MTEdge said:
What you speak of really affected the October Boston shows, the May and September Chicago shows, and the November LA shows. (I have limited the list to major markets, but we all know that Phoenix, Seattle, Denver, Detroit, and even Philly had a substantial number of tickets available for less than face value.) It also happened, to a certain extent, to the October MSG shows (but I think that was primarily because of the rain that U2 brought South with them 
).
The answer to the question "why?" is simple: Each of these major markets was overplayed, but thanks to scalpers (mostly amateur scalpers), each show was sold out. Now the amateur scalpers are trying to dump, but the market is glutted with tickets and is bearing about face value for most tickets.
Just my two cents... I have to get back to Queen Bee so I can't provide more detail to this post. 
Actually, most people especially those of U2's audiance average age, are probably unlikely to buy tickets over the internet from a scalper. All of these shows initially soldout in hours and the number of people scalping tickets simply prevented regular buyers from getting tickets on the day of sale.
Most people attempting to buy tickets the normal way are not going to go to a scalper to get into the show. Most simply move on once they know ticketmaster has soldout and don't even bother going early to the show to see if they can get in or try to find tickets another way.
Also there were many people in Philly and other shows on the last tour who bought tickets from scalpers only to discover at the show that the tickets they bought were fakes. I'm sure there is some of that out there as well on this tour so naturally that adds to the ticket situation with brokers and scalpers, plus, you have a large number of people, most people in fact, who are not going to buy tickets from brokers and scalpers either because they don't know about them or don't trust them.
Typically, only hardcore fans are going to spend more than face value to buy tickets at these prices. Given that only a fraction of most fans would go to Ebay and other places attempting to buy scalped tickets, plus that only a fraction of those fans are hardcore fans will to pay above face value, then its easy to see why several of tickets on some websites are being sold at below face value.
I actually think most of the markets were "UNDERPLAYED" with the exception of maybe Chicago. But the band simply does not have more time to devote to touring America which is why choosing to play Arena's instead of Stadiums in America turned out to be a mistake.
Its amazing how many people I come across who wanted to see this tour but were unable to because shows soldout to fast and they either did not know about or did not want to deal with scalpers.
Just to note, all the tickets at
www.ticketsnow.com for the remaining Boston shows are being sold at above face value and I have found that to be the case for most shows.
Ticketsnow.com has also stated that U2 Vertigo tour is their top selling ticket.
Wow
