Ticket prices. This is not for you (the fans).

Eddieredder

The answer is all of the above. Its not just one entity. Its ALL. Can the band take less? Do they sign off on the deal? The answer is yes. Is TM a factor? Absolutely. 

But why should they? Nobody knows how much they make, and its really none of our business. I'm positive they could make a lot more. That is for sure. 40 tour dates. Should they cut it down to $40k a piece? $100k each? A million each? Or do they deserve $40 mm each? 

At the end of the day it just becomes a model/formula. They need to make X amount of money to pay the band, the promoter, the venue etc. Everything gets backed out from that number. Couldn't ticketmaster and the venue and the promoter take less too? The answer is also yes, but they don't have too. They have the leverage. 

So then it comes back to the band. And just like we all take pay cuts at our jobs for the good of the company and other employees and customers, they could absolutely do the same. Oh wait, none of us do that. But we should expect others too? It sure is easy to spend and judge other peoples finances. 

SHZA

Lerxst1992 said:

SHZA said:

BudT said:

SHZA said:

BudT said:

To some people the band can't do anything wrong. PJ Premium is horseshit but I just bought a pair for almost $1,3000 and they are above 100 level. I know I don't have to pay it, but otherwise I'm way up top for almost as much money or I don't go. 
$1,300 for a pair of tickets that are worse than I would get with my 10c #.  25 years in the club for them to gouge me with the equivalent of scalped tickets, tickets that used to be fan club tickets every tour. I'm probably checking out after this tour but I needed to finally hit my 50th show. There aren't enough tickets, but there really aren't enough for the 10c sale when they save those seats pulled out to be legally scalped to their fans. Tell me I'm an asshole for paying that much but they gave me no choice.

Your choice was to wait and see how the market adjusts in the six months until the show. There will be other opportunities for tickets. 

All your comments are telling people it's their fault and this is all normal. Is this Tim from 10c burner account?

I don't know who that is. If you bought $1,300 tickets, that was a choice you made. No one forced you. Sadly, it is normal for ticket prices to be inflated initially and for ticketmaster to create an artificial sense of scarcity to induce people to overpay. These are standard ticketmaster sales tactics. Prices often (not always) decline after the initial sale.  

Hey I love reading your comments over the years and your optimism helped me put a hold on a Baltimore hotel hopin that a f2f will open up there, or a premium for under $300. But I do not believe this f2f strategy works for NE indoor shows. Yet I still have that hotel hold!!

As I’ve been typing alot the last day, we need to change the narrative, it’s not TM that drives up prices, it’s the specific PJ policies that drive prices higher than any other act that I can find besides Taylor.  Their policies limit supply and expand demand, which  skyrocket broker prices, then they use that data to skyrocket PJPremium prices. 

It will be interesting to see if the "F2F strategy" works for the NE indoor shows (as a Maryland native, I'd call Baltimore mid-atlantic but I'm assuming we're talking about MSG, Phiily, and B'more). In 2020 I had some nice lower-level F2F scores for Baltimore even though it was the only east coast show available on F2F (MSG was not on the F2F platform at the time). That was before PJ had embraced the premium model but it will invariably be the case that some members cannot attend and will put up their seats on F2F. I was skeptical that the F2F strategy would work for Chicago last year given the option to sell on stubhub for profit but quite a few people here scored GA and other prime seats. MSG is on another level so it will be interesting to see how it plays out. Last year for the Cure shows at MSG I thought it would be difficult to find anything good for face but it really wasn't. The Cure played three nights instead of two and did not have dynamic pricing, and I think they intentionally held back standard tickets that they would release periodically and quite a few on show day, possibly to thwart scalpers. On show day there were many face value standard tickets available in good lower bowl sections. Friends of mine scored front row on the floor just by checking for standard drops. So I'm remaining optimistic for now. 

