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Ticket demand brisk for Elton John’s upcoming concert at Covelli Centre
By GUY D’ASTOLFO
YOUNGSTOWN
Ticket demand was as brisk as expected for Elton John’s upcoming concert at Covelli Centre.
About 7,000 tickets went on sale at 10 a.m. Friday, and by midafternoon, a little more than 400 were left. Many of the remaining seats were singles.
“As expected, there was a huge rush for tickets at 10 a.m., and there have been a big number of inquiries all day,” said Kelsey Rupert, marketing director for Covelli Centre.
The March 22 concert will be the British rock legend’s third at Covelli Centre in six years. John’s 2010 concert at the downtown arena sold out roughly 7,000 seats in 30 minutes, making it the fastest sellout in the arena’s short history. The rocker also played Covelli in 2014.
Seats behind and on both sides of the stage are being sold for the March concert, just as they were for the 2010 show.
Not all sales were online or by phone. A few hundred people were lined up at the box office when it opened Friday morning. The cheapest seats – $36 – were the first to go, and an announcement to that effect was made to those in line, eliciting groans from some. Tickets also were priced at $86 and $151.
High-demand concerts often cause frustrating logjams on the Ticketmaster website when the sale begins. Tickets for Bruce Springsteen’s upcoming concerts at Consol Energy Center in Pittsburgh and Quicken Loans Arena in Cleveland also went on sale via Ticketmaster Friday morning, and the volume left many fans unable to connect to make a purchase.
Rupert knew of no such problem for the Elton John sale.
“Typically, large-demand shows take much longer for a purchase to go through because of the volume of people and also because Ticketmaster is confirming that buyers are not a scalper robot. That’s the reason they ask you to type in security phrases,” said Rupert. “Artists, promoters and venues are making a collective push to ensure scalpers are the last people to get tickets to shows. Unfortunately, it takes a few more seconds than normal to process the ticket order.”