update: It seems that all of the stadium shows are being moved to smaller arenas for lack of sales.
I’ve been telling you for weeks that Justin Bieber’s “Love” tour was in trouble. Now the Beebs has had two dates at stadiums– in Houston and Cleveland– cancelled. This is for lack of sales, not because of the corona virus.
Bieber’s ticket sales are tied to his skimpy album sales of “Changes,” his first record in four and a half years. This past week, “Changes” sank again, selling just 17,000 CDs and paid downloads, and another 30,000 in sales equivalent streams. After three weeks, “Changes” sits at number 5 on the chart monitored by hitsdailydouble.com and Buzz Angle. In its second week, “Changes” dropped about 90%.
The album and its individual tracks, with the exception of “Intentions,” featuring Quavo, is not generating much buzz.
The lack of ticket sales is alarming. The apathy toward Bieber’s tour started before the Virus Panic, but of course, it can be used now as an explanation. Of course, other shows are still doing fine, so that explanation may be hard to rationalize.
The first stop on the tour is Seattle on May 14th, where there are still hundreds of seats for sale at the CenturyLink Field. The lowest price is $49. Three nights later in Portland, only the floor sections are booked up for secondary sales. The rest of the Moda Center is for sale, again with hundreds of seats.
As the summer goes along, things just get worse. Atlanta on July 18th is the same as the others. As with all Bieber’s dates, the size of the arenas has been cut by at least a third, with venues shutting off big sections from sales rather than risk embarrassment. Ticketmaster has stopped selling tickets for Nashville date on July 11th. But StubHub is offering hundreds of seats again in every section down to $41 if you’re so inclined.
The frightening part there: StubHub is running ads on Yahoo and other places for their hundreds of cheap Bieber seats. See below.
Again, stay tuned. There may be more cancellations.
