I Must Be in the Front Row
“If every ticket in the venue ‘sells out’ at the face value printed on the ticket, that wouldn’t be enough to pay the artist what they are contractually guaranteed by the promoter for the performance. How does the promoter make up the difference? You guessed it: by selling some of the best seats directly in the secondary market, so that artists don’t get flack from you for pricing them high right out of the gate. That means the artist is either directly complicit, or that the artist is taking a massive check for the performance while looking the other way. Goddammit, right?” Nathan Hubbard (who used to be the CEO of Ticketmaster) explains why you can never get good tickets to a major event. (I was gonna try to get some Warriors playoff tickets, but I didn’t vest fast enough.)