SEO-Ward

A step away from my usual SEO rantings and I can’t take credit for this list, credit goes to Kennyvader on the The Digital Fix

I was reminded of this as the ladies in my office are going crazy wanting tickets for the upcoming Madonna concert, where you can buy a preorder pass allowing you to buy tickets before they go on sale for the generous price of £15 (which they’re thinking of doing).

Standard large tour ticket selling tactics:-

1. Announce 2-3 nights only
2. Announce presale to fans / mobile phone / credit card customers … sometimes you can even get them to pay for the privilege … sell them all the less than ideal tickets that will be hard to sell in the real sale a few days later, maybe scatter the odd front row seat in there so that they don’t smell a rat
3. Open public sale, only put a few hundred tickets on sale for each night, grab newspaper headlines by claiming to be the fastest sellout ever.
4. Meanwhile sell all the best front block seats to legalised touts that regularly book blocks and pay in one go so minimal credit card costs
5. If really daring and uncaring, cut out some of the legalised tout companies and set aside all the decent tickets into “hospitality packages” and sell them yourself for fan-rapingly insane sums of money
6. Announce more “extra” nights by popular demand even though it’s literally impossible to book extra venue nights, lights, sound, staff, insurance, licence, transport etc without days or weeks of negotiations. Again only release a few hundred tickets for each one to maintain “sellout”
7. Repeat (6) every couple of hours or days until gullible public’s appetite finally slows
8. Enjoy having public’s money in the bank for best part of a year or more
9. Release all the remaining seats in a quiet steady trickle or in blocks whenever the talent is in the newspaper or appearing in some chat show
10. If the last tickets are proving hard to sell once the tour start nears, then use “new seats available due to stage plan having now being finalised” as being the excuse for loud public announcement of loads of seats being available for supposedly sell out gigs.

The general public seem to fall for this time after time…What happened to first come first serve ticket buying that still happens for the theatre.