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Live Nation Wacked Out with $135 General Admission Lawn Seats

by on May.21, 2010, under Entertainment News

The boys over at Live Nation must be smoking some funny stuff lately to start charging $135 for the general admission lawn seating for the Jonas Brothers tour. Of course it does come with perks such as preferred parking, early entrance to the concert and of course the famously overpriced “Official Commemorative VIP Laminate”. Wow! All that for only $135!

It’s another sign that the bands don’t care for the fans when they charge $250, $276 with service charges, for Gold Circle seating, and sit the fan 14 rows from the stage! Remember, these guys are still with Disney. And their fans are still kids and teens for the most part. Better be rich parents if the kids want to sit anywhere near the Jonas Brothers!

Did anyone at Live Nation take the time to think that the reason fans are buying the tickets in the lawn general admission seating was because the rest of the tickets are already overpriced? And adding another $100 to the price of a lousy lawn space is pathetic at best.

It’s bad enough that the face value of the lawn seats is $37.50, but when they add the extra Ticketmaster  service charges, the price jumps to $50 each. And this is a Disney band, where the parents are footing the bill. And yet you could buy a $20 lawn ticket for many of the other performers coming to Sleep Train Amphitheater including retiring veterans, Brooks and Dunn and Rascal Flatts.

Irving Azoff and Live Nation may get ticket brokers to buy fewer tickets because of the huge increase in the price of a concert ticket in the last year or so, but they will also keep fans of the Jonas Brothers and other bands from buying concert tickets because of the prices and large number of bands touring now.

That is until they get the email that says, “Jonas Brothers Tickets – 2  for 1 sale!” and then only the early buyers will be pissed off.

How funny is it to make a $276 lousy seat a “Will Call” only ticket to stop the scalpers from selling an already overpriced ticket that brokers would be embarrassed to quote at that high of a price, for a seat 14 rows from the stage!

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3 comments for this entry:
  1. Jordan
    May 25th, 2010 on 6:25 am

    “…but they will also keep fans of the Jonas Brothers and other bands from buying concert tickets because of the prices and large number of bands touring now.”

    Concert tickets are priced based on demand. The fact that scalpers are able to mark up tickets and still sell them is indicative of an imbalance in the market: namely that the quantity demanded for tickets is greater than the quantity supplied. In this unfavorable market, individuals are willing to pay much more for tickets to see their favorite artists, and will ultimately do so. Concert tickets are relatively price inelastic.

    If you don’t like the way Live Nation prices its tickets, then show them who’s boss and boycott any concerts they bring to town that you would otherwise attend…

    Unfortunately, someone else will just buy your ticket and see the show while you’re hanging out on the internet blogging about how unfair it is.

  2. admin
    May 25th, 2010 on 8:19 am

    Your right, it is about supply and demand. At least with ticket brokers if the price was too high, they lowered their prices, with Live Nation, everyone pays the high price, and it won’t fluctuate. And I don’t attend overpriced concerts and thankfully I saw hundreds of them at reasonable prices before the recent price increases. There are a lot of concert goers complaining about the concert ticket prices and as Limp Bizkit, Christina Aguilera and the Eagles recently found out, they will stay away and you may have to cancel a concert or two, or an entire tour if the fans decide to stay away. Since this is just the start of the new corporate pricing plan by Live Nation, I will be watching to see just how much they screw up the relationship between fan and artist with the obvious disparity in seating offered to those with a lot of money, and those without. If you take an art and make it all about money, it’s not the same anymore.

  3. KJ
    August 14th, 2010 on 8:17 am

    Actually, the $135 lawn seats were a VIP package which also included access to the soundcheck (not just preferred parking and a laminate…). It’s not like they were forcing fans to pay that much money, you could still buy lawn seats for around $40. Same goes for the $250 seats. Those were VIP seats which included admission to the soundcheck. $250 is actually quite reasonable when you compare it to VIP packages for other artists.. This also wasn’t the only way to get close seats. There were plenty of floor seats released for the normal ticket value.