Saturday, April 18, 2009

Phish Fnway Park Tickets -- LiveNation.com Blows It Again

Error!

Sorry, we are having technical difficulty processing your request. Please try your request again. If the problem persists, please contact us. Thank you.

That was the message on LiveNation's website when I tried to login to get tickets for Phish's show at Fenway Park, set for May 31st, 2009. The message appeared only a couple of minutes past 10 a.m.

I kept trying for one hour and could not once even get the page to load. There are people posting tweets saying they scored tickets to see Phish at Fenway Park -- one guy with the user name Canada_Bound claimed to land eight tickets -- but lots of other people are saying they could not login to the LiveNation.com either.

TicketSnow.com already had a link posted for tickets to catch Phish at Fenway Park for the opener of their 2009 Summer Tour, although it was not displaying any for sale before the 10 a.m. on-sale time. Tickets already were listed for sale on StubHub, though, ranging from $113 to $3,400 per ticket. TicketLiquidator had tickets for sale before 10 a.m. with specific seat and row numbers attached to them, such as "Field Box 92, Row KK -- two seats available" for $194 apiece. VividSeats had specific tickets as well, like "Loge Box 14, Row JJ -- two tickets for $190 (each I believe, although it's not clear)." Likewise, you could buy four tickets at 7 a.m. EST (three hours before the general on sale time) in "Pavilion Box 6, Row B" for $203 each at CoastToCoastTickets. And, of course, on eBay and CraigsList Fenway Park ticket prices are off the chain.

One thing that is glaringly obvious is that the same seats are for sale across all four websites. Now, Fenway Park's primary purpose is as the Boston Red Sox home field. Fenway Park does host other events throughout the year (for instance, The Dave Matthews Band is playing two shows there before Phish on May 29th and 30th; both bands have the same management company these days.), but "season tickets" are not sold for these additional events -- just for Red Sox games.

Perhaps the Red Sox offer first dibs for tickets to other events inside Fenway Park to Red Sox season tickets holders, and the tickets currently available on all of the scalper sites are simply posted by some enterprising Red Sox fans who have read the news about demand for Phish tickets, or heard it through the grapevine and see an opportunity to pocket a few hundred bucks.

No matter how those tickets to Phish at Fenway Park on May 31st became available for purchase before the public on sale date and time, it is fucked up (insert your own personal rant on Ticketbastard, LiveNation.com and ticket scalpers here).

On a side note, I wanted to announce that The Wagger will no longer provide links to ticket re-sale websites; if you plan on buying tickets through those bastards you can link to them on your own. Not to sound rude, but I don't want to provide them with any help at all, no matter how minuscule it may be and no matter how insignificant this Blog may be in the grand scheme of Phish. Sure I mentioned them by name above, but that's only for the sake of posting an entirely accurate news story.

In related news, New York Sen. Charles Schumer unveiled plans for legislation that would ban the resale of concert and sports tickets until two days after they first go on sale to the public, the Wall Street Journal reported earlier this month.

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