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Patient U2 Fans Bid on Tickets Below Face Value
By Mark Brown, Rocky Mountain News
U2 fans who had been shut out of two Denver shows in April, when ticket brokers snapped up many of the best seats, may have the last laugh - many of those tickets have turned up on eBay deeply discounted from the huge initial markups.
In fact, fans can find tickets at face value or below on the Internet auction site. They may not be the best seats, but they'll get fans into the building.
"The week after they went on sale, people were panicking and getting tickets no matter what they cost," said Jesse Esparza of Denver, who got shut out of the April 20-21 shows but now is biding his time to get tickets. "The day they went on sale, people were bidding like mad."
But that has died way down.
"As the weeks go on, the bids come down further and further," Esparza said.
The coveted $49.50 general-admission floor tickets that put fans right next to the band's oval stage were the first to go, with all 2,200 for each show selling out instantly in a presale through U2.com. The week after they went on sale in January, they were fetching up to $800 a pair, Esparza said. "One auction ended yesterday for $180 a pair."
Fans can find much better bargains than that. As of Tuesday afternoon, there were more than 300 auctions on eBay for tickets for the two Denver shows, with most of them getting no bids at all and others selling well below face value. There were more than 2,800 auctions for U2 tickets worldwide on eBay alone. Many are put up for single shows, but some are clearly from brokers who are selling tickets in a number of markets.
Fans and amateur brokers may have thought they could make a killing on reselling the tickets and perhaps overestimated demand.
"What really happens is people try to be brokers and find out it's hard," said Gary Adler, general counsel for the National Association of Ticket Brokers, the people who professionally resell tickets to events. "There are a lot of people who want to be brokers and then find out what it takes."
One eBay auction noted that "the buy-now price on these tickets is face value($99 + $12.25 each). I'm not making a dime on this. I'm a U2 fan, not a broker or a scalper. I bought these for myself before they announced the addition of the 4/21 show, which I'll be going to instead."
Another seller in Florida was offering two Denver tickets in section 134 for a buy-it-now price of $210 – tickets that originally cost $225 with Ticketmaster charges.
Another plea noted that "my reserve price is lower than face value, so feel free to bid them as you wish. Tickets are hard tickets, NOT TicketFast."
Other auctions seem to have no connection to reality. Two mediocre tickets in section 110 - at the far end of the Pepsi Center from the stage - were being offered for a minimum $995 price tag, with no bids.
Another broker based in Fort Worth had 11 different auctions up for U2 tickets in Denver, Boston and other cities, and 10 of those auctions had no bids.
"I've always believed that if you try hard enough, you should be able to get the tickets you want without paying a fortune to a scalper," said Matt McGee of Washington, who founded and runs the Web site atU2.com.
Rather than buying through brokers, fans are trading tickets online and taking care of each other. "The fans that are patient and are willing to keep trying are - in many cases - eventually finding success. And they should keep trying because U2 always has held back tickets for release as the show approaches in an attempt to hurt the scalpers a bit," McGee said.
Early anger at the band for letting the situation get out of hand has pretty much gone away after drummer Larry Mullen apologized both on U2.com and during the Grammy ceremony last month, said Devlin Smith, who's a California-based contributing editor to the U2 fansite Interference.com.
"People are just looking forward to seeing what the band is going to do to make sure this doesn't happen on the third leg. It has died down, but people are waiting with bated breath to see what happens on the third leg," she said.
"To their credit, U2 has made a real effort to target the scalpers using eBay, in particular," McGee said. "They asked for fans to help locate scalpers and brokers selling on eBay, and within a week there were a lot of stories about auctions being canceled."
He adds that "there's been a real concern among fans that some of these folks might be selling counterfeit tickets. The main message fans are sharing online is 'If you buy from a scalper, you won't know if your ticket is real until you show up at the venue and try to get in with it.' So that means fewer bidders."
That's a particular problem with the TicketFast system that allows buyers to print out their tickets on their home computer. There's nothing to stop an unscrupulous seller from printing as many copies as they want and selling them. The first fan to arrive with that paper would get in the door; the ticket scanners, however, would then reject every other copy.
Esparza is still biding his time; he has watched the auctions and has been in touch with other U2 fans who have extra tickets.
"I'm willing to be patient. There's no way I would pay that much. I can't pay that much," he said.
