The truth about concert tickets, part 2: How many tickets go on sale for a show, anyway? Well…
[This is the second in a series of stories about the truth regarding concert tickets that I wrote for Global news. – AC]
Your favourite band has just announced a concert date for your city in a venue that has a capacity of 20,000 people. You reasonably assume that when you go online to buy your tickets through Ticketmaster, 20,000 tickets will be available for sale.
The exact number of tickets available for any given show at any given venue is a mystery. And while the Ontario Government wanted to make this sort of transparency part of its new legislation covering the sale and resale of event tickets — some MPPs wanted to ensure that 75 per cent of all tickets for every show be available to the general public — pressure from the concert industryforced them to back away from that provision.
For now, the concert ticket box office will remain a big black box. Here’s why.
