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Presale RANT


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The point of not having online ticket sales is so that it is more likely that fans, and not scalpers, will get the tickets because they will be willing to go wait at the box office. This is how it was done in the olden days, and how Wilco did it for their Warsaw show last summer. It does put fans who are not close to the venue at a disadvantage, but it gives that advantage to local residents. This is the first time Wilco has played Delaware, and my guess is that they will not be back for some time. Shouldn't locals, who otherwise have to drive to Philly or DC to see the band, get those tickets?

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The point of not having online ticket sales is so that it is more likely that fans, and not scalpers, will get the tickets because they will be willing to go wait at the box office. This is how it was done in the olden days, and how Wilco did it for their Warsaw show last summer. It does put fans who are not close to the venue at a disadvantage, but it gives that advantage to local residents. This is the first time Wilco has played Delaware, and my guess is that they will not be back for some time. Shouldn't locals, who otherwise have to drive to Philly or DC to see the band, get those tickets?

 

You're assuming that scalpers or those working for scalpers wouldn't be among those waiting in line at the box office. Even in the old days, when you had to line up at Ticketmaster outlets, I've seen scalpers hire homeless dudes to wait in line and buy tickets for them. So not having online sales (or limited online sales) doesn't always solve that problem.

 

I'm all for local residents having priority for tickets, but if that was the promoter's goal, then why have phone sales at all? Why not just sell all tickets at the box office? (A rhetorical question. I know the promoter's only goal is to sell all the tickets and if there's enough demand to do that with just in-person and box office sales, then obviously there isn't a need for online sales. It is quite a rare thing these days, though, to have almost no online sales. That's all I'm saying.)

 

I could be wrong, but I thought there were some tickets sold online for Warsaw last summer. I went to the box office at Irving Plaza, but I know some out-of-town people got tickets somehow. Maybe that was through the Wilcoworld presale, though.

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I sent an angry e-mail to a scalper selling tickets for $150 apiece on Ebay. His response: "It's capitalism, baby!" Yes, but that doesn't make it right. I'm pro-free market, but there ought to be laws preventing things like this from happening.

 

You know.. paying inflated prices for tickets suck but I drove an hour today to Wilmington and waited in line for 3 hours to get my tickets. While in line, everyone agreed that perhaps ebay isn't such a bad thing. Interestingly enough the people in line were mostly people with jobs. I was expecting a handful of college kids who skipped classes. It was really weird.

 

I felt bad for the people (about 15) who ended up with no tickets after 3+ hours.

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I sent an angry e-mail to a scalper selling tickets for $150 apiece on Ebay. His response: "It's capitalism, baby!" Yes, but that doesn't make it right. I'm pro-free market, but there ought to be laws preventing things like this from happening.

 

One way you could stop it would be by having Wilco play hockey arenas. They could maybe fill about 75% of the Wachovia Center in Philly and wipe out the market for scalpers. But who wins in that situation?

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Another way would be for Wilco to charge a lot more for tickets when they play really small venues. Then at least the band wins. Whenever they play the 9:30 Club in DC they sell out in minutes, and the tickets are all over ebay, stubhub, craigslist, etc. I couldn't find a ticket for the 2/26/08 show for $100, but the band only got $35 face value for those.

 

Right now Wilco is a scalper's dream for some of these small venues--low ticket face price, extremely high demand, so that there's virtually no risk for any old jackass who wants to buy tickets and turn them around for a quick buck.

 

If the band is going to keep ticket prices low for their fans (which I appreciate), they really need to come up with some defenses against scalpers (whom I hate).

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