PJ's policies play a role but so does the standard TM playbook. I see a lot of shows with sky high prices. It's even more pronounced with baby boomer era acts. The first few rows for the Eagles, Billy Joel, etc. are usually $2k. A couple of weeks ago I bought front row Eagles tickets on show day on stubhub for $350 apiece. Once they were transferred to my TM account I clicked the sell button out of curiosity and the minimum price it would let me list them was $1,750 apiece. I take it that was the original sale price. 

Eddieredder

efroten2 said:

Eddieredder said:

KJ228171 said:

efroten2 said:

bootleg said:

My thought is there was likely some negotiation that had to take place to be able to get as many fanclub tickets as possible.  Ticketmaster has been trying to wrestle back fan club allotments for the past 20 years.  Almost all of the venues are in business with Ticketmaster so you can just say give us every seat or we’ll play somewhere else.  It didn’t work out great when they tried that on the No Code tour.  So they have to negotiate.  TM prob says we will give you this many fan club tix but we want 10% to be PJ premium and so they sign off on it.  By all accounts it seems like a ton of the best tix are still going to fan club members.

Now the standard pricing I think could use a little work.  Who knows what goes into determining the price but I think they could alleviate some of the issues by having more pricing tiers.  A GA ticket should cost more than one on the back of the floor or lower bowl.  An upper deck ticket should cost less.  So split that into 4 or more tiers.  Make GA 250 a ticket, Front lowers 200, back lowers 150, upper deck 100 etc… however the math ends up working out.  Let people pick which levels they are comfortable paying up to and whatever level you end up getting in the lotto that’s what you pay.  I think a lot of people didn’t pick P2 as an option in the drawing because either 1 they didn’t want to pay almost the same price for an upper deck ticket as a GA ticket or 2 because they just assumed they would find a better ticket in the regular or fan to fan sale and it could become difficult to offload a P2 ticket if the demand wasn’t high enough because you can’t sell for a loss.  F2F is a nice option to have but should also be able to let people sell for less than what they paid if the demand for their show isn’t as high as others.

I've often wondered if they have to do some sort of deal with TM in order secure enough fanclub seats per show. Does any other band have a similar fanclub structure to PJ?

And I totally agree they should start staggering the prices based on seat location. It shouldn't be almost $200 for upper desk AND up front.

U2, GnR, and Iron Maiden to name a few. Rage Against the Machine doesn't have a fan club but did everything they could to keep the vast majority of the prices down even if it meant they had to let a small percent go dynamic pricing.

GNR

https://www.gunsnroses.com/subscribe

U2

https://www.u2.com/subscribe

Iron Maiden

https://merch.ironmaiden.com/products/fan-club

Are there any other bands that seat their fanclub members based on seniority?

I don't think so

Eddieredder

AA295481 said:

I drew a line in 2016, when tickets were $85 and would not pay a dime over, I never in a millon years thought that 8 years later, they would be over $200 a ticket

I never thought I'd pay more than $5 for a McDonalds meal. But here we are. $12-13 the last time I went. It was $3.24 in 91. 

BudT

100 Pacer said:

BudT said:

Tickets that are good and reasonably priced aren't going to start appearing as the show gets closer. If you've gone to any shows the last few tours, in a high demand market you know that. It's not going to happen.

It's happened. It happened in 2022, even at MSG day of, and it happened in 2023.

I was in 200 level at MSG last tour. I refreshed TM through the day. There weren't any good tickets sitting there to snatch for a decent price. I've gone to enough shows and scrambled to know there's people more rabid than me going after and hanging onto tickets because they want to go. 

Don't tell me how the premium pricing works. 

I don't care how it works. I care that those were potential 10c Tix and usually were in the past. Now the band in collusion with TM scalps those tickets to their fans.
I'm here to complain because there's nowhere else management will see it. 
Ideal scenario:
-put GA out there for any 10c member to enter.
-P1 & P2 is all seniority based. 
-They don't try to scalp Tix to their fans that they should've offered in the first place.

