Temple of the Dog Tour Sells Out in THREE SECONDS. And You Wonder Why People are Pissed.
There was much excitement when Temple of Dog, the retroactively-labelled grunge supergroup, announced that it would reunite (sans Eddie Vedder) and tour for the first time. The occasion: the 25th anniversary of the release of their one-and-only album.
Grunge/Pearl Jam/Soundgarden fans freaked out. And with only a handful of shows scheduled, demand for tickets was bound to be high.
Enter the bots.
When the 20,000 or so available tickets went on sale, they all disappeared in three seconds. Not minutes or hours. Three seconds.
Within minutes, fans claimed those tickets started showing up on the secondary market for up to 50 times their face value. I must call bullshit on this one because I just did a quick look on Stubhub and found no such thing.
However, there are plenty of tickets available. When I checked, there were 1,731 seats available on Stubhub for the November 12 show in San Francisco with starting at around $160 USD each. They obviously found their way into the hands of opportunistic secondary sellers (read: scalpers) instead of real fans.
Goddam bots. The sooner they’re outlawed, the better.
Hi Alan. I enjoy reading your news everyday and I’ve been a longtime fan of your work. So it gives me zero pleasure to point out that there might be an error in this article. When news broke that Temple of the Dog were playing their 5 North American dates, I was surprised, intrigued and excited. Closest date to Calgary was the Seattle date, and when I logged on to ticketmaster, I was far from shocked to see their hometown date sold out. However, when I checked San Francisco, I found that their pre-sale was in progress. A quick google search for “Temple of the Dog presale” netted me the password within about 30 seconds. When I entered it onto the Ticketmaster site, plenty of General Admission tickets were available. So, either I was unbelievably lucky to hit the three-second window which was reported, or there was in fact more access to tickets than previously believed. Don’t get me wrong. I am as much against bots and scalpers as anyone else. I just thought you might like to know that there might be an error in this particular story. PS – I didn’t end up buying tickets that day as I wasn’t sure if I was prepared to fly to San Fran for the show. However, thanks to your information, it’s comforting to know that I can pick up a $160 ticket if need be. Again, not to side with scalpers in any way – but I think $160 for a ticket to a show 25 years in the making, with only 5 (now 8) show dates would actually be quite the bargain. Anyways, just my two cents and an FYI as well. Love your work! Keep it rolling!