“Irregular cash flow – fans of big rock bands outraged by poor sales and stadium show tickets slashed by 50%”: https://t.ly/hCCx2
The music industry has historically been opaque. They say one thing, but the truth is another. They will tell you that they want to add more games because the previous games were sold out, so you buy more tickets to speculate on tickets, but in the end you find out that they lied and the previous games were not sold out. You cannot reduce your ticket price. Close to par value (if any).
But things are changing. Because of the message.
Let’s start with the blue dot. The Ticketmaster website provides a wealth of information. You can see which tickets are still available and which ones can be resold. When J.Lo canceled her tour, no one believed it because there was a sea of blue dots all over Ticketmaster.
But that’s not all. Now we have a Twitter site that can provide you with this information and more. I recommend you follow @underfacevalue and Ticket_Help2022 Insider X provided this information.
So all we hear is that ticket prices are being artificially inflated by Ticketmaster and no one in government talks about supply and demand, but when it comes to restaurants…
You may not be paying attention to the chaos. People are grabbing restaurant reservations in New York. So they passed a law to try to eliminate this:
“Why New York City’s Hottest Dining Reservations Will Remain Unscorable — A proposed law targeting bots and scalpers that cater to wealthy, desperate restaurant fans doesn’t guarantee it will make getting a hot table any easier.”
Free link: https://t.ly/dCZaA
I love this Bloomberg headline because this is exactly what insiders know about concert tickets that everyone in the government seems to not. The problem is not Ticketmaster, the problem is supply and demand!
If you read this article, you’ll find that the average dinner at these restaurants costs $100 to $150. But when music artists charge the same fee, people go crazy! Those baby boomers who complain about Sting fares will no doubt give up their money over dinner. What gives? Each time is a fleeting experience, a concert may be once in a lifetime, the band may never return to your town, you may never see them again!
But no one is cracking down on concert ticket scalping because the scalper lobby is so powerful and organized, while restaurant reservations are a nascent business.
Brown star Alex Eisler spends just half an hour to two hours a day making 100,000 restaurant reservations. Nature abhors a vacuum. That’s why we have restaurant reservation scalpers and concert ticket scalpers. You would think that the show would charge the same as the ticket price but that is not the case, they are afraid of being judged, why?
As for Pearl Jam…the band broke up in the nineties. Their biggest fans are all Generation X, now in their fifties. They have money, but ironically, they think twice about paying it.
But let’s just say Pearl Jam is more of an American act.
But we can say that the promoters were wrong about the market. This is what happened with the Black Keys and J.Lo. What happened yesterday does not apply today.
Yesterday, every show was sold out. Demand surged. Why not charge more otherwise scalpers will get the benefit of the spread.
But as it turned out, the client refused. This is the customer who, despite constantly hearing about how the economy is doing, finds food and other costs to be much more expensive.
They keep their dollars.
So what we’re seeing is a price correction, right before our eyes. The public is aware of this too. No one, no one, likes to find out that the person next to them bought something for less than they paid for it. We have learned to accept this from the airlines, but the end result is that everyone hates the airlines and they rig the system through consolidation and lack of route competition. This is what Napster was waiting to happen. In fact, airline prices are falling too. The post-COVID mania is over.
So what to sell?
Well, Noah Kahan is a breakthrough artist. But how many people did he break through to? This is not an MTV show from the eighties. Most people don’t even know his name. In fact, even though he’s been on the market for years, he’s still viewed as a new act and people wonder if it’s worth putting down all that money.
If you’re too exhausted to play your biggest hits…
Well, hopefully you’re doing this in a shed where the promoter has other sources of income besides tickets and where there’s usually cheap lawn because if you’re hosting a show in an arena, good luck!
But Swift’s show was sold out and parents couldn’t buy tickets for their children, so someone must be at fault.
The truth is Swift is a genius. She immediately took out all the American tickets and created a frenzy to ensure her innocence. Yes, the dirty little secret of the last tour was that she didn’t sell every ticket. But when you get caught up in a vortex…you don’t want to be left out. Never underestimate the power of parents. They are vicious in giving their children what they want.
So what happens now?
Interesting question.
As for the Global Boomers…they’re nearing the end of their run, so everyone is wondering if this is the last time. However, people have been speculating about the last one for years. However, these bands have been out for a long time at sky-high prices, so the public has gotten used to them and they are bona fide superstars.
How many bands have achieved the status of everyone in America knowing their tunes in the past fifteen years? Absolutely no one. period. Yet America has more people than ever before, and in a world where we all have the same devices, music is a uniquely visceral experience. So it’s a cult audience…nobody’s going to go see these shows on a whim, they’re too expensive.
Why do they keep canceling festivals? Are they too expensive, or the lineup just not attractive enough, or both?
Sometimes you can lower the price but people still don’t want to come.
So, if you’re planning a tour right now…the data is just coming in.
What is the government’s attitude towards this? Nowhere to be seen.
We are seeing corrections. The good old days are gone. Are new better days coming?
Well, we thought everyone would be performing in smaller buildings when the classic shows passed, but there are more stadium shows than ever. The audience is narrow but deep.
So here you find the essence of concert promotion. Nothing is guaranteed, it’s just a bet. Artificial intelligence won’t tell you that data can only mean so much, it’s an intuitive decision, and great music will move you the same way, intuitively.
But the bottom line is that people don’t want to pay as much to see most shows as they have for the past two years. How much of it is performance, how much of it is economics, how much of it is music’s place in the landscape?
Let’s ask the government. ha!