JimmyV

Eddieredder said:

AA295481 said:

I drew a line in 2016, when tickets were $85 and would not pay a dime over, I never in a millon years thought that 8 years later, they would be over $200 a ticket

I never thought I'd pay more than $5 for a McDonalds meal. But here we are. $12-13 the last time I went. It was $3.24 in 91. 

2 for $2 Big Macs during the summer of 1993. 

JD87070

Eddieredder said:

efroten2 said:

Eddieredder said:

KJ228171 said:

efroten2 said:

bootleg said:

My thought is there was likely some negotiation that had to take place to be able to get as many fanclub tickets as possible.  Ticketmaster has been trying to wrestle back fan club allotments for the past 20 years.  Almost all of the venues are in business with Ticketmaster so you can just say give us every seat or we’ll play somewhere else.  It didn’t work out great when they tried that on the No Code tour.  So they have to negotiate.  TM prob says we will give you this many fan club tix but we want 10% to be PJ premium and so they sign off on it.  By all accounts it seems like a ton of the best tix are still going to fan club members.

Now the standard pricing I think could use a little work.  Who knows what goes into determining the price but I think they could alleviate some of the issues by having more pricing tiers.  A GA ticket should cost more than one on the back of the floor or lower bowl.  An upper deck ticket should cost less.  So split that into 4 or more tiers.  Make GA 250 a ticket, Front lowers 200, back lowers 150, upper deck 100 etc… however the math ends up working out.  Let people pick which levels they are comfortable paying up to and whatever level you end up getting in the lotto that’s what you pay.  I think a lot of people didn’t pick P2 as an option in the drawing because either 1 they didn’t want to pay almost the same price for an upper deck ticket as a GA ticket or 2 because they just assumed they would find a better ticket in the regular or fan to fan sale and it could become difficult to offload a P2 ticket if the demand wasn’t high enough because you can’t sell for a loss.  F2F is a nice option to have but should also be able to let people sell for less than what they paid if the demand for their show isn’t as high as others.

I've often wondered if they have to do some sort of deal with TM in order secure enough fanclub seats per show. Does any other band have a similar fanclub structure to PJ?

And I totally agree they should start staggering the prices based on seat location. It shouldn't be almost $200 for upper desk AND up front.

U2, GnR, and Iron Maiden to name a few. Rage Against the Machine doesn't have a fan club but did everything they could to keep the vast majority of the prices down even if it meant they had to let a small percent go dynamic pricing.

GNR

https://www.gunsnroses.com/subscribe

U2

https://www.u2.com/subscribe

Iron Maiden

https://merch.ironmaiden.com/products/fan-club

Are there any other bands that seat their fanclub members based on seniority?

I don't think so

Dave Matthews Band is the only other one i know of, but i’m sure there’s others.

JD87070

JD87070 said:

Eddieredder said:

efroten2 said:

Eddieredder said:

KJ228171 said:

efroten2 said:

bootleg said:

My thought is there was likely some negotiation that had to take place to be able to get as many fanclub tickets as possible.  Ticketmaster has been trying to wrestle back fan club allotments for the past 20 years.  Almost all of the venues are in business with Ticketmaster so you can just say give us every seat or we’ll play somewhere else.  It didn’t work out great when they tried that on the No Code tour.  So they have to negotiate.  TM prob says we will give you this many fan club tix but we want 10% to be PJ premium and so they sign off on it.  By all accounts it seems like a ton of the best tix are still going to fan club members.

Now the standard pricing I think could use a little work.  Who knows what goes into determining the price but I think they could alleviate some of the issues by having more pricing tiers.  A GA ticket should cost more than one on the back of the floor or lower bowl.  An upper deck ticket should cost less.  So split that into 4 or more tiers.  Make GA 250 a ticket, Front lowers 200, back lowers 150, upper deck 100 etc… however the math ends up working out.  Let people pick which levels they are comfortable paying up to and whatever level you end up getting in the lotto that’s what you pay.  I think a lot of people didn’t pick P2 as an option in the drawing because either 1 they didn’t want to pay almost the same price for an upper deck ticket as a GA ticket or 2 because they just assumed they would find a better ticket in the regular or fan to fan sale and it could become difficult to offload a P2 ticket if the demand wasn’t high enough because you can’t sell for a loss.  F2F is a nice option to have but should also be able to let people sell for less than what they paid if the demand for their show isn’t as high as others.

