There are some angry parents of pre-adolescent young women who had hoped to see the Hannah Montana concert live when it comes to the Hartford Civic Center. It seems that when the tickets went onsale to the general public, only about 3,000 of the 13,000 tickets remained, after distribution to ticket brokers (scalpers), corporate sponsors, comped friends, and fan clubs. It explains why the Civic Center can sell-out in 3 minutes. Same thing happened with Bruce Springsteen. After the sale, thousands of tickets showed up in the secondary market (scalpers), and for several times their face value.
There was a report about the ticket re-sale market on Colin McEnroe's show yesterday afternoon, and again this morning on the Dunaway/Smith show on WTIC-AM.
One wonders why concert venues and producers would cooperate with ticket resellers (scalpers), for shows which will undoubtably sell-out on their own. One theory is that since artists now routinely take 100% of the gate, by selling tickets to resellers (scalpers), concert venues and producers can actually realize a fee over and above the face value of the ticket, which by contract, must go to the artist.
And as of Oct. 1, ticket scalping in Connecticut is totally legal. So, if the theory is true, the audience gets cheated, the artist gets cheated and the venue and the scalpers make more. Hopefully artists will catch onto the scam and demand a cut of ticket blocks sold by venues and producers to the secondary market (scalpers).
It is just enough to turn me away from stadium shows for good.
