As a member of the official fan-club I was able to enter in the ticket pre-sales for 5 five shows on the bigger bang European tour. I thought that this meant that I would be guaranteed to get lucky at least once and get close to the stage. Imagine my surprise when the closest I got was about 25 rows back and off centre in Hamburg. London was a bigger disappointment still. I got the worst shows in the house for the first two shows. How is this possible?
Also I noticed the same people at each concert I attended at the very front. Do know someone, something I don't?

Hot seats

Yes, iamthedj (Bowie-song, nice one!), you are right about the Fan Club tickets being totally crappy. The membership is a waste, and should not be used on buying tickets in arena or stadium shows. But, if there's a club show comming up, it's good to have a membership one can use. Got me into several club shows on the Licks tour. (all except the Astoria show)
You are also right about seing the same people in the front rows. They're there due to:
Friends and hard core fans of the band who travel with them world wide.
People who buy the Fan Club travel package through Fan Asylum.
People who buy Hot tickets through the fan club. This year they charged £ 250 per ticket in the O2. That included a toilet bag and a laminate. So, yes: IT IS A RIP OFF. But you get access to good seats.

I bought several packages for friends, business contacts, family and some people on this board. The toilet bags and laminates only arrived one month ago, after I threatened the company who handled the sales of the hot seats with talking to the English tabloids, and sending messages to the Stones management. Threee days later, the packages arrived by FedEx. But it's not a very nice way to run a business, and I don't trust the company for a second.

>> Do [they] know someone, something I don't? <<

maybe! people understand that the pre-sales don't promise great tickets - they just give you access
to whatever tickets have been allocated for a given pre-sale, which may or may not include a lot of good seats.
so some people wait for so-called ticket drops: little spurts of tickets that become available (for various reasons)
after the main sales. what a lot of people wait for are those "miracle tickets" that the Stones have offered
at most stadiums for several tours now: the first eight or ten rows are priced lower than the rows further back.
you need nerves of steel to wait for those, of course, and you gots to be poised to purchase as soon as they appear.

but really the tricks for getting good seats, whether in a presale, public sale, ticket drop or parking lot, are:
1] don't buy tickets you won't be happy with, and then
2] be happy with the tickets you buy. (someone else always gets better seats to more shows cheaper - don't fret about that.)



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2007-11-07 13:10 by with sssoul.

iamthedj Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> As a member of the official fan-club I was able to
> enter in the ticket pre-sales for 5 five shows on
> the bigger bang European tour. I thought that
> this meant that I would be guaranteed to get lucky
> at least once and get close to the stage. Imagine
> my surprise when the closest I got was about 25
> rows back and off centre in Hamburg. London was a
> bigger disappointment still. I got the worst
> shows in the house for the first two shows. How
> is this possible?
> Also I noticed the same people at each concert I
> attended at the very front. Do know someone,
> something I don't?

I can't confirm this for Hamburg (and Dusseldorf and Frankfurt). It was easy to get tickets within the first 3 rows. You just had to be online when the sale started. At a later time you could even buy tickets within the first 3 rows without any memberships.

Unfortunately London was a different story.

Words of wisdom here from with sssoul, this bears repeating when tickets next go on sale



with sssoul Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
>> 1] don't buy tickets you won't be happy with, and
> then
> 2] be happy with the tickets you buy. (someone
> else always gets better seats to more shows
> cheaper - don't fret about that.)

>> I can't confirm this for Hamburg (and Dusseldorf and Frankfurt).
It was easy to get tickets within the first 3 rows.
You just had to be online when the sale started. <<

except for the chaos that resulted from moving the stage, the ticket sales for the German shows
were handled really well - you could specify what seats you wanted, which was like a dream come true
compared with Ticketmaster's livid-making system of making you "fish" for something acceptable.
(and i can confirm that you could get the first three rows at Hamburg quite easily in the "new member" sale.
people were still stunned to find it was a seated show, remember? which must have slowed down the rush some -
when people expect a General Admission floor, they don't rush so much to the presales.)

I was fortunate enough to secure a Hot Ticket from a member of this site at the O2 and it was well worth the money for a number of reasons:

1) The closest I have ever been to see the band in 30 odd years (sixth row)
2) I had already purchased fan club membership and despite a lot of hassle was able to claim it back ($100)
3) I met really nice people from this site and have kept in touch
4) My laminate and shaving bag was posted on to me a few weeks ago and I have something to remind me of that superb weekend - yippee!

with sssoul Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> >> Do know someone, something I don't? <<
>
> maybe! people understand that the pre-sales don't
> promise great tickets - they just give you access
> to whatever tickets have been allocated for a
> given pre-sale, which may or may not include a
> lot of good seats.
> so some people wait for so-called ticket drops:
> little spurts of tickets that become available
> (for various reasons)
> after the main sales. what a lot of people wait
> for are those "miracle tickets" that the Stones
> have offered
> at most stadiums for several tours now: the first
> eight or ten rows are priced lower than the rows
> further back.
> you need nerves of steel to wait for those, of
> course, and you gots to be poised to purchase as
> soon as they appear.
>
> but really the tricks for getting good seats,
> whether in a presale, public sale, ticket drop or
> parking lot, are:
> 1] don't buy tickets you won't be happy with, and
> then
> 2] be happy with the tickets you buy. (someone
> else always gets better seats to more shows
> cheaper - don't fret about that.)

All very easy in hindsight, though, now that we're aware of the various ruses about releasing the crap tickets first and having ticket drops a few days before the shows etc. Problem was that on the Licks tour,as gstone pointed out, fan club members WERE looked after a lot better in terms of ticket allocation, as was also the case for some shows of the ABB tour. So it was fairly reasonable to expect a fair crack of the whip.

Unfortunately the whole system was also dependent on where you wanted to see the band. Getting good seats in a presale in Germany this summer for example was an entirely different ball game than doing so for London - even though they provided good seats for twickenham in 2006



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2007-11-07 14:44 by Gazza.

I don't go to nearly as many concerts as some folk around here but I have to say that out of the concerts that I have been to, none of the "best" seats that I've had have been through the fan club. I've had some decent ones, near the b-stage sometimes, but not worth the extra money of a membership when public sale has got me as close or better for other gigs.

I think I've bust a button on my trousers....

>> All very easy in hindsight <<

well ... people in europe definitely had an advantage in being able to observe/learn from
the US presales & sales in 05 before it was our turn to take our leaps through the flaming TM hoops -
of course then they went and changed the presale rules for Europe - but still,
what i'd learned about the TM computers by watching the US sales was a *huge* help.
so was the beautiful networking by gallant folks who let the rest of us know about ticket drops -
flairville in particular comes to mind - thank you flairville! and all you gallant other informers too

and for the record: i did get great tickets for a few shows in presales, even in ones handled by TM.
some of the ticket allocations for presales were pretty good - the bitch was that you couldn't count on it.
and that's where Principle 1 (noted above) comes into play. it can be mighty freakin nerve-shredding, though ...

with sssoul Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> >> All very easy in hindsight <<

>
> and for the record: i did get great tickets for a
> few shows in presales, even in ones handled by
> TM.
> some of the ticket allocations for presales were
> pretty good - the bitch was that you couldn't
> count on it.

Likewise. Being offered 4th row center for Twickenham in the first minute of a presale for £60 and then 12th row in B3 or something for Glasgow (a much lower demand show) for £150 was a shining example of that.


> and that's where Principle 1 (noted above) comes
> into play. it can be mighty freakin
> nerve-shredding, though ...


I actually take some kind of perverse enjoyment of the whole adrenalin rush. I ended up getting very good (and in some cases great) tickets for pretty much every show in Europe that I attended. However, there wasnt one of them that I couldnt have obtained in a public sale with a bit of patience, timing, networking and experience in how the 'system' worked. The fan club presales turned out to be as much use as a pair of tits on a bull.

>> I actually take some kind of perverse enjoyment of the whole adrenalin rush <<

yeah, it is a beautiful high when one finally scores!
and some of that of course comes from the fraying nerves on the way to scoring -
still, Ticketmaster seriously overdoes the nerve-fraying, at least for me.
the amount of adrenaline provided by the German sales this year, where i could hand-pick my seat,
was just about the perfect level of fray for me.

smile: i always wonder, just after a sale, if the Stones have any clue
how much sheer *sensation* they're providing us with, way way before the show.
it is something they've never gone through - not even Mr I've-Done-Everything Richards :E

The problem is essentially one of transparency.
Most of us are aware of the stuff discussed above.. but we're in the minority.
The typical fan or concert goer will assume that if he gets in line early, he should have a choice of the best tickets.
He shouldn't find that they've been long allocated to some "Johnny come lately" willing or able to pay over the odds. He should neither find that, weeks after he's bought the best tickerts he could get, better ones are suddenly available.
There's nothing we can do about it. It's business...but it's also bollocks !



