Why You’ll Never Get Good Tickets To Reserved Seat Shows In Lubbock

How do you screw up ticket sales?  Get the city involved!  Yep, Select-A-Seat has to be one of the most ineffective ways to handle tickets.  Combine that mess with U.S.A. P.S.L. holders and you have recipe for disaster and very little chance at a ‘regular Joe’ getting a good ticket for a concert.

The Lubbock Civic Center is handing out wristbands so you don’t have to camp out for tickets for the upcoming Bon Jovi show (how lame is Lubbock that demand is that high?).  Here’s the deal, those wristbands don’t mean ANYTHING except you don’t have to wait in line. Even worse, they release them without warning meaning employees and people who have friends with the Civic Center snap up the first ones.  Want to make it worse?  Remember the Civic Center is just ONE of the locations. There’s also all the United’s, Ralph’s, The Texas Tech Student Union, Dollar Western Wear and probably your grandma’s house.  All of these places open simultaneously and start kicking out tickets.  But wait, there’s more!  People with Personal Seat Licenses at the United Spirit Arena, all Texas Tech Students and staff and band fan club members get first shot.  This is why you can line up three days early and still end up with crap seats.  And now that you’ve been punched in the gut, here comes the kick in the nuts-they ALSO have a presale code that allows others to purchase the tickets in advance as well.  Yep, we've been apart of that nonsense as well, and even the people with presale codes are already picking over second rate seats.

Add to this some people who really don’t care if you get a ticket or not because there are plenty of people in line behind you and you have, a big, fat, bloated, unfair, mess.  Let's not forget skullduggery as well.  YES there are locations that will kick out whatever good tickets they can and hold them back.  As with any business, there are some very hard working people who want you to get what they want, but even if you are lucky to find one of them, their hands are tied by the advance sales.

Select-A-Seat  is also why you see perfectly good venues not being used. You can't book the Coliseum, the Auditorium or the Fairpark without using Select-a-Seat.  You even have to lease and/or use Select-a-Seat employees for day of show ticket sales.  In short, as a promoter, you have to COMPLETELY hand over your ticket sales and this is VERY unattractive, especially to smaller promoters.

Want proof of what I'm saying?  You don't have to go far. You can already buy tickets for Bon Jovi from the resellers and tickets HAVEN'T EVEN GONE ON SALE YET.  I could continue on this topic, but I'll just leave this open to questions.