The 'projected sell out' scheme

As a follow up to my last post (about Madonna's Sticky & Sweet Tour not selling out), I did some research on the internet, and I finally figured out how LiveNation manages to declare every single Madonna show sold out, even when the stadiums are half empty.

What it all comes down to, is something LiveNation calls 'projected sell out'. This means LiveNation sets an amount of tickets they expect to be sold, and once that happens, they call the show sold out.

However, there are two ways of manipulating the box office figures, and LiveNation uses them both. First, they can set whatever 'projected sell out' figure they want to. For instance: imagine you can fit 23.000 people in the O2 Arena. One would say the arena wouldn't be sold out until all those 23.000 tickets have been sold, right? Wrong! LiveNation can set a 'projected sell out' number for whatever amount of tickets they like. Effectively, this means they can say 'we need to sell 10 tickets, after that, we're sold out'. This way, every ticket sold after the first 10, are 'extra tickets', sold even 'above capacity'. Never mind the 22.490 extra tickets that could have been sold, it's only the first 10 that matter. Obviously, they don't use a number as low as 10, but during the Sticky & Sweet Tour, they've set 'projected sell out' figures that are sometimes 30.000 tickets less than the actual capacity of a stadium. No problem getting sold out that way.

The other way LiveNation manipulates the figures, is by usually not disclosing the 'projected sell out' figures when tickets go on sale. That way, if ticket sales are slow, they can just adjust the 'projected sell out' break even point, in such a way they will always make it to that point. Sometimes, however, they are a little too quick telling people how many tickets are actually on sale. This year in Spain, they announced 50.000 tickets on sale for the Zaragoza show, but when it didn't sell out, that number magically changed into 30.000. And then, what a coincedence, 30.000 tickets were sold and the show was declared sold out.

LiveNation can twist the figures all they want, but ridiculous marketing terms such as 'projected sell outs' won't change anything about the fact that sold out means 'every seat sold'. Having a half empty stadium proves a lot more than LiveNation's figures.