By Mark Brown, Rocky Mountain News
U2 fans who had been shut out of two Denver shows in April, when ticket brokers snapped up many of the best seats, may have the last laugh - many of those tickets have turned up on eBay deeply discounted from the huge initial markups.
In fact, fans can find tickets at face value or below on the Internet auction site. They may not be the best seats, but they'll get fans into the building.
"The week after they went on sale, people were panicking and getting tickets no matter what they cost," said Jesse Esparza of Denver, who got shut out of the April 20-21 shows but now is biding his time to get tickets. "The day they went on sale, people were bidding like mad."
But that has died way down.
"As the weeks go on, the bids come down further and further," Esparza said.
The coveted $49.50 general-admission floor tickets that put fans right next to the band's oval stage were the first to go, with all 2,200 for each show selling out instantly in a presale through U2.com. The week after they went on sale in January, they were fetching up to $800 a pair, Esparza said. "One auction ended yesterday for $180 a pair."
Fans can find much better bargains than that. As of Tuesday afternoon, there were more than 300 auctions on eBay for tickets for the two Denver shows, with most of them getting no bids at all and others selling well below face value. There were more than 2,800 auctions for U2 tickets worldwide on eBay alone. Many are put up for single shows, but some are clearly from brokers who are selling tickets in a number of markets.
Fans and amateur brokers may have thought they could make a killing on reselling the tickets and perhaps overestimated demand.
"What really happens is people try to be brokers and find out it's hard," said Gary Adler, general counsel for the National Association of Ticket Brokers, the people who professionally resell tickets to events. "There are a lot of people who want to be brokers and then find out what it takes."
One eBay auction noted that "the buy-now price on these tickets is face value($99 + $12.25 each). I'm not making a dime on this. I'm a U2 fan, not a broker or a scalper. I bought these for myself before they announced the addition of the 4/21 show, which I'll be going to instead."
Another seller in Florida was offering two Denver tickets in section 134 for a buy-it-now price of $210 – tickets that originally cost $225 with Ticketmaster charges.
Another plea noted that "my reserve price is lower than face value, so feel free to bid them as you wish. Tickets are hard tickets, NOT TicketFast."
Other auctions seem to have no connection to reality. Two mediocre tickets in section 110 - at the far end of the Pepsi Center from the stage - were being offered for a minimum $995 price tag, with no bids.
Another broker based in Fort Worth had 11 different auctions up for U2 tickets in Denver, Boston and other cities, and 10 of those auctions had no bids.
"I've always believed that if you try hard enough, you should be able to get the tickets you want without paying a fortune to a scalper," said Matt McGee of Washington, who founded and runs the Web site atU2.com.
Rather than buying through brokers, fans are trading tickets online and taking care of each other. "The fans that are patient and are willing to keep trying are - in many cases - eventually finding success. And they should keep trying because U2 always has held back tickets for release as the show approaches in an attempt to hurt the scalpers a bit," McGee said.
Early anger at the band for letting the situation get out of hand has pretty much gone away after drummer Larry Mullen apologized both on U2.com and during the Grammy ceremony last month, said Devlin Smith, who's a California-based contributing editor to the U2 fansite Interference.com.
"People are just looking forward to seeing what the band is going to do to make sure this doesn't happen on the third leg. It has died down, but people are waiting with bated breath to see what happens on the third leg," she said.
"To their credit, U2 has made a real effort to target the scalpers using eBay, in particular," McGee said. "They asked for fans to help locate scalpers and brokers selling on eBay, and within a week there were a lot of stories about auctions being canceled."
He adds that "there's been a real concern among fans that some of these folks might be selling counterfeit tickets. The main message fans are sharing online is 'If you buy from a scalper, you won't know if your ticket is real until you show up at the venue and try to get in with it.' So that means fewer bidders."
That's a particular problem with the TicketFast system that allows buyers to print out their tickets on their home computer. There's nothing to stop an unscrupulous seller from printing as many copies as they want and selling them. The first fan to arrive with that paper would get in the door; the ticket scanners, however, would then reject every other copy.
Esparza is still biding his time; he has watched the auctions and has been in touch with other U2 fans who have extra tickets.
"I'm willing to be patient. There's no way I would pay that much. I can't pay that much," he said.
