Rolling Stones Tour 2013: Tickets Selling Just Fine, Price Reduction Greatly Exaggerated Says Rep
It appears reports of the Rolling Stones slashing ticket prices for their 2013 tour may have been exaggerated...or maybe not.
On Monday, we reported that premium tickets for the Staples Center opener of the Stones 50th anniversary tour were being "flexed," i.e. having their prices reduced to avoid playing to empty seats.
"The Stones have cut the prices of 1000 premium seats at their Staples Center opener to $85," we wrote.
Now, co-president of AEG Live's Concerts West division John Meglan is telling Billboard ""There are no $600 tickets turning into $85 tickets, I can assure you of that."
"The fact is, the tour is doing great and we have no problems whatsoever," Meglen said.
However, he immediately doubles back on this claim saying ""Did we hit a point where we ran out of people that would buy at $600? Yeah."
"But why can't we do the 'market value' thing?" he added. "Why do we have to let the market value proposition live with the scalpers? Why should, in my estimation, $3 million go to the brokers, instead of the artists, in every one of these markets?"
So, Meglen is saying that they aren't reducing ticket prices on the $600 seats, except when they are.
Billboard goes on to call the release of 1,000 $85 tickets at the last minute a "strategic move," implying that it was a way to build excitement for the concert and not driven by a lack of demand. However, the act that they even have 1,000 premium seats left over at a high-profile event such as this speaks volumes for the trouble that the Stones are apparently not facing.
For their part, Keith Richards said they did their best to keep the ticket prices reasonable.
"From my point of view," Richards told Rolling Stone, "it's like this: We say we want to put a Stones tour together and people come to us with proposals. And these proposals are all basically the same. We actually did push down the prices a little bit. We took the lower offer, in other words. But, um, it's the price of the market. I don't really know. I don't have much to do with it other than I would like people to get in, to be able to afford to get in, without sort of starving their babies and all. And that's about it."