Don't Get Your Tickets Here

Jason Aldean from the last row
at MetLife Stadium (c) PipPepPop

     Back in March, I lamented on the blog about how hard it is to get good concert tickets these days. Don't worry, getting tickets has not gotten any easier. You still probably don't have your pick of seats during pre-sales, let along the actual ticket on-sale. But, due to the recent Curt Schlesinger et al. v. Ticketmaster settlement, they may be a little cheaper to loyal concertgoers. Essentially, Ticketmaster was sued for their outrageous and "excessive" fees (finally). I cannot justify paying $75.00 for tickets in the very last row of MetLife stadium, but I paid it last summer to see Jason Aldean and Kenny Chesney.  Tickets on the floor were at least $300.00 and standing room only. Where is the benefit in that? But I digress...

     Ticket "processing" fees (which average from $15-$20 dollars on top of the seat price) were the brunt of the spoils in this case. There is also a second reward/class for the ridiculously  high fees for USPS delivery. As a whole, Ticketmaster has charged as high as $8.00 to ship regularly ordered tickets (not overnight or a week before the show kind of deals) via US mail, a service which used to be available for free. This led to the ride of free PDF print-at-home tickets, which are their own fun pain in the butt. I have also been to a concert where my friend left the tickets at home and we had to download an app for our phones to get into the concert, and keep the tickets up on our phones every time we left the area to get drinks or go to the bathroom. As much as the technology was supposed to make out lives better they're not making concerts easier, yet. Maybe in the future, we can get retinal scan tickets!

     Tickets purchased from October 1999 through February 2013 make you eligible to be part of the lawsuit's class and should guarantee you something back. On bright side in this whole deal,  Ticketmaster has done all of the work for us. I logged into my account the other day to check out my cut of the $45+ million dollar settlement. I have 11 pairs of general admission ticket vouchers (good through June 2020) and 11 sets of $2.25 credits to use toward ticket purchases. Before you plan to take 20 of your closest friends to the lawn seats, keep in mind there are restrictions, as suggested by Yahoo! News earlier this week. General admission vouchers are only allowed to be used for events at Live Nation venues. The tickets are redeemable for floor general admission or lawn GA tickets to these events, and up to two vouchers at a time (totaling 4 tickets). USPS shipping codes ($5.00 each, I had none of these because I wasn't  going to pay to ship tickets) can be used two at a time for USPS shipping, and these deals cannot be used with other tickets.

Live Nation site screenshot, 6/23 (c) PipPepPop

     The ticket site for Live Nation began posting events early Wednesday and as of Thursday night, all available vouchers through November are sold out (at venues across the country). I am curious to see how the next few months go, when the novelty wears off and people forget about the ticket vouchers they have sitting in their account. Maybe I can get some tickets then! In the meantime, I'm going to see how we can convince them to put pre-sale e-mailed codes directly into out accounts too. I have scrambling at the last minute to find phrases like SUNSHINE or DEEJAY and plugging them in to try to get tickets. I also hate clicking on the images of Trucks or waterfalls to prove I'm not a robot. Hmm.. maybe ticketing robots is the way to solve all of this frustration....
 For more information, visit the settlement website: http://www.ticketfeelitigation.com/

The (Ticket) Struggle is Real

     I love going to live events! I enjoy taking in theater, hockey games, and live music. Much to my dismay, I am finding this more and more difficult to do. I was recently looking for tickets for not one but two concerts and I found out that clearly humans have little to no chance of getting seats (not even decent seats) for a show.

John Mayer 2007 @ MSG

     If one does want to get tickets, be prepared to shell out big bucks (upwards of $75.00 a ticket in most cases for a terrible seat). To compare, I went to see John Mayer at Madison Square Garden in the Winter of 2007, nine years ago. My friends and I (three ladies waiting for Your Body is a Wonderland)  paid about $40.00 per seat in the 400's section (which does not exist since the MSG remodel), but it was a second or third row in the upper upper most spot of the stadium. The seats were OK, but with a camera zoom lens we could see John pretty great! The crowd was in good spirits and the music was flowing, so we had a blast. 

      In the Winter of 2010, I attended John Mayer at the Garden again. This event was legendary!

John Mayer @ MSG in 2010.

        I still have a photo of it up at my desk to remind me of the amazing night. I also happened to be the night a major snowstorm hit NYC and almost shut down the city. But I digress, back to the story of how I scored these amazing seats. I sat on my computer refreshing the page over and over again at 10 am on the day-before pre-sale. I got the pre-sale code simply for buying the album, not join any silly fan club or having a special credit card or any other nonsense that's available now. My friend was in disbelief because I called her with the news: we were sitting on the floor, in row E (read this, 5th row on the floor). She thought there must be some kind of catch. Maybe there were double letter seats before the single letters? She was wrong and we did have amazing 5th row seats. The catch? We paid a flat $90.00 to sit about 12 feet from the stage. The concert was like a dream, the kind you do not want to wake up from.  First of all, I felt like I was at some kind of exclusive party. Second of all, we got a private floor-only bathroom and our own concessions and merchandise stands! We will never, and have never had seats close to this good since then.

    In the summer of 2013, my friend and I saw John Mayer again in a large, open-air venue in Hartford, CT. The seats were in the second section back and while still closer than the first show, still so far away. We paid $70.00 for these seats and were disappointed because it was not as good as the 2010 experience. But we barely managed to snag these seats due to increasingly difficult measures from Ticketmaster.

Luke Bryan Ticket 1st Day Pre-Sale

    First of all, Ticketmaster is the only major ticketing site to buy first chance tickets. Sites like STUBHUB sometimes grant a last-minute deal, but it's rare to see seats for anything there for the actual face value. After successfully battling each layer of Ticketmaster's elaborate process, (logging into your account, selecting the correct date, choosing only images of hot dogs, clicking "I'm not a robot" etc..) , you begin your queue in line while someone is nabbing all of the tickets, leaving something like the photo below. This (LEFT) is a screenshot for last week's pre-sale of a Luke Bryan concert in Atlantic City. On the first day of pre-sale, only single tickets were left in sections. How could all of the seats in a row be selected except single seats on the ends? Even stranger than that, why are single seats left in the middle of sections? or even stranger, in the middle of sections?

Luke Bryan Seats Left 3 Days After Sale

     Are there any seats left for the actual sale date? My assumption at this point would be no if you're planning to go to the concert with another person. So, why are all the tickets disappearing in pre-sales? Clearly internet geniuses and spambots are taking them for scalpers. Plus, the ridiculous number of pre-sales give some people special privileges over the average Joe. It's very disheartening also that to go to a show, you have to shell out $100 bucks per seat. This is not a casual night out with friends, it's a commitment that can cause lots of issues and friendship fights.  What do the good people get left with, higher prices (the 200's section seats here costs $79.00 plus $16.00 in fees, totaling about $95.00) Plus, if you have a carload of people who want to go to the show, you might as well plan to get different seats spread out all over the venue, because you will not be sitting together. If you're lucky you might be able to secure two seats together. This stress, this lack of availability, and this high price makes every concert a long shot dream instead of a fun night out. Let's find a way to make the concerts about the music again! #ConcertsForAll