Before jumping to conclusions and asking the more than obvious question, yes, this post is a few months late, but should still be relevant to all those who attend and buy tickets to shows since this is an outrage.
The band we all know and love from the London, England, Coldplay, has been around for quite some time and are no stranger to large capacity shows.
It is rare now when they play a small scale show nowadays with their larger-than-life reputation. So, when the band announces a show in a lesser capacity venue, one may want to get in on the action and buy/win tickets.
The show this article is talking about was announced for May 19 at UCLA’s Royce Hall Auditorium, a day before their new album, “Ghost Stories,” was released worldwide.
The ticket information for the show was announced only a few days prior to the actual show, knowing well that the show would sell out in minutes, or even seconds.
At 9 a.m. the tickets went on sale on Ticketmaster, but there was one major problem, the ticket link did not work. Knowing very well what time to get to the computer, a fan should be ready to go right when the clock strikes the on-sale time, and many were, including me.
Finally, after five excruciating minutes of trying to get the link to work with perfectly clear internet connection, the link finally worked, but of course, the show was now sold out.
After trying over and over and over again, hoping that there were some tickets left, luck was not on my side. After 10 more minutes of trying after the ticket link finally worked, I called Ticketmaster to try to get tickets.
The gentleman on the phone told me it was indeed sold out and only 536 tickets were sold. 536! The capacity of the venue was 1,800. This means that less than one-third of the venue capacity was sold to the general public.
Upon further investigation, I noticed that many ticket selling sites (Stubhub and even Craigslist) were selling tickets from $1000-$5000 per ticket. Why is this if the show is sold out and Will-Call only? I understand that some tickets were given away on KROQ for the entire week prior, but only a handful per day.
How were tickets already being scalped? And already for thousands of dollars for one ticket. It’s unfortunate that only 536 tickets were sold to the general public but it’s absurd that tickets were immediately being scalped online.
I understand that the band probably saved some tickets for friends and family, but 1,264 tickets were not sold. Only a handful should be saved, not 1,264 or two-thirds of the ticket capacity. Die-hard fans who actually wanted to go and use their hard-earned money to buy tickets should be rewarded with a good show.
This was not the concert to try to buy tickets to because if you did, you were most likely disappointed.
Have you had a negative story dealing with tickets?
I beg to differ. Tickets were available for the first 45 minutes. Next time, try to use multiple sources! I was able to not only get a pair for myself, but threw back two other pairs. However, I did not get them from the Internet on a desktop computer. No tickets would come up that way. At the same time, I used my smartphone app. I also scored a single day of show ticket for a friend the same way. Once at the venue, Security was patrolling the line, making sure no last minute deals took place. At the distribution point, policy was strictly enforced, and there were both pissed scalpers and disappointed fans. I watched the scalpers be turned away when they tried to hand off tickets. The person with the ID is who got the wristbands and tickets, and they were required to enter the venue. No tickets were on StubHub. They knew it was will call only, so no listings existed. As far as brokers, they offered to have their agents meet the client at the venue, but that failed. While there is some truth to your post, it’s not the entire story, hence my reply. I hope you can win tickets for The Ace.