Publication: San Jose Mercury News [US]
Date: April 12, 1997
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Title: "Scalpers Blamed For Show Cancellation"
Written By: Brad Kava

Prince plans new date, retooled ticket system.

The artist most people still know as Prince canceled the San Jose show he had scheduled for tonight after learning that tickets were being scalped at the expense of his ``regular'' fans, representatives for the performer said Friday.

He has promised to return to San Jose ``very, very soon'' at a reduced ticket price ($40 instead of $50), the representatives said, and canceled the show because the $50 tickets were selling on the Internet for as much as $300.

``I'm telling you, it's going to be right when we come back,'' said Billy Sparks, marketing and promotion manager for the Minneapolis-based performer, who has renamed himself with an unpronounceable symbol and ordered his employees to call him ``The Artist.''

Reselling tickets to popular shows (this one sold out in seven minutes) is a common practice, and a legal one. Bill Graham Presents, which promoted the show, has been fighting scalpers -- even backing a bill to outlaw them -- but has succeeded only on a show-by-show basis, by instituting strict controls.

When a new Prince show is announced, fans will be able to buy tickets only through an elaborate system in which they will have to go to a ticket window and show photo identification to purchase a voucher good for only two tickets. On the night of the show, only those who have proper identification can trade their vouchers for their tickets. Then they must enter the concert hall immediately.

BGP used a similar system last year for small-venue, big-demand shows by Smashing Pumpkins at Kezar Pavilion and Tom Petty at the Fillmore, with apparent success. The system also was used for tickets to a 2,300-seat Prince show Friday night in Los Angeles.

Sparks said Prince saw the high prices being charged on the Internet for tickets and decided to cancel.

Lee Smith, who was handling the Prince show for BGP, said Friday he was surprised by the cancellation. He said he had no way of knowing how many tickets were being sold by ticket brokers, but guessed it might be as many as 10 percent, or 700 tickets. He said BGP hadn't sold tickets for this show with a voucher system because of the time and expense it would have involved.

He also thought that the BASS system, which assigns tickets randomly to those in line, rather than on a first-come, first-served basis, had cut down on scalping.

Ticket brokers have argued that they provide a service, hiring homeless people to camp out on line for days to buy tickets and then selling them for hundreds of dollars to rich fans.

But Smith said Prince and a number of artists resent the fact that ``regular'' fans can't get choice seats with that system in place.

Other Prince shows -- he's been playing relatively small venues across the country -- have been plagued by scalpers. With fans flying in from around the world to catch the shows, it's been a seller's market.

Sparks said the artist felt that his real fans weren't getting in.

``He's losing a lot of money and he's losing a lot of credibility,'' Sparks said of Prince. ``He took a lot of his heart and said, `Hey, man, I'm gonna go against the grain and this is not right and I'm gonna stand up to this.' ''

Some fans have argued that they are actually selling tickets at cost to enable others from out of town to get in. Others who already had tickets and were excited about the show said they felt jilted.

``I felt like he was betraying the real fans,'' said David Lee, 29, a San Jose semiconductor engineer. ``We couldn't help it if people scalped. It was punishing a lot of fans for the actions of a few people.''

The new Prince show will be announced next week. BASS ticket holders to the canceled show can get refunds, including service charges, from where they purchased the tickets, concert officials said.