- The Sphere holds 18,000 people. Twelve x 18,000 = A maximum of 216,000 tickets. That’s not a lot of tickets for a limited run from a band as big as U2. That’s the equivalent of a little more than four 360 Tour shows. And The Sphere production could potentially be as spectacular as anything U2 has ever done.
- U2 has a global fanbase that would buy up all the seats for all 12 shows by itself if it could. There’s certainly more than 216,000 of them on the planet.
- But that number is misleading. You have to deduct the number of “holdbacks” required. These are the tickets held back for use by the venue, the promoter, the band, the label, products like American Express’s Front of the Line, and so on.
- This is Las Vegas. Hotels, concierges, and various fixers all over the city need tickets so they can comp the whales. The number of those tickets would have been carved out right off the top.
- This is The Sphere’s first engagement, it’s coming-out party. It will attract the Danny Ocean crowd and the see-and-be-seers.
- In conclusion, if there is space for 18,000 people, I’d be shocked if there was 10,000 tickets available to the punters, super punters, and super-duper punters per show. That means 100,000-ish tickets were never, ever going on sale.
- Scalpers have multiple fan club accounts– MANY accounts–that puts them in direct competition with actual fans. Remember the advance code ticket situations that happened with theFancl Elevation and 360 Tours
- Some fan club members were no doubt tempted by offers from scalpers. “Hey, do you really want to go to the show or would you like to make some big money?”
- As pointed out above, there are thousands of holdback tickets. They can end up anywhere.