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January 24, 2006

U2 Tickets a Hot Commodity Online

By Greg Wiles, The Honolulu Advertiser

Aloha Stadium will prohibit scalpers from selling tickets to U2's April 8 concert on its property, but fans desperate for seats can look online, where a brisk market is developing.

They just need to be prepared to pay as much as 10 times more than face value.

As of late last week, some of the best reserved seating was available at $1,770 from Internet resellers and marketplaces. The same seat sold for $165 when 35,000 tickets went on sale on Jan. 14.

Hundreds, if not thousands, of tickets for the Dublin, Ireland-based band's show, anticipated to be the biggest concert in the Islands this year, are being re-offered online at sites like eBay, StubHub.com and FriendlyTickets.com. The Internet has made it easier for ticket brokers to do business, while giving individuals and scalpers a chance to make a quick profit.

Among the sellers on eBay was Bill Aman, a Mainland U2 fan who started reselling the band's tickets last year when he ended up with a pair of disappointing seats during a pre-sale event for fan club members.

That led him to check resale prices on eBay, where people were turning around and reselling some tickets for more than double.

"I was blown away," Aman wrote in an e-mail. Later, when ticket sales were opened up to everyone through Ticketmaster, he and a friend bought up $2,000 worth and began reselling them on eBay.

"In the end, we made enough money for all of us to go to that show ($724 for four seats next to the stage) and an extra couple hundred dollars to go out to dinner beforehand," Aman said in a message.

Some O'ahu residents also have the same thing in mind, having bought tickets for what is one of the fastest-selling concerts in Honolulu's history. All but 1,000 seats were gone within 45 minutes of the show going on sale, said Patrick Leonard, spokesman for Aloha Stadium.

How much profit they'll make, if any, may depend on whether the band's concert promoters add another show. As of Friday, they hadn't.

A Honolulu resident going by the eBay screen name of Bowen5310 last week offered four choice tickets for $1,600. In an e-mail, he said he stood in line for them at a Ticketmaster counter at a Times Supermarkets location.

"Right now, it looks like people are waiting to see if a second show will be announced," Bowen5310 said, responding to an e-mail inquiring about response to his sale. "If not, tickets should go for a lot."

Reselling of tickets isn't illegal in Hawai'i, though venues such as Aloha Stadium, the Neal S. Blaisdell Center and the Waikiki Shell don't allow it on their properties. Online is a different story, with tickets available to almost any hard-to-get seat you can imagine, even the venerated Merrie Monarch Festival.

The list includes the Feb. 12 Pro Bowl (as much as $420 each for prime sideline seats on Tick etTriangle.com, compared to a face value of $150), Jimmy Buffett's concert last April, and the USC-UH football game.

"It's part of the market that's irritating," said Barbara Saito, general manager for Tom Moffatt Productions, Hawai'i's largest concert promoter. "But until people stop patronizing these types of places, they're not going to go away."

People buying from scalpers and fraudulent resellers run the risk of buying counterfeit tickets. Rolling Stone magazine reported 250 people for U2's Boston concerts last year got bogus tickets from sellers online.

Nationally, the ticket resale market for concerts, sporting events, stage shows and other events is estimated to be about $10 billion, about $2 billion of which is online, said Sean Pate, spokesman for San Francisco-based StubHub.com, a ticket marketplace. He said the online segment may be growing at 50 to 60 percent annually, while more traditional means, such as hawking tickets in front of arenas and placing ads on bulletin boards, is growing by 10 to 15 percent a year.

That's got the attention of major corporations and StubHub's marketing partners, including several NFL and NBA teams, AOL, and artists as diverse as Coldplay and Jessica Simpson.

Late last week there were 935 tickets for U2's Honolulu concert listed on StubHub, 480 on eBay and 730 on TicketTriangle.

StubHub makes its money from commissions. Sellers pay StubHub 15 percent of a ticket's purchase price, while buyers pay 10 percent. EBay's seller charges vary depending on the sales price.

Tickets for Honolulu concerts usually sell for less than tickets in larger markets, and resellers face disaster when artists add shows, said David Cabrera, vice president of marketing for Petaluma, Calif.-based ticket broker FriendlyTickets.com.

