Steve On Broadway (SOB)

Ticket Brokers Hung Out to Dry with Rain Tickets

Ticket Brokers Hung Out to Dry with Rain Tickets

A good friend of mine (a distinguished film professor at one of DC's top universities) forwarded a copy of a story by Jonathan Lemire in today's New York Daily News that dishes how Three Days of Rain with Julia Roberts is somehow having trouble moving tickets, especially given its lackluster reviews and overall lack of Tony nominations (save in the lighting and scenic design categories).

The trouble, however, is not that the public doesn't want to see Robert, Paul Rudd and Bradley Cooper. Stand outside the stage door after any given performance, and it's pandemonium.

The problem lies with ticket brokers, who -- sensing a giant windfall in scalping tickets for just about every price category (including those sold originally via Telecharge for $250) -- snapped up as many as they could immediately after they went on sale. That initial demand by brokers and hapless consumers alike incapacitated Telecharge's online system and made it all but impossible to get through on the correlating toll-free numbers. Personally, I experienced this frustrating crash for hours on end (I finally got through on the 800 number roughly five hours after the tickets first went on sale to American Express Gold Cardholders).

While nearly all of the tickets for Three Days of Rain have long since been sold, it would seem that the ticket brokers took a calculated risk and lost. Lemire goes on to report that those coveted $250 front row seats are now going for 75 cents on the dollar. Surely, theatregoers still would love to see Julia Roberts, but perhaps not for the lofty price of $250 -- or more -- per person. Now perhaps they can get a real deal while still enjoying an underrated, decent show.

Sadly, the trend toward stratospheric ticket prices began with the ticket brokers who are now on the losing end of the stick. It's their greed that first drove Rocco Landesman, president of the Jujamcyn Theaters to transport ticket prices to record levels after The Producers was declared an unequivocal triumph. His rationale was essentially, "Why should the ticket brokers reap the rewards of top dollar ticket prices that the public is willing to pay rather than the show itself?" Who can blame him? I blame the ticket broker vultures for exacerbating Broadway's already difficult and expensive ticket. They've reaped what they've sown.

This is Steve On Broadway (SOB).

Click here for Three Days of Rain tickets.
Related Stories:
Three Days Of Rain (The SOB Review) - Bernard B. Jacobs Theatre, New York, NY (May 9, 2006)

posted by Steve On Broadway (SOB) @ Tuesday, June 06, 2006