When tickets for Dave Chappelle’s run at the Aladdin Theater went on sale yesterday afternoon, people got excited. Then frustrated. Then sad. Then mad.
Next week’s four shows, which were surprise-announced on Wednesday night, sold out in seconds flat—Reddit users have complained they were unable to buy the $55 tickets after as little time as four seconds. The sold-out shows left many fans left in the cold, but when you consider the math, it’s actually not super surprising. The Aladdin has a capacity of 600 attendees. With four shows, that’s 2,400 tickets, and with a four-ticket limit, that’s room for as few as 600 buyers (in all likelihood, the number of individual buyers probably ranges from 600 to 1,200). For a high-demand show like this, that’s really not very many slots. (Remember, more than 4,000 people reportedly flocked to Pioneer Courthouse Square in 2009 in the hopes of seeing Chappelle perform an after-midnight set, based only on hearsay that he would be there.)
To their credit, the Aladdin Theater responded to the complaints with a post on Facebook yesterday evening, responding to the complaints about the sell-out—and, more significantly, complaints about scalpers and ticket resellers hawking their newly purchased Chappelle tickets. (Bullet points: They’re requiring photo ID to match the tickets so those who buy tickets from scalpers will not be able to enter; parties of two or more will need to enter with the person whose name is on the ticket; they’re canceling suspicious orders and keeping an eye on the reseller markets at StubHub and Craigslist; the Aladdin’s own employees are not even able to go to these shows.)
Chappelle fans of Portland! We are SO excited to have Dave at The Aladdin. We are much LESS excited that so many of you…
Posted by Aladdin Theater on Thursday, March 10, 2016
This is on top of the headache the Aladdin will face when they have to enforce Chappelle’s strict no-cellphone policy (as in, you can’t even bring one into the theater—which is nuts when you consider how many people use e-tickets on their phones nowadays). As I type this, I see 25 tickets for sale on StubHub, with the cheapest at $295. Don’t buy those. From what the Aladdin suggests, there will be several voided ticket sales and new seats are likely to open up. This is not foolproof. I suppose a scalper COULD sell off any extra tickets, but if the Aladdin’s policy is successfully enforced, you’ll need to enter the venue with your scalper and sit next to them at the show. Which sounds super awkward. But it does seem as though diligence is being done to make sure as few people as possible profit off ticket resales.
That’s awesome that the Aladdin is taking this pretty simple step of requiring IDs to cut down on the scourge of scalpers. Of course it won’t cut out 100% of them (some could sell three tix in a group of four and show up with their “friends”), but it should hopefully get rid of the out-of-town scalping empires and the bots that use fake names. I REALLY wish more Portland venues would do this too. (It’d suck for those who genuinely bought tix and then got sick or had to leave town, but maybe we could agree to not bitch about those situations too much for the greater societal good of killing the scalping trade.)
There’s no way that people are seated by 7:00 if the doors are at 6:00 and everybody has to have their ID matched against a list to get in. It’s only 600 people, so it won’t be that bad, but it will be a clusterfuck. Can you imagine having to do that for Edgefield shows, Wonder Ballroom, Roseland, etc? I don’t love scalpers either, but it’s not that big of a deal.