Black Sabbath gave me frostbite. Alright, that’s being overly dramatic, but that’s certainly how it felt after four hours spent waiting outside for the box office to open at Birmingham’s O2 Academy in early 2012. The band had just announced a hometown gig in the – relatively – small confines of the Academy, and with a capacity of just over 3,000 people it was fair to say demand was likely to far outstrip availability. At that point, the Academy still had a physical box office that would open at 9am, meaning rather than entering the race to get tickets online or via phone, if I just simply popped along to the box office, I could get in, pay and leave with my tickets before most people had even managed to get the webpage loaded up. ‘Oh-ho-ho, you crafty genius’, I told myself. I was wrong.
Rocking up to the Academy at 6am, despite the fact it was still dark, deep winter and freezing, there were maybe 150-200 people already waiting for the box office. So, we waited. The sun came up, but the temperature stubbornly stuck at, "It's a bit chilly, innit?" Still we waited. At one point, security walked through and counted the faces in the queue; when they hit a hundred, they declared anyone past that point wasn’t getting tickets. Still, we waited. Finally, 9am hit and the box office opened, a steady tide of people stepping in and buying tickets and, by around 10am, it was finally my turn. No more waiting; I’d got my tickets. All of this to say: how is it that ticketing has got so much worse since then?
Last week, hundreds of thousands of people tried to get tickets for Black Sabbath’s farewell – definitely, for sure this time – show at Villa Park in Birmingham. And it was agonising. Across four days of on-sales, Ticketmaster queues would reach as high as 150,000+ at any one time – already well beyond Villa’s 42,640 capacity – and getting through seemed to be blind luck. Between webpage errors, faulty verification codes and a dozen other road-bumps and pitfalls, the overwhelming majority shared the same experience of unyielding torture. It was much the same when Oasis announced their reunion tour last year.
Before joining Metal Hammer, I worked for a regional ticket retailer and it was eye-opening. The company’s USP – and one of our biggest strengths - was a familiarity with the venue that meant more complex questions ("I have epilepsy. Does this show have strobe lights?" "I can walk, but only just and need to use bathrooms frequently. Where should I sit?") could be answered by a human being who’d actually set foot in the building. But with big companies now serving most – if not all – venues almost exclusively, that’s now a logistical impossibility and makes any kind of accessibility request infinitely more daunting and frustrating.
Another thing I learned: pre-sales are a pain in the arse. The reality of the pre-sale is thus: yes, tickets are going onsale earlier, but to ensure some level of fairness only a select number of tickets are actually available each day. So, great if you’re only opening pre-sale to the 1000 members of your dedicated fan-club. Less so when anyone who has a ticketing account, the right phone network provider or a widely distributed access code can access the on-sale at the same time. Suddenly, instead of an on-sale where a 40,000 capacity venue is selling all its tickets at once, you have a slow bleed where each day 50,000+ people are all trying to squeeze on and get the 2000 tickets that are actually available on the pre-sale. Rinse, repeat, try again tomorrow.
So what can you do?The simple answer is try to shop around. Granted, it’s not easy when there are less options than ever, but even checking around the usual suspects (Ticketmaster, See Tickets, Gigantic, AXS – never, and we must stress this, never Viagogo) can offer at least a few options for getting tickets during busy onsales. Even if it seems like an event is only being served by one retailer – as with Sabbath – it’s always worth checking the venue itself to see if they have their own allocation (which is how I bagged Sabbath tickets after three days of woe).
The lack of choice is a serious concern for all gig-goers when it means only two or three companies effectively dictate everything from accessibility to pricing. But also, for all the fun of relating a war story about the time I walked three miles to Wolverhampton with a couple hundred quid in my pocket to get Trivium tickets (a trek that felt somewhere between The Warriors and Die Hard With A Vengeance), the return to physical box offices is both impractical and redundant.
Unfortunately, despite the fact these issues have grabbed headlines in recent years, it doesn’t look like anything will improve anytime soon. So all we can do is shop wisely where possible, and accept that sometimes, we just won't get to see the big shows. At this point, we’d gladly brave the frostbite.
