Question of the Day - 15 October 2018

The good news about Las Vegas is that it's the number-one live-music destination in the world. All the hottest acts come through here; along with the many residencies, literally millions of tickets to all these acts are sold every year.

So you'd think they'd be easy tickets to get. But the bad news, in terms of pricing and availability, is this: Rarely do the biggest artists play to the potential tickets they can sell. They can perform only so many nights, especially with grueling road schedules (one of the reasons that Las Vegas residencies are so popular with superstars); the venues have only so many booking dates; and they don't want empty seats, leaving ticket revenues on the floor. This always leaves demand. In addition, before tickets go on sale, credit-card members, fan clubs, the promoter, the manager, the venue, etc. get first dibs.

Then, using sophisticated tech, ticket resellers try to buy up big blocks of the most in-demand tickets in order to really jack up the prices and make big profits -- which is why we’re not surprised to hear that StubHub and Vivid are charging five to eight times the cost of the starting price of tickets.

Bottom line: Regular fans are shut out from the initial ticket prices. 

In the case of Phil Collins, it gets worse. Because of his physical condition he is playing a very limited number of dates (13 in the U.S.) on his “Not Dead Yet Live” tour. (Collins has had serious back problems for years and he often performs sitting in a chair.) In addition, Collins is one of the world’s best-selling artists; only he and Paul McCartney have sold more than 100 million records worldwide as solo artists and band members.

A quick check on Craig’s List at the time of this writing (October 11) turned up three private ticket resellers for Collins’ Vegas show. One was asking $800, another $700, and a third $200. It seems to us that if you pay attention and jump on deals like the $200 one, you might save yourself some dough.

Another idea comes from Pat Christenson, author of our book Rock Vegas (the one to read if you're at all interested in the history of live music and how it evolved in the U.S., including how Las Vegas became the world's number-one live-music destination, with a whole chapter on ticketing issues). He tells us, "Ticket prices on secondary sites like StubHub peak in the middle of a sales cycle. Keep an eye out for bargains in the last days before the concert, right up to showtime."

Finally, you could also wait until the night of the concert and show up at the MGM Grand Garden Arena, looking for scalpers, but that’s a little risky. Counterfeit tickets aren’t uncommon and for a show that's been sold out since day one, you probably won't get much of a bargain that night.

Waddaya say, QoDers? Any other suggestions at this late date for the Phil Collins concert?