18 sold out shows in Europe my ass...

Well that was just joke or something But still seat are just in our way.. I'm always standing the whole concert trought.
Well like you said, it is difference of oppinion but last year when Jovi were in Germany, was it Gelshengirshen, there were about 5 thousand sparsely empty seats and it was called as a sold out show. But last summer when they were in Munich and Dusseldorf, the stadiums were really sold out; not a single seat empty. So that cannot be about rules of Germany.

So you counted the seats? If it is a stadium of 50,000 and there were 5,000 empty though you'd still have around 90% which to me would be pretty much full and I'd say enough to call it sold out.

Tickets get sold that don't always get used. I feel certain that a lot of people stayed home from the 1st show at Giants stadium because they were smart enough to know that the 3rd tier of a football stadium wasn't the best place to be in weather that was likely to produce a tornado. Scalpers/brokers buy tickets by the thousands and can't always resell them, especially if they're doubling the price of a seat that wasn't that great to start with. Some people, like me, buy tickets and then buy better tickets and don't always get to resell the first set. You are assuming that every empty seat means an unsold ticket and it might not.

Yep, excellent point. Also, some seats for whatever the reason aren't even made available for sale (those that are obstructed by equipment, etc). So, a sell out does not mean a butt in every single seat but rather the amount of tickets sold to the gig.

deb

Well we can try to find some stupid reasons but are they really necessary. Off course some won't use their ticets but that 5 to 10 per cent of audience would prefer to stay at home 'cause of the weather... Ticets cost about 50 dollars or more... That would be just stupid.

And I don't count those empty seats... That is just the overall picture. Why can't you stick to the main point.
Just saying: Why they announce that stadium is sold out when there are thousands of emty seats. That is not because of safety 'cause sometimes the stadium is totally full and year after they just say it is full even though there are thousands of empty seats. And to everyone's shock, there isn't even a tornado?

So please have you got any sensible explanation for this question?
Could there be any chance that it is just there to give a better picture of the band...?

People have offered sensible suggestions but you dismiss them, what do you want? There is no single or 'right' answer to a question like this, people have offered some but none of us are tour promoters to know any more reasons than have already been suggested.

Why do you care anyway? Will you sleep better knowing this?

Excactly yes. I'm seriusly conserned of Jovi's popularity.
And now they are planning to make a country album, cut me a slack
Seriuosly, I just nowdays can't trust those guys, let say it like that. It is my personal issue if you will.

Well I can't 'trust' a group of men I haven't met either.

I'll tell ya why it matters, cos I had 2 sodding spare tickets for MK, and had to sell them for just over half the price I paid for them cos the goddamn venue wasn't sold out!

Billboard.com also showed these shows as "sold out" so it's not just bonjovi.com that listed them that way. Once again, sell outs are based on a pre-determined amount of tickets SOLD it does not mean every seat in the venue was purchased or that every ticket was used. You may not like it but that's the way it's done for EVERY band not just Bon Jovi.

The fact is the HAND tour was in the top 3 tours for the year. Doesn't that say enough about popularity?

deb