Showbiz411

The Rolling Stones have sold out their two shows at the O2 Arena in London in just minutes. The official seller, Ticketmaster UK, has nothing available for either show, not in the last, last row or in standing room. Their website redirects to their suspicious secondary market seller, aka official scalping partner, called Get Me In. Haha. The tickets on that site start around 500 British pounds, or a thousand dollars. The best seats are up around $20,000 or more. Yikes.

The other big UK re-seller is ViaGogo, which is advertising on our site below. You can do a little better with them. ViaGogo will also be selling secondary tickets to the New Jersey shows when they go on sale. You can guess that American Ticketmaster will sell out immediately, and that the bulk of tickets will wind up on StubHub and ViaGogo. The resellers buy in bulk and then mark them up and sell them off. The presale for the Prudential Center starts tomorrow morning at 10am on Ticketmaster.

Hey–it’s a free market, and evidently people will pay just about anything to see the Stones–especially if this is the final official tour. (It probably is.)

This, you know, may be the last time.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=jRodNxDEiYc

Roger Friedman

Roger Friedman began his Showbiz411 column in April 2009 after 10 years with Fox News. Friedman previously wrote the Intelligencer column at New York Magazine, He writes for Parade magazine and has written for Details, Vogue, the New York Times, Post, and Daily News and many other publications. He is the writer and co-producer of a film about R&B Music called “Only the Strong Survive,” which was released by Miramax in 2003 and was a selection of the Cannes, Sundance, and Telluride Film festivals.