This week, tickets for the fall USA leg of The River Tour went on sale. So did Springsteen’s Official Platinum Seats on Ticketmaster. These tickets range in price from $375-$500 in Chicago, $350-$500 in Virginia Beach and $500 in DC. They also have to be purchased in sets of 2, in Chicago and Virginia Beach, so would cost at minimum $700 depending on concert location.
In the sections where the tickets are located, the normal price is $150-$155 plus fees. According to Ticketmaster Platinum Seats are ” premium tickets to concerts and other events made available by artists and event providers through Ticketmaster. They give fans fair and safe access to some of the best seats in the house. The goal is to give the most passionate fans fair and safe access to the best tickets, while enabling artists and other people involved in staging live events to price tickets closer to their true value.”
True value?
Fair and safe access? – Premium Seats are intermingled with the $150 seats.
What?
I don’t know why platinum seating exists at a Springsteen concert. This is not the Bruce Springsteen I have followed for over 35 years. A few months ago, when tickets went on sale for the European leg of the tour, many Europeans were surprised at the higher price for pit tickets, something they call the “golden circle.” When is was discussed on twitter, Stevie Van Zandt insisted there wasn’t a “golden circle” policy. Yet, here in the USA there’s suddenly a platinum seating policy.
As Glen Boyd posted on blogcritics.org:
So how does a guy like Bruce Springsteen – a songwriter whose music has extolled the virtues of working class America for decades now, and whose public persona has just as firmly established him as a fierce advocate for class equality – abide by all of this?
That’s my main question: How is this happening? Yes, I’ve seen this for other performers, but that answer isn’t good enough. It’s bad enough the regular prices are out of reach for the average person, but now a chunk of Springsteen’s tickets are being priced for the wealthy? This from a man who maintains the concept that “nobody wins unless everybody wins.” Platinum Seating looks to me like “official scalping.”
Again, from Glen Boyd:
On his 2012 album Wrecking Ball, Springsteen railed against the dismantling of the middle class in songs that proclaimed “We Take Care Of Our Own” and championed sending “the robber barons straight to hell” when it came to the one-percent (even while openly conceding in interviews that he was one of them). That took balls. So what gives now?
Yes Bruce, what gives now?