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      in Music

      Want Free Central Park Concert Tickets? Keep Trying.

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      The first batches of free tickets to the “We Love NYC: The Homecoming Concert” are being released online this week. They can be gotten, with patience.Plenty of things require patience in life. Cobbling together a 1,000-piece jigsaw puzzle while in lockdown comes to mind, as does doing your nails — basecoat, color, topcoat.Now add to that list waiting in the virtual line for tickets to “We Love NYC: The Homecoming Concert.”Yes, they are free. Yes, there are more than four million fully vaccinated New Yorkers who qualify to attend. And the lineup for the Aug. 21 show — including LL Cool J, Bruce Springsteen and punk rock goddess Patti Smith — was sure to draw some interest.So perhaps it was no surprise that I found my first attempt a ticketless dead end, an exercise in frustration.It began at 10 a.m. Monday, when the free tickets first went up online. I learned quickly that to get a ticket you need a Ticketmaster account. So began a frantic scramble to remember my own.That was followed by a long wait in line, locked in a staring contest with a glowing white orb that represented my place in “The Queue.” I was told, with cold precision, that more than 2,000 people were ahead of me.But by 10:41 a.m. I was at the end of my road. Suddenly, the oval signifying the availability of general admission tickets faded from blue to gray.As in, No Longer Available.But New Yorkers wait online for a living. So on Tuesday, at 7 a.m., ready for Round 2, I clicked on the “We Love NYC” block on the Homecoming2021.com website. Sure enough, the previously gray, “unavailable” general admission block had been replenished with tickets and was now blue. At the edge of my seat, I selected two tickets and hit “Next.”“Sit tight, we’re securing your Verified Tickets,” the screen read. But then, as I refreshed, I began getting the same error message — “Sorry, we could not process your request, please try again later.” I tried for another hour and it did seem as if more tickets became available after the first batches were gone. But each time I got shut out.But there are success stories out there, people. I know early risers who had better experiences than I did. And all you have to do is go to Stub Hub to witness how many people have scored free tickets and now hope someone will pay dearly for them: A lot of those were on sale Tuesday, some as low as $48, general admission, all the way up to $12,789. Selling the free tickets is “violating the spirit of this historic concert,” a spokeswoman for the mayor’s office said on Tuesday.The city has not said how many tickets are made available each day. (Those interested can try again on Wednesday at 9 p.m., Thursday at 7 a.m., Friday at 10 a.m. or on Saturday at 9 p.m.) Clive Davis, the producer, has said he is looking for a crowd of about 60,000 on the Great Lawn and the mayor’s office has said that 80 percent of the tickets were going to be free.Now the good news for some is that if you fancy yourself a V.I.P., and are looking to spend from $399 to $3,450 or even up to $4,950 — tickets for those seats seem easier to get.The most expensive tickets — platinum V.I.P.s — promise seats right in front of the stage, entry into an exclusive backstage lounge featuring a “Complimentary Eclectic Selection of Hors D’Oeuvres,” an open bar and a special entrance.The gold V.I.P. tickets, price tag $3,450, include seating just behind platinum and all the comforts, food and drink of the backstage lounge, plus that special entrance.For $399, you still get a good ticket, but wave goodbye to that backstage lounge. Still, there will be a dedicated concessions area — and V.I.P. restroom facilities.Everyone — the free, the V.I.P.s and the V.I.P.s of the V.I.P.s — has to present proof of vaccination to enter the concert, either by showing up in person with their vaccination card or a photo of it, the New York City COVID SAFE App or the New York State Excelsior Pass. And if you can’t score a ticket, CNN will air the concert live.At an online news conference Monday morning, Mayor Bill de Blasio was excited that the tickets were being distributed.“This is going to be amazing,” he said, “and it’s going to be a great sign of New York City’s rebirth.” More

