ClaytonsKitten
ONE love, blood, life
I know people.
I'm going to Chi2, and hopefully Chi1 as well. Wish 3 & 4 werent 2 days later.
Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-G900A using U2 Interference mobile app
I know people.
It's settled. Only rich people like U2
So Mr. Median just spent 2.5% of his annual income to take his family to a U2 concert, if he purchased the tickets at the $275 price.
Ticket prices shouldn't be based on income levels at the city you're playing.
It should be based on the production costs of the show.
Two recent concerts—the shows that Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band performed at the Izod Center, in the New Jersey Meadowlands, on May 21st and May 23rd—have come to serve as a referendum on what’s wrong with the live-music business. The shows marked the end of the first leg of Springsteen’s “Working on a Dream” tour, which was announced in late January, after the release of his new album. In the flush days of the record business, bands toured to support the album; these days, the album is a teaser for the tour. (The Boss’s new album, which has a list price of $18.98, has sold about five hundred and fifty thousand copies in the United States; last year’s Springsteen tour grossed $204.5 million.) Ticketmaster handled the majority of the dates on the first U.S.-based leg of the tour, and tickets for most of the twenty-six shows went on sale on Monday, February 2nd—a day after Springsteen’s halftime performance at the Super Bowl.
The Izod Center is a two-tiered arena with roughly twenty thousand seats, which is owned by the New Jersey Sports and Exposition Authority, a public agency that was also the promoter for these two shows. (Live Nation promoted dates in other cities.) Some forty million people live within two and a half hours of the Izod Center, many of them Springsteen fans. The Boss could probably have sold out ten shows at the venue; because he had decided to do only two, desire for the tickets was guaranteed to be intense. With tickets in such short supply, market logic dictated high ticket prices. But Springsteen and his longtime manager, Jon Landau, had fixed prices at ninety-five dollars for lower-tier and general-admission standing-room floor tickets, and sixty-five dollars for upper-tier tickets. Given what Springsteen could have asked (the Stones charged four hundred and fifty dollars for the best seats on their most recent U.S. tour), these tickets were a remarkable bargain—proof, if anyone needed it, of Springsteen’s solidarity with his working-class fans.
The phenomenon of below-market-value tickets has inspired a cottage industry of economists seeking to explain seemingly illogical pricing in the rock-concert business. Alan Krueger, a Princeton economist who, in May, was confirmed as the Treasury Department’s assistant secretary for economic policy, is one. “There is still an element of rock concerts that is more like a party than a commodities market,” Krueger told me. A ticket to a rock show, he said, bears elements of a “gift exchange,” in which intangible benefits accrue to the seller. Cheap tickets increase the possibility of a sellout, which augments merchandise and concession sales. Sellouts make the concert experience better for musicians and audience alike. And, one might add, a cheap ticket is the price the music industry pays to preserve the illusion that the sixties never ended. “In some fashion, I help people hold on to their own humanity—if I’m doing my job right,” Springsteen once said, of his performances. At least, he helps people hold on to their savings.
In a 2006 paper titled “Rockonomics: The Economics of Popular Music,” written with Marie Connolly, Krueger reports on data that he and twelve Princeton students collected at a Springsteen concert in Philadelphia, on October 6, 2002. Every ticket cost seventy-five dollars, and the box-office amounted to around $1.5 million. Krueger and his researchers found that a quarter of the fans they interviewed before the show had bought their tickets on the secondary market, where they had paid an average of two hundred and eighty dollars. Had Springsteen charged the market price for all tickets, he would have collected about four million dollars in additional revenue, a figure Krueger calls “astounding.” Studying concert-ticket sales, Krueger also told me, is not all that different from analyzing mortgage-backed securities, which were at the heart of the financial crisis. Both are bought and then resold on a secondary market, and “both markets are also subject to price bubbles, lack of trust, inadequate regulation, and imperfect information.”
By drastically underpricing the Izod Center tickets, Springsteen was inadvertently helping to create the circumstances for an orgy of speculation and scalping on the secondary market. The desire for a hot ticket is not an economic calculation; it’s a craving. Thanks to the Internet, satisfaction is only a couple of mouse clicks away.
that's not how a market works. there's a threshold that must be reached so that you aren't actively losing money, but it's demand that sets prices.
here's a very interesting article that actually argues for some even higher priced tickets, and to stop the underpricing of some tickets, using Springsteen as an example:
The Price of the Ticket - The New Yorker
It's settled. Only rich people like U2
what's also interesting is that no one can live in the cities getting the concerts with a $50,000 a year income, unless they are very young. i'd say "middle class" in the top tier cities would be a $200,000 a year income (with 2 salaries). it might sound crazy, but it's true. when you surf rents in for 2BRs in Manhattan and it seems to start around $3600 a month, yes, only people who have income live there.
my guess is that the relative wealth of each area (San Jose, NYC, Boston) is considered when it comes to ticket prices, and perhaps the reason why such cities were selected. i can't imagine $300 tickets flying off the shelves in Tulsa.
Ticket prices shouldn't be based on income levels at the city you're playing.
