to be in the city to buy the tickets, a bunch of 10c fans will never get to go.

Of course it'll never happen because if you take out tickets whats the point of a 10c membership? Could you imagine how much revenue the 10c would lose if everyone who lived in places PJ doesn't tour dropped their memberships.. lol.

lolobugg

Not for PJ. This would piss off the majority of 10club members.
As for the foos.... good luck with it. Don't see the benefit for GA shows though.
I would like to see them in ATL but I can't find any info about ticket prices, support act, etc.
Still can't believe these guys are big enough to play stadiums and sell tix a year in advance.
last time I saw them was at the Tabernacle in Atlanta.

Ledbetterman10

Hate this idea.

cmarch007

Zod said:

I'm against it. Pearl Jam never plays the town I live in. I have to travel by car/ferry to Vancouver or Seattle to see them play (3.5 hours to vancouver, 5 to Seattle).

Pearl Jam tours are so small your screwing the majority of the fans in the same fashion. There's way more places PJ doesn't play than they do play. If you have to be in the city to buy the tickets, a bunch of 10c fans will never get to go.

Of course it'll never happen because if you take out tickets whats the point of a 10c membership? Could you imagine how much revenue the 10c would lose if everyone who lived in places PJ doesn't tour dropped their memberships.. lol.

You make a great point. I'm assuming that the amount of Foo Fighter tickets that will be available will be somewhat limited. I agree on the Pearl Jam not playing "my town" piece a lot. We've traveled a good amount to see them and the lottery is basically one of the best reasons we've been able to do so.

It would be cool if 10c held 100 pairs of tickets in this format so the local fans could purchase seats up close in their own town and then still offer the remaining 10c seats for the lottery. This way you could have local fans represent the first few rows and still have 10c members who travel get good seats.

pjsteelerfan

It would be like the Merch trucks but 1,000,000% worse.

Given2Fly-Fish

If it is a pre-sale at the box office, wouldn't that come from general public tickets and be seperate from the 10C allotment or am I missing something?

benjs

The Foo Fighters seem to forget the fact that scalpers were around before Ticketmaster, because scalpers, just like fans, are also able to wait in line for tickets. If they feel there'll be money to be made, you can bet your ass these "Beat The Bots" line-ups will be filled with scalpers.

lolobugg

I wonder how many homeless people will be in line at Centennial Park? They are already there so I can see scalpers paying them to stand in line. I still don't know if it will matter at a GA event. I guess it depends on capacity.

buck502000

might be cool if you could only get inline with an active 10c membership

jason_94

It's an ok idea. I also agree with several of the points talked about above both for and against the idea.

I think one thing that ticket buyers have to take into consideration is what tickets are being offered.

I'm sure there are only certain blocks of tickets or specific tickets available at the presale. There are probably several tickets that will be available through fan club, internet presale, public on sale, & tickets made available to brokers that are located within the same area up front that the box office presale ones are.

Ok, when I said several I didn't mean a large quantity. I just think if you were to look at a seating chart and look at the best seats you would see tickets set aside for box office & internet presale, and brokers all sprinkled together.

Just my opinion.

Zod

benjs said:

The Foo Fighters seem to forget the fact that scalpers were around before Ticketmaster, because scalpers, just like fans, are also able to wait in line for tickets. If they feel there'll be money to be made, you can bet your ass these "Beat The Bots" line-ups will be filled with scalpers.

Yah scalping didn't start with the internet.... Scalpers used to pay people to stand in line to get tickets. I was also under the impression that scalpers get many of their tickets directly from ticketmaster now. IE Ticketmaster sells blocks of tickets directly to scalpers....

I'm actually a bit choked because I want to see the Foo Fighters in Vancouver (or maybe the Gorge). I hope they leave decent tickets for the other presales/regular sale as it's pretty much impossible for me to get to the Gorge or GM Place box office to grab tickets :(

Zod

pjsteelerfan said:

It would be like the Merch trucks but 1,000,000% worse.