    • 100 Shares189 Views

      in Theater

      A Broadway Theater Owner Rethinks Post-Pandemic Ticket Selling

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }At HomeExplore: A Cubist CollageFollow: Cooking AdviceVisit: Famous Old HomesLearn: About the VaccineAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyA Broadway Theater Owner Rethinks Post-Pandemic Ticket SellingJujamcyn, which operates five of the 41 Broadway houses, said that when theater returns it will use SeatGeek instead of Ticketmaster.In a sign that some theaters are rethinking how they will operate when Broadway reopens, Jujamcyn Theaters is overhauling its ticketing practices.Credit…David S. Allee for The New York TimesMichael Paulson and Jan. 29, 2021As many live performance venues rethink their operations in anticipation of a post-pandemic reopening, one of Broadway’s major theater owners has decided to overhaul its ticketing practices.Jujamcyn Theaters, home to the musicals “Hadestown,” “Moulin Rouge!” and “The Book of Mormon,” said Friday that it had reached an agreement with SeatGeek, a disruptive newcomer to the marketplace, to handle of all its ticketing. It had been using Ticketmaster, the dominant platform for concerts and other live events.The agreement is SeatGeek’s first on Broadway; the company, which is based in New York, works primarily in the sports industry in the United States, but also has theater clients in London’s West End.“We’re always scanning the landscape for what is new and what is possible, but the shutdown really changed what we were looking for,” said Jordan Roth, the president of Jujamcyn, which operates five of the 41 Broadway theaters. “There are capabilities that SeatGeek has built that speak directly to the now, and also, I think, to the future.”Roth would not describe the financial details of the arrangement, but said he had been impressed by the company’s technological flexibility, as well as its use of historical and comparative pricing to help customers assess ticket value. He said that beyond selling tickets, its technology could be used to allow customers to order food and drink, arrange transportation, purchase merchandise and get other information. SeatGeek will also allow tickets for Jujamcyn shows to be resold through its platform.The deal is a coup for SeatGeek, which began in 2009 as an aggregator of listings on the secondary ticketing market but has become a significant competitor to Ticketmaster in selling tickets directly on behalf of theaters and sports teams. SeatGeek sells tickets for the Dallas Cowboys, the Cleveland Cavaliers and a number of Major League Soccer teams.Danielle du Toit, the president of SeatGeek Enterprise, the company’s primary sales platform, said the Jujamcyn deal would showcase innovations like allowing patrons to order a glass of Champagne to be delivered to their seat at intermission.“For the average Joe,” du Toit said, “the idea is that it’s easy, it’s intuitive, it’s fast, it’s enjoyable.”The shutdown of live events during the pandemic has dealt a blow to all venues and ticketing companies. But behind the scenes, it has also sped up some changes that had been bubbling through the business for years, like contactless concessions sales and the transition to mobile, paperless ticketing. Roth said Jujamcyn had not yet determined whether paper tickets would still be used post-pandemic.Some venues and sports teams have also used the pause to rethink their ticketing alliances; in November, for example, two Houston soccer teams, the Dynamo FC and its affiliated women’s club, the Dash, signed with SeatGeek.When events return, many venues and ticket sellers say they expect extensive safety protocols that may even be embedded into the ticketing process. Late last year, Ticketmaster said it was considering implementing plans like confirming a patron’s vaccination status through a third-party smartphone app. A Ticketmaster spokeswoman said this week that the company was still awaiting federal and state guidance about reopening; Ticketmaster said on Friday it had no comment about losing Jujamcyn as a client.Du Toit said that the slowdown of events gave SeatGeek the opportunity to develop the kinds of features that are part of its Jujamcyn deal.“We’ve used this downtime to dig deeper into our technology,” she said.“The Book of Mormon,” “Hadestown” and “Moulin Rouge!” were all selling strongly before the pandemic and plan to return once theaters can reopen. Two other musicals housed in Jujamcyn theaters, “Frozen” and “Mean Girls,” have announced that they will not resume performances post-pandemic, so the company has two vacant houses to fill.SeatGeek becomes the third major ticketing services provider on Broadway; many theaters use Telecharge, which is owned by Broadway’s biggest landlord, the Shubert Organization; Jujamcyn had used Telecharge until switching to Ticketmaster in 2016. Ticketmaster continues to work with the Nederlander Organization, another major Broadway landlord. Of course, many consumers purchase tickets not through the primary ticket sellers, which handle direct sales online and at the box office, but also through brokers, resellers, or intermediaries like TKTS and TodayTix.The average Broadway ticket cost $121 last season. It remains unclear whether prices will change when Broadway reopens, although many producers expect less premium pricing (those are the highest-priced tickets for the hottest shows; for example, before the pandemic “Hamilton” was regularly selling many of its seats at premium prices of $847 each), at least in the short-term, as the industry seeks to rebuild.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More