A Different Way To Sell Tickets
Grammy award winning pop singer Bruno Mars will be featured in two concerts in Hawaii this coming November 10 and 11 at Aloha Stadium in Honolulu. The November 10 show is sold out and tickets for the November 11 show go on sale tomorrow (Saturday, June 16) morning at the Aloha Stadium box office and online.
Many people who waited in line at the stadium to buy their tickets or tried at home to get them through the internet were met with frustration and disappointment. Bruno Mars tickets were sold out before the end of the day. People waiting in line were turned away after a certain point, and countless others who tried to buy online were frustrated to learn that “bot” programs bought many tickets for resale at higher prices by third parties.
It seems the same thing will probably happen when tickets for the second show go on sale tomorrow. The line at the stadium was stopped shortly after 9:30 a.m. today. Those lucky enough to beat the cutoff at the stadium are waiting another night for when the box office opens tomorrow. Good luck.
Similarly those wanting to buy online will probably face the same problems they did last week.
Surely many tickets were sold for the 36,000 or so lucky ones last week. But the popularity of the local born singer has made demand for the second show tickets extremely high.
A possible solution.
What should be done to assure that tickets are sold only to the fans (mostly local residents) and not to commercials entities via bots?
My solution would be to allow people to come to the stadium, sit in the seats and have ticket sellers authorized by the stadium and concert promoter to meet every single person seated in the stadium and take their ticket orders with an iPad or other tablet device tied into the payment system and master seat map for the performance being sold.
Curtail all online sales until the people who are at the stadium buy their tickets. Whatever is leftover can be sold online… or as they probably do now, just lop X amount of seats on the side for online sales only. Indicate the online sale allotment in pre-sale information.
If the maximum amount of tickets any one person can buy is 2 or 4, then round down the 36,000 seat number to 16,000 live in person Aloha Stadium ticket buyers. Hire ticket sales agents to take ticket orders iPads and send an e-ticket people’s smart phone and/or email address with a back-up in the cloud just in case. Task done.
While the ticket buying crowd is seated inside Aloha Stadium for the ticket agents to come around, the promoter could use the opportunity to showcase local bands, sell food or something. Make the ticket buying day an enjoyable event.
Surely there are logistical issues to be worked out such as parking, security, sanitation, hiring enough ticket agents and setting rules, priorities and policies on the actual implementation of the process. It is also possible that this idea may not be feasible at all.
What do you think? Surly this suggestion is only a rough idea, but if planned well it could be possible for the next big show.