Yah I think PJ fan's are a little more diehard than Foo Fighter's fans. I imagine the lineup would outpace the # of tickets available... the lineup would be chaos.

on2legs

Bad idea.

manitouman

That's a hell of a lineup for July 4th! I like the idea that it's just a presale. You'll never stop scalping just like you'll never stop prostitution. It's business. However, it is great for hometown fans to get a shot at being close to the band on their home turf. I may be in the minority here but it irritates the hell out of me these people who HAVE to be in feont for every freaking show. And I've personally seen some of the worst treatment of others to aquire those spots.

I don't know, to each their own. But I like the suggestion someone made about setting 100 or so tickets aside for home town fan club members. Maybe when they sell tickets there would be an option to select a "home venue" and that would be the only show you get in the lottery for up close tickets. All other shows you want to attend would be at the mercy of the regular, as usual lottery system.

pjsteelerfan

manitouman said:

That's a hell of a lineup for July 4th! I like the idea that it's just a presale. You'll never stop scalping just like you'll never stop prostitution. It's business. However, it is great for hometown fans to get a shot at being close to the band on their home turf. I may be in the minority here but it irritates the hell out of me these people who HAVE to be in feont for every freaking show. And I've personally seen some of the worst treatment of others to aquire those spots.

I don't know, to each their own. But I like the suggestion someone made about setting 100 or so tickets aside for home town fan club members. Maybe when they sell tickets there would be an option to select a "home venue" and that would be the only show you get in the lottery for up close tickets. All other shows you want to attend would be at the mercy of the regular, as usual lottery system.

The "Home venue" only works when touring the whole country. Foo's are more or less doing that. PJ does not.

Zod

I think there would be a helluva lot more than 100 hometown people wanting tickets. Could you imagine the size of the line up for a meager 100 tickets.... The amount of dissapointed people would completely eclipse the 50 people who scored a pair of tickets.

With Pearl Jam you have the issue that they're tours are small, and there's a lot of places they never play. If you make the decision to restrict tickets to town there are in, then you end up alienating a lot of fans.

I think the lottery system mostly works. GA tickets are pretty hard to get. If you choose a show for GA as #1 and another show as GA as choice #2, you're most likely not getting GA for the second show (unless it's some show that insanely low ticket demand). Thus picking out the show you want to see the most as your top pick does allow people to pick the show closest to them and priortizes tickets for those people.

There's a few downsides to it (at least in 2013, not sure about 2014).

1) There's no seniority with GA which means people can lure in friends/family to buy $20 memberships to increase the odds of scoring GA tickets. I like that it's not by senoirity as no one really gains much senority, so newer members would never get to be upfront on the old system. If they did one draw per show and randomly gave out the GA's, I think it would help stop the sign up everyone you know for a 10c membership issue.

2) On the 2013 tour they treated the two N.A. legs as seperate tours, which means people got two #1 choices for the N.A. tour. This mean people from opposite coasts could go to the opposite tour and trump people living closer to the shows for tickets. I think it would of been better served as one giant tour to give people a better shot at tickets for the show closest to them.

Conclusion: Due to PJ's tour's being small I don't think you can restrict access to giving tickets to people who living in the location of the show. There are way more PJ fans living in places that PJ doesn't tour than where they do tour, so restricting tickets shafts more people than it helps.

As I mentioned above. If people can't travel for shows because the 10c restricts tickets, then 10c loses a lot of members. So it's never going to happen anyways

my2hands

More lines?

No thanks

2-feign-reluctance

There are days I feel like beating a bot

demetrios

Zod said:

I'm against it. Pearl Jam never plays the town I live in.

Same here. I live on the dark side of Halifax. Pearl Jam has only played 3 show's here in Eastern Canada. 1 in Halifax, Nova Scotia & 2 in St.John's, Newfoundland. 3 show's in 24 years in Atlantic Canada. Traveling outside the Atlantic to see Pearl Jam is the only way I can see my band work.

