Is Madonna having trouble selling concert tickets for the “Rebel Heart” tour? Not exactly. The tickets were sold, to re-sellers. And now the re-sellers are having trouble scalping the tickets to actual customers.
Madonna and Live Nation have made their money. But scalpers, er, “secondary ticket sellers” as they are now politely called, have huge inventories. The main focus is on two shows this month at Madison Square Garden and one at the Barclay’s Center in Brooklyn.
Checking StubHub and Mark’s Tickets, the number of seats is huge. Prices can be very high to sit right up front. But for a decent seat at any Madonna show, a die hard fan can do very well spending around $300. In Brooklyn bring binoculars: $200 will get you anything in the top tier. That’s $300 less than I paid to see the Rolling Stones there a couple of years ago.
The interactive map at MarksTickets.com show tickets at the Garden in every section at price levels akin to Broadway shows. And certainly, Madonna’s shows are stage spectaculars. Also, it’s noted that the actual stage in all locales is built with a runway that stretches the length of the venue– so even sitting far from the main stage isn’t so bad.
Meanwhile, Craigslist is filled with ads from regular people, as well as scalpers. Some “suddenly” can’t go to the show. But I suspect many, like George Costanza on “Seinfeld,” thought they’d flip a few seats at a profit. Now they’re offering what they bought at cost, or less. It’s worth checking.
All of this has nothing to do with Madonna or Live Nation, PS. Like I said, they made their money. The secondary market is a speculator’s game, a gamble that demand will outstrip supply.
PS If you bought a regular ticket to the tour, you were automatically offered a digital download of the album “Rebel; Heart” for free. But if scalpers bought up most of the tickets, that would also explain why few downloads occurred when the album, when it was released, bombed. You just can’t win these days.
