Crazy we called them, last Saturday at the Hard Rock Hotel’s Rod Stewart concert.
Back in February, a long story about Las Vegas ticket prices raised the question of if and when customer price resistance would kick in.
Once concert might have helped the research: Rod Stewart’s Saturday show at the Hard Rock Hotel, where tickets topped $750.
If entertainment buyers hadn’t yet found the ceiling before Saturday, they felt the “ouch!” when Stewart’s well-coiffed mane bumped it.
“It was a very good learning experience,” Hard Rock Hotel President Kevin Kelley acknowledged Monday of Stewart’s concert showcasing his standards albums, which fell short of its expectations.
Even the day before the show, Ticketmaster’s Web site showed tickets available at three pricing levels, including $750 “gold circle” seats on Row K (Ticketmaster’s “convenience charge” added another $29.45 to each ticket).
“It’s going to make us look a little harder” at ticket pricing and “price things more competitively” down the road, Kelley said.
Stewart did not generate any “secondary market” interest among brokerages that advertise tickets above face value.
“There’s been no call, no clamor,” one broker said before the Stewart concert. “It is truly priced way above its value.”
Word is that Stewart will return in August to play at more reasonable prices, probably at the MGM Grand Garden. “Reasonable” is relative: The recent prices make the $350 top tickets for Madonna’s return to the MGM on May 29 seem far less audacious than the same price did in 2001.
Courtesy, Mike Weatherford – Review Journal