Yeah, I'm totally against this ticket strategy.

But if 10club put a rule that old school loyalty paying 10club members between 1x - 170xxx will totally be guarantee a ticket to any city / show of their choice no matter what if they follow these footsteps of the FF, sure, I'm in.

FrankieG

I feel like this would be going back to the F5 days where you need to invest 5+ hours in order to get good seats. (Except you would be waiting in line on a Saturday in the weather instead of at a desk..)

If they had this type of presale for a show near me, i would definitely arrange to get there suuper early, probably the night before... But the odds are in my favor because I can relatively easily get to a box office anywhere from DC to NY. The smaller a tour is, the more regional draw a show has, which I think would make this idea a nightmare.

The 10club membership (with the exception of GA) is preventing scalping. I would want to go ticketless/immediate entry upon pickup of tickets before doing a 'beat the bots' thing.

Mercury

my2hands said:

More lines?

No thanks

THIS.

Suziemay

I genuinely appreciate that the Foos are trying something in the hopes of helping out fans. However, I'm not sure it solves much of anything. As others have said, scalpers will be in line with their buddies. They were in line at Key Arena last year waiting for ticket drops just like the rest of us. Wrigley too.

Only thing I can think of is using unique presale codes the way some other bands do. And I do like the idea of hometown advantage, so maybe a code that's only good for hometown shows a day before tickets are available to the rest of 10c? Then if there's any left, another code will be emailed out that can be used for any shows. Day of show will call only or paperless tickets (although I do like my ticket stubs!). Maybe they can use TicketWeb or BrownPaperTickets or something, but I wouldn't be opposed to TM either.

Already feeling exhausted just thinking of attempting to get tickets for the next tour, whenever that will be!

ldent42

I will say I like this idea, but IN TANDEM with 10c lottery.
Ticketmaster tends to have several presales, like for Amex or Citi card members, or if you buy a CD and get a code, and THEN the general sale.
So if PJ did 10c lottery, on site box office sale, then general sale (ticketmaster) I think it could be a good thing. No, it wouldn't stop scalpers. Yes, it disadvantages people who live in areas that do not get shows in the sense that they can't go line up at the venue box office, but as long as the 10c lottery happens first I'd argue that the benefit to those who CAN go wait in line outweighs that disadvantage, since the lottery won't change and the general sale will still happen.

To my knowledge the Foos don't have a 10c lottery-esque method of getting fan club members tickets prior to the ticketmaster sale, so this is one way for them to go about doing that early access thing. FWIW, without starting a class war argument, I'd like to mention that those of us (including myself) who travel for PJ shows have the privilege to do that. So doing an in person only presale is another way of giving a leg up to fans who aren't so fortunate, who have to compete with traveling fans in the lottery, as well as scalpers, traveling fans, and "casuals" in the general sale.

And no, I will not be waiting on line at Citifield on Saturday. I will try to get tickets in the general sale cuz Foos put on a good show.

Zod

Suziemay said:

Only thing I can think of is using unique presale codes the way some other bands do. And I do like the idea of hometown advantage, so maybe a code that's only good for hometown shows a day before tickets are available to the rest of 10c? Then if there's any left, another code will be emailed out that can be used for any shows. Day of show will call only or paperless tickets (although I do like my ticket stubs!). Maybe they can use TicketWeb or BrownPaperTickets or something, but I wouldn't be opposed to TM either.

I like the idea of unique codes. PJ used them for the 2011 Canadian Tour. That was the presale that broke the website and the last of the F5 sales. PJ used unique codes on TM as a last minute measure to sell the 10c tickets on that tour.. it worked pretty good.

