Kip Moore Takes Aim at Ticket Scalpers
Kip Moore is generally a laid-back guy, but when scalpers started grabbing tickets to his upcoming headlining tour, the “Dirt Road” singer got all kinds of riled up. Moore, who will headline this fall’s CMT on Tour, has already put tickets for several dates on sale, and in spite of keeping prices low (between $25 and $35), has seen those tickets being resold at a premium all over the Internet.
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In a strongly worded message on his Facebook page, Moore notes that production costs for his tour were scaled back “across the board” to ensure low ticket prices, but that his hands are somewhat tied when it comes to combating scalpers who buy up the pre-sale tickets.
“There are things in this world that piss me off that I know I’ll never be able to change,” he writes. “Like shitty people in congress, mechanic that tell you your motor is blown when its most likely a small problem, rising gas prices, selfies every 2 seconds, duck lip selfies, phones in general, paying $75 for a decent seat at a baseball game, people that bitch just to bitch and being politically correct, and the list goes on. But above all, the thing that pisses me off the most is scalpers. I could sit back and ignore it, because I know it’s a losing battle, but I just can’t do that. People are trying everyday to fix this problem, but it’s a difficult task.”
Addressing the scalpers directly, Moore writes, “I understand doing whatever you can to make a dollar. I also understand there are ethical ways of making that dollar. Twist it however you want to make it to seem like what you’re doing is ok, but it’s not. I want to always keep prices low, so don’t be a dick.”
Moore isn’t alone in his disdain for scalpers. Eric Church, whose Outsiders World Tour kicks off in September, told Rolling Stone, “It’s a damn scam is all it is. It’s the mafia. The price of some tickets for Minneapolis right now is $1,200, and the price for Madison Square Garden is $800. It’s stupid. It’s not solvable until it’s illegal. If a fan who gets on at 10 o’clock has the same chance as a scalper that gets on at 10 o’clock, I’m OK. The problem I have is that scalpers have a bazillion people working for them. And they have those bots that scan. So it’s not fair.”
To combat scalpers, Church canceled the purchase of some 900 tickets to his September 16th concert in Minneapolis, and put them back up for sale to give fans a better chance of securing tickets at a reasonable price. The alternative, raising prices across the board so that scalpers have less incentive to re-sell tickets, isn’t something he wants to do.
“There’s guys out there that want to come to a show and bring their family to a show and are working a blue-collar job, they were there for us in bars and clubs, so I should raise [ticket prices] to $100 because that’s what the scalpers think? I refuse to believe that,” Church said. “The fact that I have to raise it because of scalpers, that’s what makes me mad. It’s not because I want to raise it, it’s because there’s a fucking scalper going to make a profit on it. It’s nuts.”