Bruce Springsteen loves to brag about his roots in the working class, but his fans are leaving The Boss in large numbers as tickets for his next tour have skyrocketed to $5,000.
Bruce Springsteeen’s fanzine shows how awful things have become. BackstreetsAfter 43 years of operation, the publisher and editor-in chief announced they are closing down. They said that fans lost interest in their products because they couldn’t afford them to purchase tickets.
Christopher Phillips has been the editor of this fan magazine since 1998. He said that his staff was excellent. “dispirited, downhearted, and, yes, disillusioned” over ticket prices.
“These are concerts that we can hardly afford; that many of our readers cannot afford; and that a good portion of our readership has lost interest in as a result,” he wrote in an editorial note.
https://t.co/TCDJkGYZuC pic.twitter.com/pwpROJ8ggP
— Backstreets Magazine (@backstreetsmag) February 3, 2023
The source of the acrimony is Ticketmaster’s dynamic pricing algorithm, which allows tickets to be priced based on consumer demand.
Even though dynamic pricing has been in existence for many years now, it has caused concert tickets to reach astronomical heights for most of the top artists. It has also led to sticker shock for those who love their performers and are happy to pay a premium.
Ticketmaster, which is owned by Live Nation Entertainment, is already under Congressional scrutiny following the Taylor Swift debacle that saw service outages and and long wait times.
As Breitbart News reported, Springsteen could have taken action to work around Ticketmaster’s virtual monopoly on ticket sales, but has so far chosen not to do so.
Springsteen appeared to brush off his fans’ revolt in a recent interview with Rolling Stone.
“You don’t like to be criticized. You certainly don’t like to be the poster boy for high ticket prices. That’s the last thing you prefer to be. But that’s how it went,”He said. “You have to own the decisions you have made and go out and just continue to do your best.”
“You don’t like to be criticized”: #SpringsteenThis article addresses the expense of seeing the Boss. @greeneandyPlease see the following: @RollingStoneYou can also get a response directly to our 7/4/22 “Freeze-out” editorial (https://t.co/zbDygQpzwQ). Thoughts? https://t.co/OEH0jcEE7P pic.twitter.com/sI4WPda7WA
— Backstreets Magazine (@backstreetsmag) November 18, 2022
Springsteen was an outspoken anti-Trumpist and supported Joe Biden in the 2020 election.
Even the rocker helped push Atlantic‘s discredited report that President Trump called American servicemen “losers” “suckers” in an anti-Trump campaign ad he made with novelist-screenwriter-activist Don Winslow.
Follow David Ng on Twitter @HeyItsDavidNg. Do you have a tip for me? Contact me at [email protected]
Check out the complete article here
