Over the last couple of years I’ve been going to a lot of concerts and other types of live events. While getting tickets for some is easy, with many of the more popular acts it’s far from easy.
Case in point, Taylor Swift.
Taylor Swift will be touring Europe in summer 2024. To get tickets for any of the concerts you had to “pre-register” and then if you were “lucky” you’d get access to some other kind of system which might, if the concert gods smiled down upon you, give you access to tickets. It was a complicated and messy system. A lot of people I know tried to get tickets and many weren’t able to. I couldn’t get tickets for any of the concerts in Ireland or the UK but managed to get some kind of “premium” one for another location.
Last Friday AC/DC tickets went on sale for their 2024 European tour. There had been some form of “pre-sale” available, but of course I missed out.
It took me a good chunk of Friday morning to get tickets, as I was stuck in a virtual “queue”.
The online “queue” opened at 9am but it took me nearly an hour to get to buy a ticket – there were quite a few others ahead of me for the Dublin gig.
I was also trying to get a ticket for the Seville concert and that was even crazier:
You’ve read that right. 104 thousand people trying to get tickets for a concert in a venue that has a capacity of maybe 60 thousand! Oddly I did manage to get a ticket, but the first announced date sold out.
Friends in other parts of Europe weren’t as lucky and reported that their nearest gigs sold out before they got to the top of the line.
So how can you “win”?
It’s not easy.
I’ve been fairly successful in getting tickets for the events I want to go to by doing a number of things and none of them are particularly complicated:
- signup for the artist’s mailing list. It’s the simplest way to be kept in the loop on upcoming performances. Sometimes they’ll also give you details on “fan only” pre-sales
- signup for the main promoters’ lists. In Ireland that’s going to be MCD and Ticketmaster.
- Follow both the artists and the promoters on their social media accounts – they’re often a good source for pre-sale access
- If you’re using Spotify to listen to music then you can hook into Songkick which is pretty good at tracking upcoming performances by artists you listen to. (Admittedly it’s not perfect as it’ll keep telling me that Vivaldi is going to be playing near me soon – last time I checked he’s been dead for quite some time!)
- If you have an American Express card see if there’s a special pre-sale for cardholders (mostly outside the Irish market)
- See if the venues offer any access to pre-sales or other priority sales. The Royal Albert Hall gives patrons first dibs on tickets to most events.
- See if there’s a fan club that gets special access to tickets. U2 and a few other groups do this.
How “easy” or “hard” it is to get tickets will vary a lot. Some acts sell out very quickly (U2, AC/DC, Red Hot Chilli Peppers, Bruce Springsteen) while others can be surprisingly easy to get tickets for (an English language comedy act in Madrid for example).
A few other things I’ve noticed:
- Going to concerts solo can work to your advantage – I’ve often found that there’s single tickets available for even big acts like Metallica
- Conversely, some types of seating / tickets are ONLY available if you’re buying a pair of tickets
- If you can get a physical ticket in some form, or get into your phone’s “wallet” do so in advance. Relying on mobile networks and logins etc., to retrieve a ticket when you’re at a venue is not fun. (I’ve had some tense experiences!)
- Check hotel prices in the venue city. Hotel prices the night of the AC/DC concert are very high. If you can provisionally book the hotel before the tickets go on sale it might save you some money and headaches. (I’ve had to resort to using points to book some hotels, as the price in actual money was so high compared to the baseline pricing)
And remember – it’s entertainment, so have a good time!
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