I'm still against hometown advantage. It's a big F.U. to all the fans that live outside of the places PJ tours. I think there are more 10c members that live in places PJ doesn't tour than 10c members in cities they do tour. I'm against any idea that increases the odds for one segment of 10c'ers to get tickets at the expense of all the other 10c'ers. If you read peoples ideas it's often about ways they can change the system so it increases the odds they get tickets at the expense of other people. In this case giving a hometown advantage to increase the odds of getting tickets for people in that city, but preventing anyone who doesn't live near a touring city from getting any tickets. It doesn't feel right to me when the idea involves making the system work better for me by making it worse for other people. This is why ideas like "Make sure everyone under member #170000" gets tickets first don't jive with me. It would benefit me immensely, but it's a big F.U. to anyone who joined the 10c in the 21st century.

It's pretty obvious the band realizes this by giving you lotto preferences so you can choose the show that's easiest for you to get to (or the one you want to see the most). If the closest show to you is 500 miles away, then you can still put in your preference for that show. I think on a basic level the current lottery handles the geography issues rather well. It give's everyone a shot at picking a show as the one they want to see, which makes it inclusive for all the fans that live in places PJ doesn't play. There's a few tweaks they could do to the lotto system, but the over all concept seems fair and equitable to me.

ckravitz

So if the tickets can be offered at the venue instead of, say TicketMasters website, why can't more tickets be made available to fan club websites?. What I am saying is if TM (or whoever) is willing to allow venue only physical sales, it means they are giving control of the sale over to the venue. If that is the case (and I'm guessing there is more to this than we realize) then why can't TM release more tickets to be sold via fan club websites? Seems odd.

jwhjr17

Here's the rules for the St. Paul show in person box office sale. Seems pretty organized to me:

Tickets for the August 22, 2015, Foo Fighters concert will go on sale this Saturday, November 22 at 10 a.m. in person only at the Xcel Energy Center Box Office.

Numbered wristbands will be distributed at Gate 1 of Xcel Energy Center beginning at 7 a.m. Saturday and continuing until 3 p.m. or until wristbands run out. Absolutely no camping overnight or lining up for wristband prior to 7 a.m. will be permitted. Receiving a wristband guarantees the opportunity to purchase tickets to the show. Prices and locations subject to availability.

After receiving a wristband, fans will be directed to form a line. Fans must stay in line as leaving the line will forfeit their position. Fans may not save a place in line for other fans and wristbands are non-transferable. Fans must have a wristband to purchase tickets. There is a ticket limit of two (2) tickets per wristband, no exceptions.

lolobugg

jwhjr17 said:

Here's the rules for the St. Paul show in person box office sale. Seems pretty organized to me:

Tickets for the August 22, 2015, Foo Fighters concert will go on sale this Saturday, November 22 at 10 a.m. in person only at the Xcel Energy Center Box Office.

Numbered wristbands will be distributed at Gate 1 of Xcel Energy Center beginning at 7 a.m. Saturday and continuing until 3 p.m. or until wristbands run out. Absolutely no camping overnight or lining up for wristband prior to 7 a.m. will be permitted. Receiving a wristband guarantees the opportunity to purchase tickets to the show. Prices and locations subject to availability.

After receiving a wristband, fans will be directed to form a line. Fans must stay in line as leaving the line will forfeit their position. Fans may not save a place in line for other fans and wristbands are non-transferable. Fans must have a wristband to purchase tickets. There is a ticket limit of two (2) tickets per wristband, no exceptions.

good luck with that one

Amongst the Ani

^^^^ This seems insane to me. You can't line up early so what happens right at 7am when the box office is ready to start the process. If PJ tried this they would probably get banned from playing in that city ever again as the mayhem that would ensue right at 7am would need the national guard called in to calm it down. I assume FF is thinking since it is GA who cares if you are 1st or 201st as long as tickets are available. For FF that is probably the case in most cities. With PJ though the demand would far outweigh the tickets available. Old videos of people getting trampled on black friday would be nothing compared to what would happen as soon as wrist bands started getting handed out at 7am with no line or structure up until that point. PJ has it right for their fan base who travels to the few shows a year they play with the system they are using. Keep the current system