Ticket sales aren’t going very well for an upcoming speaking tour featuring former President Donald Trump and former Fox anchor Bill O’Reilly, according to sources quoted in a report from Politico. Tickets have been on sale for just over a month for the events, which are billed as a conversational evening sharing unique insight into Trump’s term in office and the challenges he faced.
From Politico:
In Orlando, where the duo is hosting an event at the 20,000-capacity Amway Center on Dec. 12, a box office employee for the arena said, “There’s still a lot of tickets open.” The person, who like others for this story insisted on anonymity to share confidential sales data, added: “We have concerts that are doing a lot better than this.” A Bad Bunny concert being held next March recently sold out within two days, for example, and the majority of seats for a Dec. 3 Kane Brown concert have been sold already.
The story is similar for other stops on the brief tour, with an estimation that more than 60 percent of seats remain unsold for the Houston event, and one anonymous ticketing official for the Sunrise, Florida venue not far from the Trump home base at Mar A Lago resort saying they would have expected sales for the event to have been “definitely higher” by now.
“It hasn’t been [selling] like crazy,” they added, with the added fact that shows featuring comic Katt Williams and comic/podcasting star Joe Rogan have done “significantly” better sales-wise than the former President’s slot.
A Friday afternoon screenshot of the American Airlines Center (Dallas) show indicates a sea of blue dots representing open seats for the December 19 performance.
Pricing could be playing a signinficant role in the sluggish demand, with the least expensive seat for the dates coming in at over $100 before fees are added. Lower level seats are over $300 before fees, with VIP options for some stops priced well into the thousands of dollars on the primary market. Politico also offers that the current climate may be harming sales, as audiences appear less interested in political content, evidenced by a lengthy slump in cable television news ratings.
Representatives of Trump and O’Reilly pushed back against Politico’s reporting, saying that promotion for the events, which all take place at the end of the year, hasn’t even begun, and many tickets haven’t been made available yet.
“The History Tour has already sold over $5 million of tickets, and the excitement and enthusiasm is unlike anything we’ve seen before,” Trump spokesperson Liz Harrington said in a statement. “Come December, the sold out shows will be a memorable night for all.”
O’Reilly himself took the pushback even further, calling it “bullshit” that ticket sales have been lackluster, and threatening to sue the Politico reporter contacting him for the story. “You put one word in there that’s not true, I’ll sue your ass off and you can quote me on that. You’re just a hatchet man and that’s what you are.”
