With this year's season about to kick off, event promoters and artist representatives have vowed to turn things around. So, they are offering a variety of inducements, including lower prices and offering more bands for the money by packaging big acts together at one show. Promoters are also blitzing fans with e-mails and text messages to try and generate interest in coming shows.
While prices for the best seats continue to be sky-high, a big priority this year is making sure that the cheap seats are actually cheap. Last year, the inability to put fans in those back-of-the-house seats contributed mightily to a string of underperforming tours and concert cancellations. So this year, for example, the Eagles have aggressively promoted $25 seats at some stops on their coming tour; top-priced tickets are selling for $175.
Younger acts have made a point of keeping prices low across the board. Punk-pop trio Green Day - one of the few young bands that can fill a stadium - are seeing strong sales with ticket prices mostly held to under $50. The Dave Matthews Band is charging less than $60 at most shows on its summer trek. Among the other big acts on the road this summer: Coldplay, Avril Lavigne, Nine Inch Nails and Alicia Keys.
The emphasis on affordable tickets is a big change from last season. Last year, according to Pollstar, a trade magazine that follows the concert business, the average ticket price for the 100 top-grossing tours hit a record high of $52.39, more than double the average seat in 1996. Even mediocre seats for acts like Van Halen and Cher were on sale for up to $80 a ticket. Unfortunately for the industry, the fans balked at the spiraling prices. Weak sales forced the cancellation of show by artists including Christina Aguilera and Marc Anthony.
High-priced tickets certainly haven't vanished. The Rolling Stones' coming tour of stadiums, arenas and theaters, which kicks off Aug. 21 in Boston, will see top-end seats going for over $450. (The average ticket price at the stadium shows is $90.) Michael Cohl, the band's tour director, says the high-priced seats subsidize the others. ''This is a way of making it work for everybody,'' says Cohl. ''The group and the wealthy people who can afford the $400 seats and everybody else.'' As eye-popping as these tickets are, selling them has never been much of a problem for big-name acts: The first seven Rolling Stones shows put on sale, including Boston, Washington, D.C., and Miami, are already sold out.
Fans can thank some of the recent shakeout in the concert industry for this season's lower prices. Last season's prices were so steep partly because some promoters guaranteed artists overblown upfront payments, and then tried to pass along their increased costs to fans. The result: ''The bottom fell out of the industry around July-August,'' says Randy Phillips, president and CEO of Anschutz Entertainment Group's AEG Live division.
But this year, people in the industry say, while guarantees to artists have not been slashed as dramatically as some expected, they have come down by around 10 percent. And Clear Channel Entertainment, the world's largest concert promoter, is being spun off by its parent, Clear Channel Communications.
Without a deep-pocketed parent company to subsidize aggressive bids for artists, Clear Channel Entertainment may be forced to curb its spending. That means fans could see prices come down even further.
