There have been numerous articles about how Grateful Dead tickets have skyrocketed on the secondary market. Looking at the record-breaking demand for Grateful Dead tickets, we had to ask . . . how much did The Grateful Dead leave on the table by not selling their tickets at market value? We decided to find out . . .
The Grateful Dead sold their tickets on TicketMaster according to the following pricing tiers:
Each pricing tier corresponds to a level at Soldier Field – $72.05 for the 400s level, $92.47 for the 300s level, and so on until you come to $215.20 for access to the GA PIT in front of the stage. Since this is about how much money Grateful Dead left on the table, we’ll be focusing on the numbers in parentheses ($56.50 for the 400s level, $76.50 for the 300s level, etc.) unless specified otherwise.
By spreading the capacity of Soldier Field (61,500) roughly evenly across the different sections, while giving greater capacity to the large floor sections, and comparing that data to the information from TicketMaster, we can come up with an estimate of what each section was worth at Grateful Dead prices:
By adding up the value of each section, we can estimate that the Grateful Dead sold out Soldier Field for roughly $6.1 Million per night.
This is well under market value. Figure 1 shows how pricing for each tier exploded on the secondary market after the concerts were sold out:
* All primary market data is from www.ticketmaster.com; all secondary market data is from www.tickpick.com.
To determine how much the Grateful Dead was losing per night by not selling their tickets at market value, we looked at the average prices of tickets on the secondary market for each section.
*All data is from www.tickpick.com
We then used the same capacity/section analysis to estimate that the Grateful Dead could have sold out Soldier Field for a whopping $152 Million per night!
Therefore, by our estimates, the Grateful Dead gave up approximately $146 Million per night by not selling their tickets at market value. To put that number in perspective, Celebrity Net Worth estimates that Grateful Dead band member Bob Weir is worth only $30 Million. One night at Soldier Field is worth nearly 5 times that!
Comments
6 responses to “How Much Money Did the Grateful Dead Leave on the Table at Soldier Field? More Than You Think . . .”
There are over 10000 tickets available online now for Chicago. The secondary market grossly and artificially raised prices, but few people are buying. These slimy scalpers must be beginning to sweat holding so many tickets still. Few will sell at the ridiculous price they are asking. Yes there is a high demand for these tickets, but there has always been taboo against scalping GD tickets and many who could afford these stupid prices are are choosing not to. I predict that that there will be many tickets available the day of the show for face or less as the greedy scalpers try to minimize their losses. There was a lot of hype at the 2002 reunion in Alpine Valley. It seemed tickets were going to be so hard to find many did not go to look for them. People with extras could not even find someone to give them away to day of the show. The prices on these charts are BS. Just because some A-hole is asking so much fr a ticket does not mean that it has that actual value.
One question still bugs me, why has the secondary market been so much softer for the Santa Clara shows? The “last shows ever” should be good for some lift for the Chi shows but lets face it July in Nor Cal vs July in Chicago plus seeing them on their home turf should put the Levis shows at least in the ballpark. (Nice pun eh?)
YEAH. That is weird. I think the East has always been more densely populated and the GD always toured heavily out there as cities are much closer together. So my theory is that Chicago is full up with mostly East Coast heads, and we on the Best Coast will get the mellower crowd. YAY. MY buddy called me and he cannot sell his Santa Clara tix, which he paid 139 each for, lucky me as he is miracle-ing me tix. 🙂
Secondary market is selling a much smaller number of tickets. The supply is down. Tickets could have sold for more but not 5X. Don’t underestimate the potential backlash from deadheads had they felt these shows were a money grab.
Gee really? Only 30 million? How does he.expect to get by on that? Oh pity the poor rock star,his life is soooo difficult! Let’s say he lives another 30’years that’s million a year.Seems pretty comfy to me!
“Grateful Dead band member Bob Weir is worth only $30 Million”
Yeah poor old Bob.