Bruce Springsteen tickets went on sale today at 10 a.m. for the Wells Fargo Center show scheduled for 3/16/23. People were having a hard time getting through due to demand, but when they did, some were hit with insane totals:

The reason for the crazy cost is due to “dynamic pricing,” a system put in place by Ticketmaster that determines prices based on demand. Here’s a good explanation from Steve Knopper at Rolling Stone, regarding what Taylor Swift fans experienced in 2018:

If you went on Ticketmaster in January and pulled up a third-row seat for Taylor Swift‘s June 2nd show at Chicago’s Soldier Field, it would have cost you $995. But if you looked up the same seat three months later, the price would have been $595. That’s because Swift has adopted “dynamic pricing,” where concert tickets – like airline seats – shift prices constantly in adjusting to market demand. It’s a move intended to squeeze out the secondary-ticket market – but it’s also left many fans confused as they’re asked to pay hundreds of dollars more than face value. “Basically, Ticketmaster is operating as StubHub,” says one concert-business source.

Swift is not alone. This summer, U2, Kenny Chesney, Pink, the Eagles and Shania Twain will also embrace dynamic pricing (which Ticketmaster calls Official Platinum Seats). It’s their latest attempt to battle resellers like StubHub, the eBay-owned site, which had sales of more than $1 billion in 2016.

Ticketmaster actually came out and stated that the “dynamic pricing” for these Bruce gigs amounts to a little more than 10% of available seats (via Chris Willman at Variety) – 

In the wake of an ongoing furor over “dynamic pricing” for Bruce Springsteen’s tour, Ticketmaster took the unusual step Sunday afternoon of releasing some statistics about costs and percentages for the dates that went on sale last week. Downplaying the number of controversial “platinum” tickets with variable prices that reached as high as $5,000 apiece on the first day of on-sales, Ticketmaster says those represent only 11.2% of the overall tickets sold.

By the ticketing service’s calculations, that left the other 88.2% of tickets sold at fixed prices that ranged from from $59.50 to $399 before added service fees.

Let me preface this by saying that I like Bruce more than Kevin Kinkead. I will never have enough interest to go see him in concert, but I like his hits. I like Santa Clause is Coming to Town around the holidays. I also think it’s funny that his fans think he’s an everyman when floor tickets to see a guy worth $650 million dollars end up costing you $6k due to a “battle with resellers.” He should take a picture out of one the biggest country music stars, Luke Combs’ playbook, and refuse to raise tickets at all so his fans can see him perform.

BRUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCE:

Kevin and I talked about it more on Crossing Broadcast today:

Watch the full episode here where we put the kibosh on the Nick Castellanos vs. Jim Salisbury vs. Jamie Apody vs. Matt Gelb drama with Anthony, who had a first-hand account of the whole thing: