Live Nation admits up to 90% of tickets may never reach the general public

“‘Everybody in the industry knows that most of the best tickets for most of the shows are never sold to the public,’ said Don Vaccaro, CEO of TicketNetwork…. (Former Ticketmaster CEO Nathan) Hubbard put it this way: ‘The on-sale process is like a mysteriously devastating airplane farter: tickets leak out little bits at a time, nobody can figure out where they’re coming from, and the whole thing reeks…By the time the actual on-sale happens, 90 per cent of the tickets might be gone; they usually aren’t very good.’

Live Nation calls that an extreme example, but acknowledges 25 to 50 per cent of tickets may be held back for other distribution streams, including premium packages, or for the artists, promoter and venue.”

Read more from CBC’s World Report by David Common.