Thanks to Steve Morse and Bruce Mohl of the Boston Globe for putting a special highlight on official musician fan clubs, and how they’re servicing their fans by offering ticket presales, and the concerns faced because of them.
The Business and Money section of the Boston Globe focused on a guide to tickets – whether it’s sports tickets, concert tickets, or anything in the city and how scalping is a force in the free market. This was a section I couldn’t put down today, especially given the recent Chicago Sun-Times interview with Larry Mullen, Jr. by Jim DeRogatis.
Some highlights from Morse’s story:
Sebastian Clayton, Adam’s brother who runs U2.com, said “We weren’t expecting the amount of members who joined,” and that the system was overwhelmed when tickets became available in January. Sebastian says, “We were left in the lerch and weren’t able to fill everyone’s order.” The story also states that Sebastian said “the problem was fixed after U2 tacked on another leg to it’s tour.”
It’s interesting that now as U2 hits the major cities within the next four weeks – Chicago, Boston and New York City – that both Chicago and Boston newspapers are still reporting about U2’s tour ticketing woes.
I don’t know why the media are still beating this story into the ground. Especially given the fact that U2 are playing a total of 7-8 times in each of these major market cities when it’s all said-and-done.
Now – instead of focusing on the fanclubs, let’s focus on stopping scalpers charging an ivy-league college tuition for tickets. Surely, there must be something we can do to put them out of business!