Economics is everywhere

Let me tell you about the economics of an 80s concert in the 21st century. As you may know, Def Leppard and Journey were in town tonight. Last week I looked into getting tickets but couldn't quite get a crowd together who was interested in going. Lawn tickets were $25. I resigned myself to the fact that I didn't need to spend $25 just to see "Pour some sugar on me" live at Riverbend. But today at work people started talking about it and people sounded like they were going to go. We checked on-line, lawn tickets were still available. So we decided to go- who doesn't want to listen to some classic metal and arena rock on a beautiful summer night? The traffic was terrible. We arrived at the box office and got in line only to find out the lawn tickets had just sold out. However, there were still pavilion tickets left.

Think about it, that's not usually the case. Usually the pavilion seats go first because people want the comfort of the seats and the closer proximity to the band. The lawn seats are what's left for the stragglers. Not so tonight. The demand for the cheap seats was greater than the demand for the premium seats. Apparently the willingness to pay for "Don't stop believin'" and "Open Arms" was a little lower than anticipated by the event organizers when they drew their supply and demand curves. Some people paid the extra for the pavilion, but plenty of people were walking away. So, we didn't get to see the show. We weren't willing to pay the $65-75 for pavilion seats. Maybe if it was 1985. (Didn't they hear that Styx just had a FREE concert in Mason a few weeks ago?)

An interesting twist is that the scalpers also only had pavilion seats left. We did run into one guy with lawn seats but he wanted to sell them for $75. Apparently he didn't take Econ 101. If I can still buy the nice seats for $65 at the box office, why am I going to pay $75 for the cheap seats?

At least we sang some good 80s songs in the car on the way home.