'Ticket's There' – Irish and International Music Blog

With all this hoopla about ticket prices, service and postage charges..etc, wouldn’t it be cool if one of Irelands leading promoters (there’s only two..well threeish) gave something back. I just had a cool idea about setting up an amphitheatre that would allow fans to see gigs for free. All you’d have to do is find a large open space with a long slope (like Punchestown) and build your main arena area (or outline it). Then you build a separate section at the band that would allow fans to see the gig for free.  

Say you allocate a few thousand tickets for the back section and use it as an overflow area and distribute the tickets the day before the festival from selected outlets in nearest big city to avoid touts getting hold of them. This way the promoters get to keep the same attendance figures and still manage to accommodate a few more thousand people who would spend money on booze, food and travel. To avoid people opting for this option instead of actually buying tickets, you could have a rule that it’s only opened if the concert sells out. You could also place a massive screen in the free section meaning fans could still see the band close up despite being miles back from the stage.

You wouldn’t even have to use it for shows that are have 80,000 arriving. You could do it for smaller bands that might only sell 5,000 and have the show in the likes of Phoenix park and then dish out another few thousand free tickets through contests and various other promotional activities. That way the band would also get a lot of exposure outside their existing fan base.

Personally I think that would be kind of cool but I’m sure a load of logistical, administrative and financial reasons could be found to shoot it down. God forbid M*D or any of the other promoters out there would find away to give something back to the fans that shell out a minimum of 60 quid for all their shows. Ah well.

(and before you say it, f**k of with your ‘you’re paying for the band’s performance, not the promoters service argument. That’s greed talking. The promoters are a business and if there was more completion that offered these kind of perks and treats for people, the established companies would disappear.

This entry was posted on August 7, 2009 at 1:24 pm and is filed under General Tickets There Blog, Music. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.