[Slowhand] Too many Swamp Meats ?

[Gordon Shinn]

Clapton, Van Halen cut prices to fight slow sales

What's bad for concert promoters may be good for consumers.
In a last-ditch attempt to fill seats in a lackluster summer-
concert season, venues around the U.S. slashed ticket prices
to as little as ten dollars -- for superstar acts including
Korn, Linkin Park and Snoop Dogg, the Dead, the Cure, Ozzfest
and John Mayer. The price cuts were in response to a dismal
summer, promoters say, with Lollapalooza, Britney Spears,
Christina Aguilera and Marc Anthony canceling tours, Norah
Jones downsizing from amphitheaters to smaller venues and
even major artists such as Eric Clapton and Jessica Simpson
struggling to move tickets.

For one day in mid-July, concert promoter Clear Channel
Entertainment dropped prices at Northern California venues
to twenty dollars, including parking and fees. The company
also put lawn seats at Nashville and San Antonio events
on sale for ten dollars. And a ten-dollar food-and-beverage
voucher was included for each twenty-five-dollar Van Halen
lawn seat in select cities. Promoter House of Blues put
twenty-dollar lawn seats on sale for eighty shows in
seventeen venues.

"It is a stimulus," says Alex Hodges, executive vice
president of House of Blues Concerts. "If a show has been on
sale for five months, you do a discount to give it a renewed
sense of urgency."

Until now, ticket prices have risen steadily for years;
this year's Top Fifty tours, according to concert-industry
bible Pollstar, cost an average of $58.71, or thirteen
percent higher than 2003's $51.81. And while revenues for
those tours were up eleven percent in June 2004 compared
to midyear 2003, ticket sales dipped two percent.

Several promoters, including Dave Marsden of Clear Channel
in Boston, have acknowledged that ticket prices are too
high. But there are exceptions -- the Warped Tour, one of
the summer's few bright spots, charges less than thirty-five
dollars. And the Dave Matthews Band keeps prices in the
forty-to-sixty-dollar range. "Our ticket prices have always
been fair," says Coran Capshaw, the band's manager. "We're
not getting involved in any discount programs. I don't think
it's time to hit the panic button."

STEVE KNOPPER
for Rolling Stone
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