Bruce Springsteen’s Manager Defends Controversial 2023 Tour Ticketing Rollout

variety.com:

Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music CriticBruce Springsteen fans have been asking to hear from the artist or his camp directly in the wake of a firestorm over extremely variable ticket costs for a 2023 U.S.

tour that has gone on sale last week and this week. On Tuesday, six days into the controversy over “platinum” ticket prices — which had initially gone as high as $4,000-5,000 — Springsteen’s manager, Jon Landau, spoke up to defend the way the ticketing had rolled out.“In pricing tickets for this tour, we looked carefully at what our peers have been doing,” Landau said in a statement given to the New York Times’ “Your Money” columnist, Ron Lieber. “We chose prices that are lower than some and on par with others.”Landau’s statement continued, “Regardless of the commentary about a modest number of tickets costing $1,000 or more, our true average ticket price has been in the mid-$200 range.

I believe that in today’s environment, that is a fair price to see someone universally regarded as among the very greatest artists of his generation.” The official defense from Springsteen’s manager came two days after Ticketmaster — which has taken a lot of the heat from fans — issued statistics to Variety indicating that the majority of tickets that had already been sold, 88.8%.

had been sold at fixed values of $60-400 before fees, considered reasonable in the current market. The Ticketmaster stats showed only 11.2% of tickets had been “platinum tickets” subject to the skyrocketing costs that raised fans’ ire.Ticketmaster further said that the average price of all tickets sold in this first three days of on-sales was $262.