Unless you鈥檝e been blessed with fingers as fast as a robot, are among the lucky few to win a contest or go to sleep each night on a huge pile of money like Scrooge McDuck, chances are you won鈥檛 be in the audience when P!nk performs at Rogers Arena this spring.
At least, not in a seat that falls within the same postal code as the stage.
Almost as soon as tickets went on sale earlier this year for the May 12 Vancouver concert, they were snapped up by ticket re-sellers 鈥� using automated systems 鈥� at speeds the average human has no hope of matching. Moments later, those tickets reappeared on multiple secondary sites at (no surprise) grossly inflated prices.
The mid-$200s will now get you a nosebleed seat, while being within sweat-spray distance of the artist could cost upwards of $3,800. Angry would-be concertgoers quickly started tweeting their disappointment directly at P!nk, but the truth is that鈥檚 how it goes for most big acts these days.
And that鈥檚 just the sticker price. Buried in there, too, are some usurious service fees.
For what service, exactly, no one knows.
If you鈥檙e not paying attention to which site you use, you could also be blindsided by an exchange from U.S. to Canadian dollars, further boosting the cost of your already overpriced tickets.
There鈥檚 no reason this practice should be legal. And yet it is, because the only law that applies, apparently, is the law of supply and demand.
I got burned earlier this year when a birthday present for my mom 鈥� two seats to k.d. lang 鈥� ended up costing more than $600. Luckily, it was an amazing show, but I would have enjoyed it just as much had I paid face value for the seats.
As I looked around at the capacity crowd that August night, I tried to mentally calculate just how much the re-sellers had raked in for doing basically nothing. Now multiply that by the literally dozens of shows and concerts at venues across the city every year and the numbers are staggering.
Two months later, because I鈥檓 apparently not organized enough to manage even my meagre social calendar, I had the pleasure of attending not one, but two local theatrical performances in a single day on Oct. 28. During a matinee performance of Royal Canadian Theatre Company鈥檚 farce, the Hound of the Baskervilles, three actors and one stage tech worked up a sweat racing back and forth across the stage at the ACT Theatre in Maple Ridge, changing costumes, sets and characters on the fly 鈥� and being hilarious in the process.
And they did it all for a crowd of fewer than 30 people 鈥� a pretty sad sight in an auditorium that seats 486.
That evening, at Trinity Western University鈥檚 SAMC Theatre, during a performance of the period drama, The Cover of Life, a slightly larger cast gave an equally terrific performance to a somewhat larger crowd, but it was by no means a full house.
To see so many empty seats twice on a Saturday was a bit disheartening for me. I can鈥檛 imagine how it felt to the actors who spend months rehearsing their parts.
Think about how great it would be to have A-list celebrities perform to thousands of empty seats 鈥� even once. Ticket re-sellers would lose their shirts and the artists themselves might find some incentive to step in.
That鈥檚 a fantasy, of course. People won鈥檛 stop going to see the big-name acts, and they鈥檒l continue to pay through the nose to do it. Rogers Arena will be full on May 12 and P!nk鈥檚 show will no doubt be out of this world.
I won鈥檛 be there; I can鈥檛 afford it.
If there鈥檚 a local production or concert happening that night, maybe I鈥檒l make a point of seeing that instead.
It might not have the cachet of a best-selling musician or a touring Broadway production, but as far as local entertainment goes, much of what we get here in the Valley is top-notch. Add to that the fact that ticket prices usually range from $15 to $50, that you鈥檙e supporting local talent, and that the drive home won鈥檛 take an hour, and it makes sense to spend a few more of your entertainment dollars closer to home.
And best of all, re-sellers won鈥檛 get a cut of the action.
