To keep all its concert facilities buzzing, Live Nation makes exclusive deals with artists - maybe too many and not always wisely, it now appears - agreeing to huge guarantees. The promoting company promised a reported $400,000 a night for this year's "American Idols" production and $700,000 a night to Tom Petty.
But these deals, essentially giving the artist all the ticket revenue, only work if there's a full house, and Live Nation can make decent money on the food, drink and parking fees.
If attendance drops even just 10 percent, their collective goose gets cooked.
This year, Live Nation has summoned up some schemes to energize the lagging business - offering tickets free of service charges to early buyers, and bargain $10 lawn seats for a limited spell a few weeks before the show, just to put more (thirsty, hungry) bodies in the house.
Now the mega promoters have just come up with a buyer's remorse offer, giving you three days to change your mind and get your money back after making a purchase. And they're talking about standardizing a now-experimental "all-in" ticket that wraps the Ticketmaster processing charge into the advertised price of a seat, rather than socking it to you separately at, say $20 a pop.
Yeah, that's why they call them "Ticketbastards."
But some industry watchers believe those discounted tickets cause as much harm as good, training concertgoers to wait for a bargain deal directly from the promoter or from resellers like TicketsNow.com.
"It's becoming much more of a nail-biter, wait-till-the-last-minute, see how the seven-day weather forecast's looking, then buy your ticket business," said Jesse Lundy of Point Productions, which promotes at the Colonial Theatre in Phoenixville and books the talent for the Philadelphia Folk Festival.
While unwilling to share advance sale information about this year's (Aug. 20-22) folk fest near Schwenksville, Lundy said one recent folk festival sold "30 percent of its tickets in the last week, which is really scary."
And the Mann's Cahill agreed that "the walk-up business here has gotten much bigger of late. Arcade Fire sold about 1,000 tickets the night of the show."
To fix what ails the concert business in this still-troubled economy, everybody has to notch down their demands, believes Roy Snyder, longtime manager of the Keswick Theatre.
Promoters "need to learn to say 'no' to the excessive demands from talent managers and booking agents, and the managers need to learn to say 'no, you need to take less money,' to their artist clients. Because they're protective of their 10, 15 percent commissions, these people have been afraid the artists will say, 'You don't have faith in me anymore, I'm going to find new management.'
"But it's time to get real, people."
