The Police Auction Robbing Fans
Image details: The Police And Elvis Costello In Concert At The MGM Grand served by picapp.com
Fans still reeling over the ticket prices announced for The Police’s Australian tour have one more reason to be disgruntled. The band has elected to auction selected seats in the first five rows of the Melbourne, Adelaide and Perth.
The practice of auctioning premium seats is new for Australia, but has been around in the United States since 2003. Tickets typically sell at an average of 74% higher than their face value.
Where does the extra money go, you ask? Not to the ticket retailer, but straight to the pockets of Sting and his cohorts. Auctioned tickets from the band’s American shows had a “charity component,” but no one’s exactly sure how large that is.
Supporters of the practice say it helps to boycott scalping by allowing fans to buy tickets at their “real value.” Yet this claim is dubious, as the starting bid of these tickets is the face-value of a non-auctioned tickets. Perhaps front row tickets at The Police were never really worth $250 to begin with, after all.
I’m with the large proportion of fans who are against this idea, as it seems to reward punters with the deepest pockets rather than the deepest passion for the band.
Call me old fashioned, but I miss the “good old days,” where I’d queue overnight with other enthusiastic fans in hopes of getting that elusive front row. We’d be cold, sometimes wet, definitely hungry, hoping that a radio breakfast show would take pity on us and bring food. But we’d bond over those hours and all feel satisfied in the end that we’d earned those tickets.
On the advent of internet ticketing, it became preferable to sit there at your computer screen hitting “refresh” as you watched the minutes tick on to the sale time. The camaraderie was gone, but that familiar adrenalin rush was still there.
It’s the fans with that passion who deserve to see The Police up close and personal. Not the people who can simply afford the privilege.
If you’re so inclined, you can bid on Police tickets from July 23 until August 2 through Ticketmaster.
Tags: auction, The-Police, ticketsRelated Stories
POSTED IN: Tour News
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2 opinions for The Police Auction Robbing Fans
Dave Parrack
Jul 21, 2007 at 11:43 pm
I don’t think the ticket auction thing has happened over here in the UK yet, but it probably won’t be long. I don’t begrudge the artist making the money from it, as if people are willing to pay it, why not?
I do think it would be a nice gesture to give a proportion to charity though.
If it stops ticket touts in their tracks then that’s got to be a positive thing surely?
lkatulka
Jul 22, 2007 at 1:34 am
My biggest beef with it is that it feels like it exploits the passion of fans. It used to be that if fans committed to getting really good seats, they could just buy A-reserve and be there to buy tickets as they went on sale. Now they’re saying you have to pay an undetermined amount to get close to your heroes, which to me seems greedy.
If the entire amount was going to charity, and it was maybe one isolated pair of front row seats or something, I’d feel a lot more at ease about it. John Mayer’s done that in the past, and it seems to have worked well. That doesn’t hurt the chances of other fans of getting good seats. But charity components are a bit more iffy when they’re undisclosed. After all - a dollar could go to the charity and technically the ticket has a charity component.
I’m also not sure I’m convinced it would stop scalping either. Surely, if someone makes enough money through scalping, they could afford to bid on these really good seats, right?
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