I've often wondered if they have to do some sort of deal with TM in order secure enough fanclub seats per show. Does any other band have a similar fanclub structure to PJ?

And I totally agree they should start staggering the prices based on seat location. It shouldn't be almost $200 for upper desk AND up front.

U2, GnR, and Iron Maiden to name a few. Rage Against the Machine doesn't have a fan club but did everything they could to keep the vast majority of the prices down even if it meant they had to let a small percent go dynamic pricing.

GNR

https://www.gunsnroses.com/subscribe

U2

https://www.u2.com/subscribe

Iron Maiden

https://merch.ironmaiden.com/products/fan-club

Are there any other bands that seat their fanclub members based on seniority?

I don't think so

Dave Matthews Band is the only other one i know of, but i’m sure there’s others.

But they get a significantly smaller allotment of Warehouse tickets than PJ does-because PJ demands it. And they don’t cap Official Platinum tickets and they don’t do F2F. Also they play a lot of shows every year, so demand (outside of SPAC and a few other select shows/weekends) isn’t anywhere near the same level.

bootleg

I think 10c did still get a ton of great seats for most shows but yes there are PJ premiums spread throughout each section.  They told us up front these would make up about 10% of the tickets.  You should never buy PJ premiums, but if you need that guarantee so that you can arrange travel and hotel you should still never buy them in the first week of going on sale.  They are designed to make you think nothing else will be available so you better get them now before prices get even worse.  There will be other opportunities, and even places like stub hub have tix cheaper than the pj premium right now.

Lerxst1992

100 Pacer said:

BudT said:

Tickets that are good and reasonably priced aren't going to start appearing as the show gets closer. If you've gone to any shows the last few tours, in a high demand market you know that. It's not going to happen.

It's happened. It happened in 2022, even at MSG day off, and it happened in 2023.

I checked both of those shows many times up to 4pm, and msg never dropped below 480 for blocked view ceiling tickets, and Camden 700. If fans are willing to wait til closer to show time that’s great , but it’s not a reasonable way to buy tickets.

Unless fans want to play the f5 games for hours a day, these east coast indoor tickets do not appear. And the f5 game is a very expensive cost…time is money.

100 Pacer

BudT said:

100 Pacer said:

BudT said:

Tickets that are good and reasonably priced aren't going to start appearing as the show gets closer. If you've gone to any shows the last few tours, in a high demand market you know that. It's not going to happen.

It's happened. It happened in 2022, even at MSG day of, and it happened in 2023.

I was in 200 level at MSG last tour. I refreshed TM through the day. There weren't any good tickets sitting there to snatch for a decent price. I've gone to enough shows and scrambled to know there's people more rabid than me going after and hanging onto tickets because they want to go. 

Don't tell me how the premium pricing works. 

I don't care how it works. I care that those were potential 10c Tix and usually were in the past. Now the band in collusion with TM scalps those tickets to their fans.
I'm here to complain because there's nowhere else management will see it. 
Ideal scenario:
-put GA out there for any 10c member to enter.
-P1 & P2 is all seniority based. 
-They don't try to scalp Tix to their fans that they should've offered in the first place.

You’re mistaken. A verified fan code was required but rows of lower bowl premium MSG  were being released at standard pricing. You obviously weren’t in the mix but this was happening day of. For Camden it was happening day prior. At no point was I telling you how premium pricing works but having said you claimed “good and reasonably priced” tickets aren’t going to appear so I corrected you.

The rest of your argument is emotion driven. 