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2007-11-07 15:50 by Spud.

Gazza wrote

>>However, there wasnt one of them that I couldn't have obtained in a public sale with a bit of patience, timing, networking and experience in how the 'system' worked. The fan club presales turned out to be as much use as a pair of tits on a bull.>>

I agree with Gazza that it's about experience, a bit of knowledge and especially NETWORKING.

I recently visited NYC and who was on at MSG? - Bruce, who I had never managed to see before. I signed on to the Backsteets fan site and after a couple of days managed to link into a fan who had a couple of spare tickets. During the sale of tickets for the event I had 3 computers on trying to secure decent seats but the best I could get was at the rear of the stage in the back rows.

Networking is the way to do it because as with this site, nobody is allowed to sell above face value.

Maybe it is the shows I pick or maybe it is just plain luck but here is what I have gotten via the fan club pre-sales:

2002 2 tickets to Wiltern theater, LA, second row balcony
2003 2 tickets Olympia Theater, Paris
2005 4 tickets, row 2 floor, LA Forum (for March '06)
2006 4 tickets, row 4 dead center, Vancouver BC Place

Plus a good friend won the Beacon Essay contest via the fan club and brought me, since I brought him to the Wiltern.

Here is hoping my 2007 renewal will bring me MSG for April 2008 or, even better, a theater show.

iamthedj Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
Do [they] know someone,
> something I don't?


some of them in the seats up front DO know someone you (and i) don't. the band "VIP" tickets are up there too.

georgeV - you've been very lucky, i guess lightening can strike twice.

fan club tickets sucked the big one. they can f off.

basic rule of thumb :

Fan club presales are only worth it if they get you tickets for a theatre show OR in the first ten or so rows on the floor for an arena show.

If you dont think you're going to get either for a show at some point in the next 12 months, then dont waste your money.

You'll pretty much always be able to get pretty close at a stadium show at some point between the sale date and the show date and will also probaly be able to get something decent for an arena show.

the Licks presales worked fine what with all the theatre shows, but it had its flaws. One was that for the US theatre shows, you had to live in the US or Canada - the same restrictions on the location of the buyer werent in force for the rest of the world (which affected me personally as I got to the arena and stadium shows in BOTH NYC and LA but couldnt apply for Roseland and Wiltern tickets and the US based fan I was going with got shut out of the sales)

A second one was that when the sales for the stadium-arena-theatre trilogies tended to all go on sale simultaneously. The expression "circle jerk" springs to mind.

Thirdly, your fan club membership conditions limited you to one membership per person (or was it per household). So, in THEORY you couldnt buy tickets in presales for more than one theatre show - even with a different credit card. The regulations actually stated that doing so would mean the first one would be invalidated. As it turned out, they didnt enforce this and a lot of people got tickets to multiple theatre shows, but I think quite a few people (myself included) didnt go for other theatre shows in case it messed up the purchase for the one we already had (Astoria in my case). Of course, by the time we all realised it wouldnt be a problem, all the theatre shows had been long sold out. I was able to get presale tickets for both Dublin shows on different credit cards though.

>> The expression "circle jerk" springs to mind. <<

not "simultaneous orgasm"? i thought you like the rush :E

i was out of commission for the Licks tour, but i heard that you had to buy tickets sight unseen in those sales -
you chose your price category and only found out when you got the tickets where they were located. is that not true?

with sssoul Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> >> The expression "circle jerk" springs to mind.
> <<
>
> not "simultaneous orgasm"? i thought you like the
> rush :E

Not when part of you gets satisfied and another part remains frustrated!!

>
> i was out of commission for the Licks tour,

I wont ask!

but i
> heard that you had to buy tickets sight unseen in
> those sales -
> you chose your price category and only found out
> when you got the tickets where they were located.
> is that not true?

Maybe someone in the US can confirm this, but I THINK that applied in a DIFFERENT presale which wasnt the fan club one but which was run by the Goody's record shop chain.

You were certainly able to see what was offered on the rs.com sale - although there wasnt the option to buy the membership at the same time as your tickets (unlike the ABB arrangement) - and there was no refund of your $100 if you didnt buy tickets.