The manager of Bruce Springsteen has weighed in on the ongoing controversy surrounding tickets to the veteran musician’s upcoming US tour. Announced earlier this month, Springsteen will perform 31 dates in the US from February 2023, his first full-scale tour since 2017.
However, backlash was soon in abundance as fans responded negatively to the “dynamic pricing” scheme implemented by Ticketmaster. As USA Today reported, the pricing scheme saw ticket prices rise to $5,000 USD due to a system that adjusts the price of tickets based on demand.
Bruce Springsteen – ‘Atlantic City’
In a statement released a few days ago, Ticketmaster shared some figures to defend the controversial system, which reportedly only effects the “platinum” tickets sold for the shows. According to the data, only 11.2% of all tickets were sold as platinum tickets, and only 1.3% were priced at or above $1,000 USD. Ticketmaster also noted that the average price for a ticket to Springsteen’s tour was $262 USD.
Now Jon Landau, the manager of Bruce Springsteen, has responded to the claims that Ticketmaster has been engaging in ticket scalping. “In pricing tickets for this tour, we looked carefully at what our peers have been doing,” Landau explained in a statement, via The New York Times. “We chose prices that are lower than some and on par with others.
“Regardless of the commentary about a modest number of tickets costing $1,000 or more, our true average ticket price has been in the mid-$200 range. I believe that in today’s environment, that is a fair price to see someone universally regarded as among the very greatest artists of his generation.”
The New York Times pointed out that Springsteen had previously been critical of Ticketmaster, having spoken out in 2009 after fans were reportedly redirected to a Ticketmaster-owned resale site called TicketsNow. TicketsNow shut its doors mere months later, having been fined $50,000 USD by the Illinois Attorney General as a result of widespread complaints.