It should be based on the production costs of the show.
that's not how a market works. there's a threshold that must be reached so that you aren't actively losing money, but it's demand that sets prices.
here's a very interesting article that actually argues for some even higher priced tickets, and to stop the underpricing of some tickets, using Springsteen as an example:
The Price of the Ticket - The New Yorker
so you could look at it that by having lower priced tickets, Bruce is foregoing a big chunk of change, yet reinforcing his man-of-the-people brand, but then that $4m goes into the creation of this market that we are all decrying, and that it seems LN/TM is trying to get access to with their stupid "packages."
so it's kind of win-win. Bruce tours and makes money, and trades the extra money for the intoxicating atmosphere of a sold out show (a way to get people to come back again and again, and it's worked on me -- i saw the Baltimore show on this particular tour and it was i think the single best concert i've ever seen) while keeping his aura of integrity that's critical to his particular brand (and his politics).
there's no judgement here. you become a brand (or "heritage act") after a certain point (for Bruce, it was probably around 1984, for U2 it was probably around 1993), and there's not much you can do about it. you have a critical mass of fans who have expectations and needs, and there is a shift. 1978 will never happen again for Bruce, and neither will 1985 for U2.
so what do you do other than protect it? this is likely worth more than the $4m Bruce passed up by not charging higher prices, but then that money went into less savory hands.
it's all very interesting.
YES a pair of GA for Chicago 3 with my friend's new membership code, and a single GA for Chicago 4 with my existing pre sale code
SOOOOOO HAPPY!!!!! Looking for GA buddies and accepting suggestions on what to do in Chicago as we make a long weekend of it from Toronto
Its based on the demand for tickets in the market.
I don't think U2 tickets are that expensive in today's market. I've paid $150 for muse $140 for gaga $160 for beyonce $120 for foo fighters and $35 for bon Jovi (cheap seats but what a view and what a concert!) in the last year alone and so paying $85 for my favourite band of all time is nothing. To the general public I don't think the tickets costs are that surprising.
You're comparing stadiums to arenas, which proves my point.
Both the Stadium shows compared and the Arena shows compared had similar priced tickets. You have your GA tickets, your high priced lower level tickets, the mid level price, and the "nosebleed" price. The averages differ primarily from the number of tickets being sold at each price level.Stadium tickets are on average cheaper for fans, that's why they can not only meet demand but also play in less traditional markets.
That's true, but U2 is still in general using the same price levels for tickets in the more rural areas of the country as they are in the big cities as shown above.Arenas are much, much smaller, there's a scarcity of tickets, which sends the prices higher
Read again, I said the following:lso, LOL at "would have seen a big slump in sales for PopMart." Have we not all heard about the empty stadiums on the 3rd North American leg? That's exactly what happened
Where did I compare stadiums to arenas? I did compare the D.C. 360 stadium show to the Norman 360 which shows that there are no significant differences in prices between the big cities and the more rural areas for U2 tickets. Norman Oklahoma's prices for 360 were actually a little more expensive on average than D.C.
The following example my be more in line with what you are thinking of and its an arena big city to arena small city comparison.
U2 Elevation Tour
June 14-15, 2001
Washington D.C.
MCI Center
GROSS: $ 3,172,418
ATTENDANCE: 37,971
SHOWS: 2
SELLOUTS: 2
Average Ticket Price: $83.55
U2 Elevation Tour
May 4, 2001
Lexington Kentucky
Rupp Arena
GROSS: $1,143,878
ATTENDANCE: 16,642
SHOWS: 1
SELLOUTS: 1
Average Ticket Price: $68.73
Still, the average price difference is only $15 dollars. It could just as well be lower demand for U2 in Kentucky as the difference in cost of living.
Both the Stadium shows compared and the Arena shows compared had similar priced tickets. You have your GA tickets, your high priced lower level tickets, the mid level price, and the "nosebleed" price. The averages differ primarily from the number of tickets being sold at each price level.
That's true, but U2 is still in general using the same price levels for tickets in the more rural areas of the country as they are in the big cities as shown above.
Read again, I said the following:
I think if U2 were a heritage act by 1993 they would NOT have seen the big slump in ticket sales with POPMART in 1997.
Yes, there was a big slump in ticket sales in 1997 which is why the band were indeed NOT a heritage act by 1993 as they were still dependent on the success of current product for ticket sales.
i agree that in comparison to other huge acts, U2's prices are in line. I appreciate SO much that U2 makes their floor tix such a reasonable price. Because I've had Beyonce floor seats in an area and they were like $350+. The $82 for GAs is great. I get that they are not a charity (ha), I think they should get paid for going on tour, and get paid well.
But I do think those lower bowl $600 party packages are bullshit and I DO think Livenation and Ticketmaster are at their core shitty fucking companies. I do kind of begrudge the band for doing business with them. Free market, whatever...but I'm not exactly a capitalist in general.
I haven't looked at other arena set ups but for vancover I got two $100 tickets in section 309 row 3, that seems pretty good but perhaps row 3 is from the top? Otherwise I am very happy with cost/seat etc.
Oh I totally agree I don't look at party packages because they are laughably expensive for absolutely nothing and I also agree that ticketmaster is the scourge of the earth and their systems in place are horrendous.
I haven't looked at other arena set ups but for vancover I got two $100 tickets in section 309 row 3, that seems pretty good but perhaps row 3 is from the top? Otherwise I am very happy with cost/seat etc.
I also think unless your rear of stage there is rarely a bad seat in an arena and ga is magnificent from anywhere. The only variable is who is around you
I KNOW THIS!
I was just saying I think they should be based on production costs in my little hypothetical ideal world.
Good grief.
Not staging, thats info that will come in handy when scoping out where to go for GA or what sections to look for in terms of ticket releases.
Same, setlist I'll try to avoid, did a great job on 360 2010 leg with that... but staging is important for GA.
So is there anyone here that is planning on avoiding all spoilers re: setlist/staging once the tour starts?