Ticketmaster partly to blame for high prices of Tragically Hip tour: Vancouver Ticket
Posted May 30, 2016 4:45 pm.
Last Updated May 30, 2016 4:50 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
VANCOUVER (NEWS 1130) – Presale tickets for the Tragically Hip’s Vancouver show in July evaporated within seconds, but you can already choose from hundreds on resale websites. Smaller scalpers say the big players will be making a mint off of fans hoping to see the band one last time.
Lead singer Gord Downie announced last week he is suffering from terminal brain cancer. The Man Machine Poem tour will most likely be the Hip’s last tour and demand for tickets is very high.
A quick search on Stub Hub showed over 700 tickets available a short time after the presale. There were also many tickets available through Ticketmaster’s official platinum service for much more than face value.
Kingsley Bailey with Vancouver Ticket says they will be reselling tickets, despite Downie’s terminal cancer diagnosis. He says he is no more likely to get access to tickets through the general sale Friday morning than the average fan. He blames Ticketmaster for holding back tickets.
“It stands to reason that Ticketmaster’s left arm that can sell these tickets on their VIP sites at three or four or five times the amount, that’s what they’re doing. It’s no longer in the hands of the ticket broker that have all these bots that are gobbling up all the tickets and they’re not available to the general public. That’s just smoke and water. It’s just smoke… If there were transparency and we could actually know how many tickets came available to the general public during a general on sale, then I could categorically say that we are making too much money, but we’re not.”
We’ve tried to find out how many tickets are being held. We asked Ticketmaster for an exact percentage of seats being released for the general sale, but did not get a response.
