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After discovering a mass ticket scalping ring in Denver, CO, Backstreet Boys have pledged to activate
their Backstreet powers to combat those evil doers who would swindle eager fans out of their milk
money. Following their Halloween night engagement at the city's Pepsi Center, the B-Boys were
informed that over 1000 tix were released to various Mike Damone types who easily tripled the $38
asking price and got mad. How mad? So mad that they dispatched their management The Firm to hire
investigators, who discovered that the tix were indeed released while under house control. In response,
the Boys have asked that the show's promoters donate $75,000 to the Columbine College Fund, which
helps provide secondary education to students affected by last April's Columbine High School
massacre. In a statement, Backstreet say: "We've done everything we can to prevent scalping, from
limiting the number of tickets purchased to distributing wristbands... To think scalping of this type
occurred at our Denver show infuriated us. With us, the fans always come first and anything that
compromises our connection with them will always be addressed and properly investigated. We were
horrified to learn that our fans in Denver were manipulated and ripped off in this way." The Backstreet
Boys are "infuriated" because they've taken pains to keep their ticket prices low, which is
understandable but we can't stop imagining just what they Backstreet Boys look like when they're that
mad. I mean, do they break stuff? Do they curse? On a note less apt to get them even more mad, the
boy band have arranged to sell fans 1,000 good seats for their Spring 2000 tour, via auction. Proceeds
will be donated to a TBD charity, so that if fans pay upwards of $100 for a ticket, at least they'll get a
good seat and help a good cause. Check Noise for details soon.
BACKSTREET BOYS fans must get bigger allowances
than we thought. At the band's Oct. 31 show in Denver,
more than 1,000 tickets were sold by scalpers charging
at least $110 each for the $38.50 tickets. The always
do-right Boys were so horrified when they heard about
this mass bamboozling of their fans, they asked the
show's promoter - the House of Blues - to donate
$75,000 to the Columbine College Fund. What's more,
the band will be working with the Web site tickets.com
to distribute 1,000 tickets via auction to each show
during its spring 2000 tour. "With us, the fans always
come first," said the band in a statement, "and anything
that compromises our connection with them will always
be addressed and properly investigated."...
By Mark Lewis
Alleging that House of Blues Concerts allowed tickets to their Denver show to fall into the hands of
scalpers, Backstreet Boys are calling on the promotions firm to make a $75,000 donation to a
scholarship fund.
The group, which will wrap up the 1999 leg of its ''Millennium'' tour
in Florida next week, claims that HOB Concerts (which earlier this
year acquired Universal Concerts and their Denver promotion
unit) allowed the sale of at least 1,000 prime seats for an Oct. 31
concert at Denver’s Pepsi Center to ticket brokers, who in turn
sold them for $110 to $350 instead of the $29.50 and $38.50 face
values.
Mark Norman, senior vice president of HOB Concerts in Denver,
told the Denver Post that a discrepancy netted his company
several hundred extra ''house tickets''--promoter or venue
allotments, held back from public sale, that the promotions firm
normally sells through its own office to clients or to businesses
taking large groups. The belated realization that an unusually
large number of tickets had to be sold by showtime prompted a
decision to loosen the usually strict limits on the number of house
tickets any one client or group can purchase.
HOB Concerts admits that tickets fell into the hands of brokers,
but not that it knowingly sold the tickets to them. Norman said that
the channeling of the tickets to brokers is being investigated.
Backstreet Boys’ managers and accountants discovered that fans
had bought seats from brokers after they polled the first twenty
rows of the Pepsi Center, according to the Post. And when
settling accounts after the show, group accountants discovered
that House of Blues had increased the price of prime seats by
including parking and dinner with them, according to the Rocky
Mountain News.
The group’s publicist released a statement last Tuesday (11/23)
in which the group asked HOB Concerts to donate $75,000 to the
Columbine College Fund. The fund provides financial aid to high
school students affected by the April 20, 1999 shootings at
Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado. HOB Concerts has
not said whether it will honor the request.
The Backstreet Boys’ statement said that the group was “horrified to learn that [its] fans in Denver
were manipulated and ripped off,'' while also portraying the group as a fair-minded act which tries
to keep its ticket prices down so that fans can “purchase merchandise and pay for parking plus
other concert amenities without completely emptying their pockets.”
In the statement, the group proclaimed their support for “publicly-held companies and reputable
organizations such as SFX (a national concert promotion conglomerate) and Tickets.com.”
The group's management company, The Firm, owns an equity stake in Tickets.com, a national
ticketing company which provides auction and, ironically, ticket broker services.
The statement also implies that the group may favor venues aligned with SFX, a rival to HOB
Concerts, when tour dates are announced for their February-March U.S. tour in coming weeks.
More concrete is a plan to use Tickets.com's services to auction an expected 1,000 tickets for the
upcoming tour, with profits earmarked for as-yet-unnamed charity groups.
The group wants the promotions firm to make donation
to a Columbine scholarship fund.
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