Are tickets too expensive?

Touring is where the money is at nowadays - I think income from album sales has been on the way down for ages - plus you rarely get albums that sell HUUGE amoutns liek you used to - and of course they cost a lot elss than they used to to the cinsumer.

Even before servies like iTunes came out you could get CDs for around £6.50 in sueprmarkets - whereas a few years earlier a new album would be twice as much when it was only sold in music chains.

I've always cosidered BJ one of the most commerical rock bands around for sure.

I don't think the band has that much insight when it comes to ticket prices. TM sets the prices and they accept it. I'm sure they could press the prices if they wished too but don't. Prices for Bruce for example are less than Bon Jovi and there are more people to pay in his band and his tours are never sponsored so Jovi has something to learn from bruce there for sure. I think my ticket limit for Jovi was at 02 when the prices hit the £100. That's more than I've ever paid for a show but as it was a one off thingy it was acceptable, but would ordinary tour shows wind up in that category I doubt if I would go along with that.

Out of curiosity, how much were the Ace tickets for the Halloween show? Was it festival seating?

I think that they take advantage of the English Pound. I bet the GC Tickets for Ireland will only be € 75 whereas the British equivalent costs £ 75 even though there is a discrepancy of around € 35.

The band definitley has a say in the ticket prices, of course they do.

TM has their own service charges that they apply to every ticket - its a propertion of the original ticket selling rpice.

The inital selling price of £75 is down to Bon Jovi and is the price decided by them and their management. All of this money goes to them. All of TMs profits are fro mthe service charge - which was like £8 on a 75quid ticket.

With regards to what Bon Jovi do with their £75 (and all the other ticket revenue) well of course they can pay for promo/stadium hire/everything else - but out of every ticket they will be making a huge profit.

The fact is other bands do the same but for only £40-45 tickets. No way do BJ need to charge almost twice as much to break/even make a profit.

As you say, their cocnerts are sponsodered, so even more money. The O2 show (which i missed) was kinda acceptable because it was a one off.

Anyway be glad they are not charging upto 150quid for the best seatsliek the rolling stones..maybe in 15 years eh...

You're wrong.

Yes, Bon Jovi have a say in their ticket prices but they aren't the ones that set them. The tour promoters do almost as much work testing the market to find optimal prices that will sell all the tickets and gain the highest margins, as they do actual advertising the gigs. Jon may consider himself a businessman but there's no way he comes up with these prices; they're dictated by the demand in the market.

I think the Gold Circle tickets this time are ridiculously expensive. You can all dig out your arguments about how The Stone, Madonna...etc charge more than that, but a hike of £30 in one tour is unacceptable. I happen to think the only tickets that are offering any sort of value for money this time around are the General Admission ones, and, as such, they'll be the only ones I'm buying.

Bon Jovi doesn't get all of the money, that's laughably stupid. There's the venue and the promoter for a start.

I said that in my post...did you not read that bit?

They will still be making huge profit themselves.

Lets say the avg price for Twickenham shows are 60 (i.e between 45 and 75) and they sell 60,000 tickets they are making 3.6m in revenue. No way does that show cost anywhere near that much to put on.

Going from smaller venues (i.e St Marys with 30,000 capacity and revenue of 1.8m) and adding them all up you will see the huge numbers of revenue they will make throughout the tour

Take away all of the costs of putting o nthe tour and BJ themselves wil lbe rollign in millions.

You are right proper businessmen will find an optimal price they think they can charge but you would be crazy to think Bon Jovi cannot step in and say those prices are way to expensive...there have been plenty of other shows where they coudl charge way more - i.e Springsteen at the O2 but they didn't - i think the max ticket price was 60-65quid there.

I imagine when Sprignsteen next goes on tour his prices will be much lower than BJs prices.

are you sure???

Well did anyone go see Prince this summer?
I went to a couple of shows

£31.21 a ticket, for all areas (except exec. boxes), for all 21 nights. From floor seats right by the stage, all the way up to the Stevie Wonder seats.

AND a free CD!

Now thats value for money