"We got crushed on the Eagles," said Cabrera, who brokered about 40 seats to the shows. He remembers taking a loss on a pair of second-row seats that cost him $270 each. When the Eagles doubled the number of Honolulu shows to four, he was forced to sell the pair of tickets for $180.

Cabrera said to make a profit on tickets for three American Idol concerts here in September 2004, he had to fly to Honolulu and spread word among hotel concierges that he had tickets. He also hawked some of the front-row seats he had on the street before the shows.

Prices for the U2 show ranged widely on the Web late in the week. FriendlyTickets.com, a site trying to build a name as having the lowest prices, had tickets ranging from $250 to $1,770 for reserved seats directly facing the stage in the stadium's orange section. The seats for $250 were from Cabrera's own inventory and cost him about $185. Higher-priced tickets were from other brokers who listed on his site, he said.

As of late last week Cabrera thought the resale prices for U2 in Honolulu will likely drop. He said his company, FriendlyTick ets.com, didn't buy as many tickets as it could have for the U2 show, given his knowledge of Hawai'i and prior experience.

For other, larger cities Cabrera obtained as many as 300 floor tickets sought by fans wanting to get close to the band. For Ho-nolulu, he bought about 100 of the $49.50 floor tickets and resold them last week for $75.50 each.

U2 reserved-seat prices jumped from $450 to $900 in 24 hours for one of the band's San Francisco dates, Cabrera said. Some Rose Bowl tickets surged to $2,500 the day of the game.

Cabrera says despite losing money on some events, he and others in online ticket brokering see the business growing.

"It's substantial," said Stub Hub.com's Pate, noting his site has about 1.1 million tickets for sale on an average day. "The spread of the Internet has facilitated a new outlet for people to buy and sell tickets."

Copyright © 2006 The Honolulu Advertiser. All rights reserved.

Posted by Jonathan at 12:59 AM | Comments (0)

January 08, 2006

U2 Fans Rocked by Backpackers' Price Hikes

By IRENE CHAPPLE

U2 fans travelling to Auckland are being charged extra accommodation costs - raising the hackles of some who say they are already spending thousands to see the Irish rock legends.

Christchurch man Don Burns was shocked to find prices at Auckland Central Backpackers would increase almost 20 per cent while the Irish supergroup was in town.

Burns and seven others are travelling from Christchurch, Wellington and Masterton for the St Patrick's day concert, U2's first in New Zealand since 1993.

The 38,000 tickets for each concert sold out in 90 minutes and group organiser Sally Johnston said the four couples were spending about $1500 each on their rock'n'roll holiday.

Plans went sour after they tried to re-organise their accommodation and found prices had been raised for the weekend. Johnston said she booked four double rooms at the backpackers for $67 each and when she called back to change two of them for $88 ensuites she found prices had gone up to $80 and $105.

The backpackers' front office manager Andrew Hoey said prices had been put up for the Big Day Out and U2 because demand was high and "we had a tough year (last year) so basically we see this as an opportunity to get it back".

The decision to raise prices - which had been done only once before, for the Lions tour - was a "hard dilemma".

"We talk about it a lot, but we have to make money," he said.

Hoey said he would charge the group $67 a double room because it was the original quote given.

A quick accommodation survey by the Sunday Star-Times found other hotels and backpackers put prices up for events such as the Lions tour. The Duxton had not increased prices for U2, but discount specials such as the "superdocket" $199 deal were unavailable.

The Carlton Hotel's director of sales, Brendon Bainbridge, said room prices set before the Lions tour were up from $225 to $250, but when the expected truckloads of fans failed to come, prices dropped to around $200 a room.

The hotel had not increased prices for the U2 weekend but would be unlikely to offer discounts on its published $225 rate.

Bainbridge said customers should expect to pay more for accommodation at premium times, comparing it to flying at Christmas or eating out on public holidays.

"If you and 80,000 of your friends are converging on the same place the price might be higher ... but I haven't seen hotels doing anything crazy".

--Stuff.co.nz

Posted by Jonathan at 01:52 AM | Comments (2)