Reilly’s Right - Tickets Are Cheap

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(R-ME) Sherman: If there’s ten thousand seats in the area, are you selling 10,000 tickets?

(TM CEO) Azoff: Never. On average we might see 80 or 85 percent of the seats.

Sherman: Are those the good ones or the bad ones you’re not getting?

Azoff: The vast majority of the best seats in the house.

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From a later article:

[..]

Hmm .. it sems like an almost insoluble economic problem. They have inventory … it’s sitting on a shelf … and it’s highly perishable—worthless at a minute after showtime.

Whatever can be done?

The article crystalized a feeling that I had several times while watching the hearings on the merger: Why does Live Nation need to merge with Ticketmaster to deal with the alleged broken concert industry?

In this case, why couldn’t it just, you know, sell the farther-back seats for less money?

[...]

Indeed, I recently got an email from someone who added an additional wrinkle: Paraphrased, the point was simply that LN controls too many goddamn venues.

Why are the company’s bookers not putting acts in smaller rooms? Because LN has to keep its own buildings in action, even if they’re too big for the artist in question. [em. orig.]

Are these guys squirrelly or what?