To the best of my knowledge Phish has never once engaged in a tiered ticketing pricing structure. For every Phish concert, the price of a ticket in the front row is the same as the price for one in the nosebleeds or lawn.

When the Dave Matthews Band plays the Superpages.com Center in Dallas, pavilion tickets will be $70 and lawn tickets $40. When The Dead cruise into the Greensboro Coliseum, tickets will be $89 and $49.50. When Metallica plays the TD Banknorth Garden, tickets will be $79.50 and $59.50.

Phish

Phish now has thirteen dates on the books, and the ticket price for all of them is $49.50. I’d love to know how this all went down. Was having a single ticket price a requirement set forth by the band before joining Red Light? (Side note: redlight.com is a porn site, redlightmanagement.com is the correct link, might as well spare you that inconvenience).

When tickets go on sale through Live Nation, Ticketmaster and Metrotix the weekend of January 30, I predict that seven out of their ten shows will sell out within the first hour. Perhaps they won’t immediately sell 80,000 tickets to their two shows at Alpine Valley. Maybe they can’t immediately sell 22,000 in Burgettstown, PA on a Thursday night. But most fans believe that Jones Beach (2 shows), Great Woods, Camden, Asheville, St. Louis and Noblesville will sell out the day tickets are available for purchase.

READ ON for more of DaveO’s editorial on Phish ticket prices…

It’s clear to me that Phish is leaving money on the table. Don’t get me wrong, this table will have a lot of money on it at the end of the month. Seven sold out shows and let’s say they sell 60% capacity of the Alpine shows and 75% of Burgettstown. That’s still 170,864 tickets at 49.50/each and you’ve got $8,457,768.00. If Phish raised the ticket prices by $20 (to $69.50) for the best 30% seats in the house, they would immediately net an additional 1. Million. Dollars!

A million dollars, and that’s just for ten shows. If they play 40 shows this year, that would be four million.

I think $49.50 is completely reasonable for a band that has already netted 1,183 shows through the past 25 years. Sure, ticket prices may have been as low as $27.50 in the Summer of 2000. With inflation, that would only be about $34 in 2008. Ticket prices have gone up a little…but look at a few more examples of bands playing arenas and amphitheaters: AC/DC: $89.50, Nickelback: $65/55/46.50, The Eagles: $185.50/125/75/45

I hope this streak of one-price ticketing continues – maybe it will and maybe it won’t. For now, I’m proud that my favorite band still has a manageable ticket price despite their ability to sell out arenas and amphitheaters nationwide. If these four guys can stay out of jail, I can once again hold my head high when questioned about the return of Phish at the next extended family get-together.

DaveO

David Onigman is a recent transplant from Boston to San Francisco. In addition to behind the scenes work and the occasional post, DaveO contributes the (almost) weekly Cover Wars column, though he's always looking for guest authors for it.

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