The opening night of the Black Keys was turned upside down by the rebuffing of hundreds of ticket holders – Variety

But many of those who were turned back insisted that "nontransferable" was never included in the announcements about the program they could find. Since most of the pages dedicated to posting or selling tickets have already disappeared from the online cache on Saturday, it was difficult to immediately independently verify who was right about what was or was not explicitly presented before the concert. .

"It's a giant mess, but for me the problem is the lack of transparency," tweeted a producer of a major entertainment company, who was among the opponents of the door. "At no point in the process, when I went to the fan club site, did I see that Tix was sold, that I had gone to Ticketmaster, that it had been found, found on StubHub – at no time, no one has said anything about non-transferable. "

The official statements of the group and the ticket office begged.

Ticketmaster said in a statement: "The presenters of the concert have requested that these tickets be made available exclusively to fans and that they are not transferable. This was announced from the beginning with the announcement of the performance and throughout the sales process. Unfortunately, the bad actors took advantage of this situation to display screenshots of tickets that could not enter the secondary market. We always recommend to buy tickets from the official source. "

"The concert tickets last night were $ 25 and were for the fan club," said the Black Keys in their own statement to the press. "It was our first show in four years and the kickoff of the Let's Rock tour. Because we were playing in a much smaller room than other venues on the tour, we've disabled ticket portability to make sure our fans get into the door at the low price we've set for them. "

Non-transferable electronic tickets on Ticketmaster are marked with a rotating bar code. A fan on Twitter said that the revealing revolving bar code was only lit 45 minutes before the show started.

Naturally, StubHub was inundated with phone calls from the sidewalks located outside the Wiltern. Many frustrated fans had tweeted the time they had spent waiting to see if the money they had spent for resale tickets (in many cases, 10 times). or more of the face value) would be refunded. In the end, the resale site benefited from refunds and a significant bonus, trying to win the skirmish for fan sympathy.

StubHub said: "Surprisingly, Live Nation and Ticketmaster have issued tickets for The Black Keys concert through rotating barcodes, which limits the use of tickets by fans. As a result, fans who bought legitimate tickets on StubHub were turned back at the entrance. Fans should not be punished for giving or selling their tickets. We strongly disagree with the approach of Live Nation and Ticketmaster and its negative impact on fans. As part of our FanProtect Guarantee, StubHub offers comprehensive refunds proactively. Considering the exceptional situation, we also give a credit of 100 USD to the concerned fans. "

The Los Angeles Times, which had a report of the scene as the main topic on its website Saturday, began its story by telling the story of a woman from Boyle Heights who had spent $ 700 in three tickets for herself and her two young children and who was waiting in line for two hours, after finally getting to safety, she was told that the tickets were not valid, returning her to the sidewalk with a 9-year-old girl who was crying.

Reporting on crying children is not the kind of public relations that any musical act wants, even for the purpose of taking a noble position. Yet, many observers have stood at the Black Keys. Saturday, on social networks, reactions seemed divided: some accused the villains of the group to refuse hundreds of fans warned that their tickets would not be honored, and others touting the Black Keys as heroes for finally taking position against so-called scalpers.

Examples of tweets: "Personally, I'm fed up with getting ripped off for concert tickets while this market of scalpers could easily be completely closed. Good on the Black Keys. I hope that MORE groups will do it. "I see that the Black Keys have confessed to having the entire responsibility to refuse all their fans. Excellent work from the fans who alienate them for no reason! "" The Black Keys have therefore taken action with Ticketmaster to avoid scalping, and people who support scalpers by buying tickets sold for $ 700 complain? "You punish the sellers rules, not the people who did not know that they were ripped off. "

Curiously, according to the LA Times, sources of production said that 97% of the 1,850 seats were occupied by the room, although hundreds of people who sold resold tickets were refused … question of who occupied all these seats who would have been theoretically empty.

The situation is reminiscent of a similar controversy in early 2017 when the country's star, Eric Church, reportedly "canceled" 25,000 tickets for his tour, identified as having passed through resellers, and in fact put the seats back into question. sale.

While many artists are running to follow the example of the Black Keys by offering kabosh to third-party resellers, Thursday's scene provides an instructive moment, if nothing else, in the value of passing the word explicitly before StubHub customers already inside the gateway … and before the arrival of helicopters.