In what could casually be called a “catastrophic bungle,” Vivint Smart Home Arena saw several fans holding tickets for a recent Tim McGraw and Faith Hill performance for seats that no longer existed after a recent renovation.
The tickets were sold well in advance of the show, but had since been removed to create more room for high priced box seating, acccording to KSL.com. The arena, which houses the Utah Jazz as well as events like the concert, recently underwent a $125 million renovation project and is in the process of switching its ticketing operations to Ticketmaster, which takes over on October 1.
It would appear that the transition isn’t going as smooth as the fans would have hoped.
“You knew what the plan was going to be so why didn’t you just let people know?” said Julie Levvitt, who bought six tickets for her family last October from Flashseats. When her family arrived, they quickly learned that their seats no longer existed. Levvitt says her family was not offered vouchers for the inconvenience.
Anyone with tickets to upcoming shows should contact the arena at (801) 355-SEAT (7328) to confirm that the tickets they hold do, in fact, still have seats associated with them.
Venue officials blamed third-party resale for the snafu.
“We tried to contact all the people who had sold seats in these areas way in advance so that they could make an exchange of tickets,” Vivint VP of Communications Frank Zang said, adding that they sent out emails over the last several days asking concertgoers to arrive early. “But if those tickets had moved on to another person, we didn’t have the contact information necessary in order to reach them to let them know that there had been some changes.”
“We certainly apologize to anyone who was inconvenienced last night during the concert,” Zang said. “Fortunately, our guest services staff were able to relocate people to other seats so they could enjoy the show.”
