Fans Favor Internet
for McCartney Seats
The ex-Beatle's first show in Des
Moines sold out in just over an hour, with over 80% of tickets sold online.
4/26/05
By KYLE MUNSON
REGISTER MUSIC CRITIC
The personal computer trounced the long and winding road to the box office
Monday as the preferred method of buying Paul McCartney tickets.
About 15,500 tickets went up for sale at 10 a.m. Monday for McCartney's
first concert in Des Moines, scheduled for Oct. 27 at the new Wells Fargo
Arena at the Iowa Events Center.
The tickets disappeared in little more than an hour, and more than 80
percent of them were purchased online - a sign that fans who camp out
for nights in advance to secure a prime spot in line are a dying breed,
replaced by Internet geeks with high-speed hookups.
The Veterans Memorial Auditorium box office, with its six ticket windows,
was the only brick-and-mortar ticket outlet Monday, where 200 or so fans
were lined up by 10 a.m.
"This may be my only chance to see (McCartney), really, ever," was how Jeff Odegaard of Granger described his motivation as he took his
place in line around 9:30 a.m. Monday.
Nearly all those in line were able to buy at least one ticket, but that
wasn't enough for several people near the back. About 10:45, an announcement
over the auditorium loudspeaker said that only single seats were available.
Some people walked away.
Ticket-buying has changed radically since the heyday of Veterans Memorial
Auditorium.
"In the '80s, the (ticket) outlets were definitely the largest (share),
then in the '90s, it shifted," said longtime Des Moines concert promoter
Steve White. By the mid-'90s, phone sales dominated, supplanted today
by the Internet.
It's this trend toward online ticket-buying that allowed the Events Center
to sell McCartney tickets using its own system, through www.iowaeventscenter
.com as well as a phone number, rather than the industry's standard ticketing
service, Ticketmaster. Thousands were able to access the Events Center's
Web site simultaneously, while a call center outside Des Moines was staffed
with as many as 100 phone operators.
Events Center officials declared a sellout shortly after 11 a.m., although
scattered seats were still being sold until nearly 11:30. No additional
seats will be available until the day of the concert, when last-minute
adjustments might - might - lead to more tickets for the public.
Fans who participated in the old-fashioned vigil at the auditorium for
McCartney said that they whiled away the hours with catnaps, traffic-watching
and pizza orders via cell phone. Sunday night chilled them to the bone.
"We had blankets, but they weren't really enough," said Wayne
Vairo of Chariton.
Erica Hegstrom of Bouton, who was second in line and walked away from
the box office with a smile and two seats in the eighth row, said, "These
last four hours have been the worst."
In front of Hegstrom was Jeff Bappe , 30, of Ames. The first fan in line
- made all the more obvious by the swarm of TV cameras that tracked every
second of his historic purchase - purchased the first eight tickets (more
than $1,400 worth, for the front row) sold for Des Moines' new $217 million
arena, scheduled to open in July.
Bappe was a high school freshman in 1990 when McCartney performed at Cyclone
(now Jack Trice) Stadium in Ames. The young Beatlemaniac had to play a
baseball game instead of attend the concert that night in July, and just
as Bappe was walking off the diamond he could hear McCartney's band fire
up for the first song. It was that twinge of teenage regret that inspired
Bappe to line up at 5:30 a.m. Saturday morning and camp out for two nights
in the cold.
It was a tame scene at the box office Monday morning - no jostling, shouting
or scuffles. KGGO-FM (94.9) gave away a pair of tickets, and somebody
was handing out free doughnuts.
Not that everybody walked away happy. The most common bummer cited by
fans was that they weren't able to specify a section of the arena when
buying, only one of three price levels. The computer determined "best
available" seats for each of them.
When asked if she was satisfied with her seats in the balcony, Jessica
Urbina of Urbandale replied, "Not really," while glancing from
her tickets to a seating chart posted on the wall.
Kent Ehrhardt of Urbandale, after he walked away from the box office empty-handed,
said, "I ain't gonna spend $177 for tickets where you don't know
where they're going to be."
The most common complaint among online buyers had to do with the cumbersome
series of screens required to click through before reaching a ticket-sales
page. And one of the screens left many potential buyers thinking that
they were supposed to enter a "promo- tion code" that they didn't
have.
The eight-ticket limit on every ticket purchase was an effort to discourage
scalpers. Events Center officials said that because they were establishing
their new ticketing system, no other overt scalping safeguards were in
place, but would be in the future.
The Events Center seemed to get what it wanted Monday: a quick sellout
for its first big show (at least to be announced, as the first actual
event in Wells Fargo Arena remains a mystery).
"I don't remember the last show I saw at
Vets," said Doug Winters of Indianola, who has traveled as far as
North Carolina to attend a McCartney concert and was third in line Monday.
One new arena and a Beatle later, Winters is back in downtown Des Moines.
Story originally published in:
DesMoinesResgister.com