Get_Right

100 Pacer said:

BudT said:

Tickets that are good and reasonably priced aren't going to start appearing as the show gets closer. If you've gone to any shows the last few tours, in a high demand market you know that. It's not going to happen.

It's happened. It happened in 2022, even at MSG day of, and it happened in 2023.

It happens every show although MSG can be unpredictable, sometime they are available, sometimes not. But for other shows, face value tickets can be had with a little effort.

Lerxst1992

SHZA said:

Lerxst1992 said:

SHZA said:

BudT said:

SHZA said:

BudT said:

To some people the band can't do anything wrong. PJ Premium is horseshit but I just bought a pair for almost $1,3000 and they are above 100 level. I know I don't have to pay it, but otherwise I'm way up top for almost as much money or I don't go. 
$1,300 for a pair of tickets that are worse than I would get with my 10c #.  25 years in the club for them to gouge me with the equivalent of scalped tickets, tickets that used to be fan club tickets every tour. I'm probably checking out after this tour but I needed to finally hit my 50th show. There aren't enough tickets, but there really aren't enough for the 10c sale when they save those seats pulled out to be legally scalped to their fans. Tell me I'm an asshole for paying that much but they gave me no choice.

Your choice was to wait and see how the market adjusts in the six months until the show. There will be other opportunities for tickets. 

All your comments are telling people it's their fault and this is all normal. Is this Tim from 10c burner account?

I don't know who that is. If you bought $1,300 tickets, that was a choice you made. No one forced you. Sadly, it is normal for ticket prices to be inflated initially and for ticketmaster to create an artificial sense of scarcity to induce people to overpay. These are standard ticketmaster sales tactics. Prices often (not always) decline after the initial sale.  

Hey I love reading your comments over the years and your optimism helped me put a hold on a Baltimore hotel hopin that a f2f will open up there, or a premium for under $300. But I do not believe this f2f strategy works for NE indoor shows. Yet I still have that hotel hold!!

As I’ve been typing alot the last day, we need to change the narrative, it’s not TM that drives up prices, it’s the specific PJ policies that drive prices higher than any other act that I can find besides Taylor.  Their policies limit supply and expand demand, which  skyrocket broker prices, then they use that data to skyrocket PJPremium prices. 

It will be interesting to see if the "F2F strategy" works for the NE indoor shows (as a Maryland native, I'd call Baltimore mid-atlantic but I'm assuming we're talking about MSG, Phiily, and B'more). In 2020 I had some nice lower-level F2F scores for Baltimore even though it was the only east coast show available on F2F (MSG was not on the F2F platform at the time). That was before PJ had embraced the premium model but it will invariably be the case that some members cannot attend and will put up their seats on F2F. I was skeptical that the F2F strategy would work for Chicago last year given the option to sell on stubhub for profit but quite a few people here scored GA and other prime seats. MSG is on another level so it will be interesting to see how it plays out. Last year for the Cure shows at MSG I thought it would be difficult to find anything good for face but it really wasn't. The Cure played three nights instead of two and did not have dynamic pricing, and I think they intentionally held back standard tickets that they would release periodically and quite a few on show day, possibly to thwart scalpers. On show day there were many face value standard tickets available in good lower bowl sections. Friends of mine scored front row on the floor just by checking for standard drops. So I'm remaining optimistic for now. 

PJ's policies play a role but so does the standard TM playbook. I see a lot of shows with sky high prices. It's even more pronounced with baby boomer era acts. The first few rows for the Eagles, Billy Joel, etc. are usually $2k. A couple of weeks ago I bought front row Eagles tickets on show day on stubhub for $350 apiece. Once they were transferred to my TM account I clicked the sell button out of curiosity and the minimum price it would let me list them was $1,750 apiece. I take it that was the original sale price. 

