Like many Squamish music lovers, I was saddened to learn of Tragically Hip front man Gord Downie’s terminal brain cancer diagnosis.
I’ve been a fan since I saw the band perform in support of their first album way back in the ’80s and rocked out at another 14 shows over the following years. I cheered when Canadian actor Dan Ackroyd introduced The Hip before their debut performance on Saturday Night Live and applauded the band’s altruism when they played a surprise show at an intimate Whistler venue to support flood victims.
With songs that have a decidedly Canadian slant, The Hip are “our” band (or at least that’s the mindset of Hip fans across the country), and I was looking forward to attending the Hip’s farewell tour.
So on Friday, I sat with credit card in hand, waiting for 10 a.m. when the tickets would go on sale. As the countdown clock on the Ticketmaster site went from 9:59 to 10 a.m., I clicked on the “buy tickets” button, and the screen said “There are no tickets available that match your search.” I clicked again… and again… and again. For 20 minutes, all I received was the same “no tickets” message, until finally the order screen informed me the shows scheduled for Vancouver were sold out.
I was frustrated, but I wasn’t surprised. The Hip Fan Club pre-sale a few days earlier had yielded the same results; fans were seemingly locked out of buying tickets but scalpers seemed to be getting theirs just fine. A check on Craigslist or any third-party ticket-selling site showed dozens of tickets immediately available (while fans were still trying to purchase their own) with prices ranging from a few hundred to a few thousand dollars.
Apparently, scalpers use “bots” or computer programs designed to mass click on the Ticketmaster site, scooping up all the tickets before anyone else could. One ticket company suspiciously owns a third-party scalper site, and they were also selling their own “premium” tickets for $600 to 700.
This fiasco was not what was intended. It was meant as a farewell to a beloved band, for fans – not a huge money grab at the expense and exploitation of someone with terminal cancer.
The powers that be need to look into Canada’s ticket-selling racket, with scalpers, bots and third-party ticket-selling sites.
How concerts are being sold to fans these days isn’t very hip at all… it’s just pretty tragic.
