Heart is pounding! Time is of the essence! “Refresh”, “refresh”, “refresh” as quick as you can! We don’t want to miss anything!
It’s hard to differentiate if we’re excited, nervous, manic, or some contorted hybrid of all of the above, but in any case, I think we might have a problem. But we’ll worry about that later. Right now we have to focus on locking up tickets!
To the casual music listener or concert goer this probably sounds strange. But to any person who truly loves a band, the chance to see them live, up close and personal, is unmatched when it comes to favorite life experiences.
Seeing them once is great. Seeing them once every time they tour is even better. But seeing them multiple times, in multiple places, each tour – every tour – is best!
I remember being confused by it when I was younger and heard people talk about following the Grateful Dead. Stories of folks following them from city to city, and I wondered how it didn’t get boring hearing the same songs over and over.
But when it’s YOUR favorite band, who plays YOUR favorite songs, it makes perfect sense!
For me, that band is Bon Jovi. And it doesn’t matter how many times I see them, it’s never enough. Each show has a little bit of it’s own flavor, continually reinforcing you to keep coming back so you don’t miss any of those unique moments.
That topic will be a whole other blog some day, but for now let’s just say – move over Dead Heads and make room for Jovi Heads.
Going is easy, It’s the getting of the tickets that becomes akin to an extreme sport. It becomes a little like playing the Vegas odds.
It’s all about finding the balance between getting as close as you can, while not spending your last dollar so you don’t become homeless along the way.
The trouble is, once you’ve experienced being close enough to see their facial expressions, and God willing even make eye contact, there’s no turning back. Anything less after that feels like walking out of the casino broke. So you keep trying, hoping you’ll turn your luck and walk away a winner.
Chance number one comes the day of fan club pre-sales – the chance to get tickets before they are available to the general public.
The tricky part is that this usually happens on a weekday, right smack in the middle of your work hours. You can bet at 10 am on those days, every fan club member has made an excuse to hide behind closed doors with their finger hovering above their keyboard, waiting to be one of the first ones in when the clock strikes. Not to mention, all the fans in different time zones juggling “o’clocks” to figure out what that time equals in their neck of the woods.
Here is your first decision – can you pay full price, including the special VIP packages attached, to secure a seat in the front few rows. If not, you just make sure you’ve ensured yourself a seat somewhere in the building, and will worry about upgrading later.
Your next chance comes closer to the show date, when the ticket vendors allow folks to purchase just a seat, sans package. Much more affordable, but you’ve played roulette with whether or not an un-purchased seat up close even still exists.
If yes, you’re risk tolerance has paid off and you won big. You just scored awesome concert tickets! If you were in Vegas, there would be lights flashing and bells ringing in your honor.
If not, you have to wait for the next shot at getting closer to the stage.
That next chance comes in the form of re-sale tickets, Those would be the tickets that are no longer needed by someone who managed to already lock down a better seat for themselves. Keep in mind, as long as it’s closer than your own current seat, it’s still a win for you.
The catch here is that the price could go either way. Maybe the seller just wants to get rid of them and make back some of their money, in which case “kudos” on your find. Maybe not all the bells and whistles of a bigger win, but winning is winning, and you just did it, so “well done!”
The other side of that coin being that the seller may start thinking economics – supply, demand, and capitalism – raising the price to make a profit off of this re-sale. Depending on how much profit they are hungry for, you have some decisions to make about whether or not getting up closer is worth it.
But then there is the reality of the ever-changing ticket map, and over-lapping chance stages, that can happen simultaneously rather than in a neatly organized process, making it tougher to have a fool-proof strategic plan. Given this mayhem, it behooves you to keep looking as often as you can for that diamond in the ruff chance at seeing your favorite performer smile in your direction.
Enter the gamification of getting your hands on primo concert seats. The psychology behind this chaotic process inadvertently pulls you into the quicksand as your brainstem’s reward center over-rides your logic with it’s behavior modifying operant conditioning.
It becomes a bit like a real life musical chairs game to see who gets their desired seat, who is able to sell their old seat, and who is left holding onto an unsold seat by the time the first chord is strummed.
So you sit at the computer, forgetting to breath as you “refresh” over and over. Each mouse click becomes like the pull of a slot machine’s arm. Most times you get nothing. But the intermittent times you see a change of available seats on the venue map is the reward that reinforces you to keep clicking.
Sometimes it’s a small reward. Maybe a new closer seat, but it was too expensive. Maybe a new affordable seat, but it wasn’t closer enough to make the change worth it.
But maybe, just maybe, you get the rare win of that new closer seat you can afford….. score!
Imagine this, all across the country, little mice wearing Bon Jovi concert t-shirts clicking computer keyboards in hopes of that occasional reward of awesome tickets. Now cut to flashback scene of rats in cages pressing a lever in hopes of their periodic food pellet reward. (Hey…. did B.F. Skinner ever work for TicketMaster?)
This now has re-programmed your brain, at it’s brainstemiest level, to shape new learning – the new threshold of how many times you will click that computer key before the behavior extinguishes itself out and you give up. This means that next time, you can easily continue the behavior of monitoring and “refresh”ing for at least the amount of time you did on this new seat before you even begin to consider just being content with what you already have and walking away.
It’s the gamble for show seats. It holds the enticing chance for winning big. It also holds the possibility of disappointment and financial loss. It’s exciting, it’s nerve wracking, it’s gut wrenching, and it’s addictive.
Maybe being addicted to something that makes you happy, and harms none, isn’t such a bad thing though.
And if you’re lucky, for one brief moment in time, just maybe Jon Bon Jovi might actually know you exist – thanks to you sitting so close to his stage……
Life-long memory…….. priceless!