Like I said you are the reason I got optimistic and put a hold on a Baltimore hotel. I have hope. But wasn’t that 2020 show famous for round the clock f5ing?

holding back standard priced tickets is another in an endless line of policies that hurt New Yorkers, because they never do that here. When they do it for out of town shows,we can’t get to the venue in time, so it’s just another way we NYers get hurt by the supply and demand games PJ plays with its ticketing policies that drive up resale and PJPrem prices.


using seat geek,decent NE (non stadium) seats for..,

Billy Joel, $491

Eagles,Chi $526

Neil Young $296

Zach Bryan $442

Drake $503

RHCP, VA $472

Rolling Stones, MetLife lowers, $443



PJ MSG, any ticket 200s row 7 and lower, …. One ticket at $836, every other over $1000.

PJ, other NE indoor venues, decent seats, most over $500




Pearl Jam has ticket policies that limit supply and increase demand. It is obvious their ticket policies drive up prices on the broker sites, which drove up PJPrem..

patkelly12

PJ Premium is 10% and and those high prices subsidizes the rest of the tickets. Also we should never buy Premium tickets and they will drop to standard price. So which is it then?

Eddieredder

"Pearl Jam has ticket policies that limit supply and increase demand. It is obvious their ticket policies drive up prices on the broker sites, which drove up PJPrem."

 Thats totally fair. But what would you propose as a solution? Its clearly pretty complicated.

I guarantee having tix be $250 each (or more) with no premium wouldn't be welcomed with open arms. Nor would $500 pit tix. Tiered pricing = more profit on cheaper seats. Its complicated. 

SHZA

patkelly12 said:

PJ Premium is 10% and and those high prices subsidizes the rest of the tickets. Also we should never buy Premium tickets and they will drop to standard price. So which is it then?

Someone is obviously buying them. But it's not necessary in most cases and prices will drop. 

patkelly12

SHZA said:

patkelly12 said:

PJ Premium is 10% and and those high prices subsidizes the rest of the tickets. Also we should never buy Premium tickets and they will drop to standard price. So which is it then?

Someone is obviously buying them. But it's not necessary in most cases and prices will drop. 

If they aren't ALL bought at the prices needed to subsidize the rest of the tickets (which is what we were told they represented), then how can the math work? It would seem to me that would cause some financial straits.

Eddieredder

patkelly12 said:

SHZA said:

patkelly12 said:

PJ Premium is 10% and and those high prices subsidizes the rest of the tickets. Also we should never buy Premium tickets and they will drop to standard price. So which is it then?

Someone is obviously buying them. But it's not necessary in most cases and prices will drop. 

If they aren't ALL bought at the prices needed to subsidize the rest of the tickets (which is what we were told they represented), then how can the math work? It would seem to me that would cause some financial straits.

Who holds the bag on premium? The band? TM? is there a formula? All parties? Its all accounted for either way. 

pjl44

patkelly12 said:

PJ Premium is 10% and and those high prices subsidizes the rest of the tickets. Also we should never buy Premium tickets and they will drop to standard price. So which is it then?

More the former. Savvy people will wait it out but they will sell plenty of premium tickets to others as their desire or compulsion is different. "If we all band together and refuse to blah blah blah" doesn't work.

patkelly12

Eddieredder said:

patkelly12 said:

SHZA said:

patkelly12 said:

PJ Premium is 10% and and those high prices subsidizes the rest of the tickets. Also we should never buy Premium tickets and they will drop to standard price. So which is it then?

Someone is obviously buying them. But it's not necessary in most cases and prices will drop. 

If they aren't ALL bought at the prices needed to subsidize the rest of the tickets (which is what we were told they represented), then how can the math work? It would seem to me that would cause some financial straits.

Who holds the bag on premium? The band? TM? is there a formula? Its all accounted for either way. 

I guess that's' my point. All the standard tickets are gone. Its not like they can come back and say "Hey, we never got that premium subsidy. We need you to cough up some more on those tickets we sold you earlier." - I guess the only solution if that subsidy isn't recouped is to charge even more on the next tour (for standard tickets).

Assuming the above is all on the up and up.