"As Beyoncé's Cowboy Carter Tour kicks off, thousands of cheap tickets are still for sale - Hours before the doors to SoFi Stadium in Los Angeles were set to open Monday, tickets for night one of the tour had dipped to as low as $57.50."
https://www.nbcnews.com/pop-culture/pop-culture-news/beyonce-cowboy-carter-tour-los-angeles-ticket-prices-drop-rcna203410
She went out too soon in buildings too big at too high a price.
Not that she wasn't made aware the edifice of demand was not as rock solid as she believed it to be last time in Pittsburgh.
And stop blaming Ticketmaster. Beyoncé controls everything, the pricing, the on-sales... Ticketmaster is paid to take the heat so Beyoncé emerges unscathed...hopefully.
Meanwhile the public gets screwed.
Then again, the goal is for the artist not to get screwed, by pricing tickets high enough that the secondary market is eliminated. But this doesn't always work.
Now if you're a regular consumer of mainstream news, you'd believe Beyoncé is one of the biggest acts in the land. Didn't she just win that Grammy? Doesn't everybody love her? Didn't she triumph in country?
Well, when it comes to entertainment news it's all hype. Don't trust a word that is printed. But the difference is now people can bark back online.
My favorite part of this story is where Beyoncé's team claims the gig is sold out, but if you click through, there are endless pictures of empty seats. This b.s. used to work in the pre-internet era, but now...
Having said that, do I think most attendees are checking social media rabidly?
No. But in order for everybody to do well the date has to go clean. Sell less than every ticket and someone is taking a bath, if not everybody.
There is not unlimited demand for everybody. Beyoncé played stadiums only two years ago! She is not the Beatles. Despite Beatle-like hype. If for no other reason than no one and no song reaches everybody anymore. But the acts drink their own kool-aid. You've got to let it lie fallow.
Could Taylor Swift go back on a multi-year stadium tour and sell out everywhere now? I'd give her better odds than Beyoncé, but I wouldn't recommend it. The hype sold a lot of those tickets. People had the experience, are they about to spend all that money once again?
So what happens now...
NOTHING!
Ticketing is an opaque business, and that's just how the acts like it. Reality is anathema. It's all an illusion.
Beyoncé claims innocence and blames Ticketmaster. Ticketmaster knows the truth but doesn't say anything and despite Beyoncé not going clean, many other acts will.
Are we seeing consumer resistance as a result of Trump's policies?
Not here. These tickets went on sale long before he took office.
Will we see resistance in the future?
Generally, no. Relatively speaking concerts are a one time event, a relatively inexpensive experience that generates memories for a lifetime.
But will the business at large falter, will it take a hit?
There's got to be some effect of financial uncertainty. Just read the economic reports. People are spooked. And so many live from paycheck to paycheck, even those who buy concert tickets.
So what would solve the problem here?
No one can solve the problem of playing big rooms too soon other than the act itself. It's a judgment call.
As for pre-sales... The acts get paid for those, they don't want to give up that credit card sponsorship and other sources of revenue.
As for the mania...
That's the magic of music, that there IS mania. Not always. You don't want to be left out.
Paying too much for a ticket? Finding out you could have gotten one cheaper after the fact?
No one likes to be ripped-off. NO ONE! So, as Ian Hunter sang, once bitten, twice shy. But the funny thing is this will apply to Beyoncé and not acts at large. But Beyoncé will lick her wounds, sit on the sidelines, go out in arenas and do boffo at the b.o. and claim victory and everyone will forget this snafu/mistake. This doesn't happen for every act, you can be hurt by mistakes, but do I think that Beyoncé can sell out arenas in the future, after staying out of the market for a bit? Yes. Then again, maybe not at these prices.
But she wanted all that MONEY!
Acts keep pledging fealty to their fans. How they love them, would do anything for them, would be nothing without them.
The acts don't give a sh*t about the fans, now more than ever. We live in a mercenary world and acts want as much money as possible to feed their lifestyles. They bleed the fans over and over and over again. How about the multiple iterations of vinyl to keep the act at number one for weeks at a time?
But the public believes in these acts, however falsely. Their music gets them through in a sold-out, oftentimes incomprehensible world.
So that's the way it is.
Then again, the more sunlight that is shined on these issues the better. Just like Ticketmaster's seating charts aided the business, showing what is sold and what is not. We live in an information age and people like information.
Then again, as much as the fans decry subterfuge, they're untrustworthy too. They want to be able to scalp their own tickets and many complain about paying fair market price for tickets. Too often the acts blink and undercharge and the scalpers make a fortune. But it works in the reverse too. Now more people know.
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