New York Post on high ticket prices

["Brian Cady" <cadyb@home.com>]

Available on line at:
http://www.nypost.com/entertainment/12014.htm

TICKET SHOCK!
Sunday,October 1,2000
By COREY LEVITAN

Anyone who's attended a concert recently knows that ticket prices have never
been higher. But if you think the blame lies with greedy promoters or ticket
handlers, think again: It's the stars themselves who are responsible for
ravaging your wallet.
Concert promoters enter bidding wars to secure the rights for every major
tour, competing to guarantee a minimum dollar amount the artist will earn
for each show. The higher the artist's guarantee, the higher the ticket
price.

"If [performers] are concerned about the ticket price, they always have the
ability to say, 'I want my tickets to be no more than X,'" notes Gary
Bongiovanni, editor of the concert trade magazine Pollstar. "But at this
point, most artists are just taking the money."

On their joint tour last year, Bob Dylan and Paul Simon reportedly split a
guarantee of as much as $500,000 per performance. For her New Year's Eve
concert at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, Barbra Streisand enjoyed a reported
guarantee of $13 million.

Promoters pass on the cost of these high guarantees to consumers, usually
taking no more than 10 percent of ticket profits for themselves.

The guarantee practice has driven up prices for the top 50 concert tours an
average of 17 percent since last year. According to new research from
Pollstar, average prices swelled from $38.56 in 1999 to $44.88 for the first
six months of 2000.

Some big names are charging so much more for their shows these days, fans
will have to get a second job in order to afford a ticket.

Streisand - who claimed to call it a career this week with two final
performances at Madison Square Garden - charged $350 for the top tickets on
her last tour, in 1994. This time, the ducats started at $125 but zoomed up
to $1,500 (not counting the $2,500 tickets that included dinner and extras).
That's a 400 percent increase.

A premium seat for the current Who tour, which hits the Garden Tuesday,
Wednesday, Friday and Saturday (the Wallflowers are also on the bill),
fetches $250, 12 times what it cost to see the band's first "farewell" trek
in 1982.

On the rise for decades, ticket prices began a steep climb in 1994, after
the Eagles proved they could top the $100 barrier and still pack huge
houses.

"This is the equivalent of box-office extortion," says Russ Haven of the
consumer group NYPIRG. "Average fans can't afford these sky-high ticket
prices. The loyal fans who built the careers of these artists are competing
with corporate expense accounts, and that's a competition they'll always
lose."

Some of an artist's take goes toward the escalating costs of insurance, crew
labor and production elements. But much of it doesn't.

"It all depends on the tour," says promoter John Scher, whose Metropolitan
Entertainment recently brought Metallica and the Tattoo the Earth tour to
Giants Stadium for a top ticket price of $50.

"Almost all acts put major money into sound and lights," Scher says. So
eyebrows are rightly raised when a young band such as Creed can play big
arenas yet still keep ticket prices between $27 and $36.

"The mentality of a lot of people is, 'Let's get as much as we can now,"'
says Rick DeVoe, manager of San Diego's Blink-182, which charged $15 to $25
for its recent summer tour. "But we've made a lot of money from our record
deals and other avenues. I'm looking more at longevity. We feel that these
fans are gonna be with us for life."

Industry insiders also finger SFX, the country's largest concert promoter
and owner of such New York venues as Roseland, Irving Plaza, the Beacon
Theatre and Jones Beach Theater, for offering artists big guarantees.

"They're causing the problem by offering high guarantees to artists that are
impossible to resist, just so they can price independent promoters out of
business," one independent promoter said on condition of anonymity. (SFX did
not return The Post's phone calls.)

Sky-high prices have not slowed sales, though some New Year's Eve concerts
last year were canned due to a lack of interest. In general, fans seem
willing to pay. The question now is: How much higher can ticket prices go?

"If suddenly the public stops buying concert tickets at the current prices,
I would suspect you'd see some pressure to be lowered," says Bongiovanni.
"But, at this point, we haven't seen anything like that."
By COREY LEVITAN
Copyright 2000 NYP Holdings, Inc.

        -Brian in Atlanta
         The Who This Month!
        http://members.home.net/cadyb/who.htm