His current stadium tour may have sold out in a lot of venues this summer, but tickets to see ex-Beatle Paul McCartney at FedEx Field in the Washington, DC area is not faring quite as well. Several premium tickets for the show are still available, and in fact, blocks of seats were apparently withheld and placed on the market recently when tickets were not moving, calling into question issues of transparency in the primary market.
When tickets to the August 1 show first went on sale about a month ago, prices for several premium sections were selling for a face value of $250 each. The sections, the first set of seats that are not on the field, included 120, 121, 122 and 123, and the corresponding seats directly across on the other side of the stadium.
Those tickets were in the first 15 rows of the section. But, due to slow sales, the seats in the next 13 rows, which were not originally available, are now selling for $125 a piece, giving the appearance that the tour’s promoter Live Nation held those tickets back to gauge the market. Had the $250 seats sold well, the seats above likely would have been placed on the market at the same price.
In addition, dozens of those tickets are turning up on StubHub for roughly the same price, though those seats were not originally available. Similar seats are not currently listed on other exchanges, such as TicketsNow and TicketNetwork, parent company of TicketNews.
Where those tickets for higher rows in those premium sections came from is a mystery; broker or seller information on StubHub is not disclosed.
Neither McCartney’s New York-based media relations representatives at PFA Entertainment Media & Marketing, nor Live Nation returned messages seeking comment.
Separately, on Tickets.com, which partners with StubHub for the resale of MLB tickets, McCartney fans are greeted with a large ad for tickets being available on StubHub, reminiscent of trouble Ticketmaster found itself in with its TicketsNow subsidiary (See screen shot below).
In this case, fans are given the opportunity to click on StubHub tickets, and a disclaimer (“Additional tickets may be available through StubHub, our secondary market partner”) is at the top of the ad.
