The Front Porch Blog

All For The Hall Tickets Re-Sold for Exorbitant Prices on E-Bay

Jessica Phillips  |  September 2, 2009

A frenzy for tickets to the "Keith Urban and Friends All For the Hall" event in Nashville, TN has begun. This wonderful idea brings together artists like Brad Paisley,Vince Gill, Faith Hill, Lady Antebellum, Dierks Bentley and Little Big Town. Other surprise artists are sure to be announced soon. This kind of show harkens back to old Opry days, where artists would lesiurely join each other onstage for unique duets, and swap stories and songs. Best of all, each artist performing at the October 13th event is playing for free.

Tickets were put on sale for $25.00, to keep the event affordable for families and fans. Every dollar made from the show benefits the Country Music Hall of Fame, to help preserve country music's rich history.

Or so you would think.

When tickets went onsale to the general public this morning at 10:00am CDT, it seemed few tickets were left for purchase. At that same time, on e-bay, tickets to the charity event were already available-for upwards of $300.00 to $500.00.

Fortunately, ticketmaster and Urban's fanclub limited the number of tickets that could be purchased per family. Unfortunately, this probably did little to prevent scalpers from purchasing, then re-selling, tickets. This practice of "middle-men" buying up blocks of tickets is more of a common practice in the music industry than most would like to admit, and it is notoriuously hard to control.

Scalping tickets to a regular concert cheats both fans and artists. But scalping tickets to a charity event like "All For the Hall" is particularly sickening. This practice cheats not only fans out of an affordable experience, but the Hall of Fame is cheated out of money that could be designated to preserving and promoting country music. In this blogger's humble opinion, any additional money made by scalpers from re-selling tickets at exorbitant prices should be sent directly back to the Hall of Fame.

Additionally, what if all the scalped tickets are not sold at the outrageous prices listed on e-bay and other sites? Artists are then left with the possibility of playing to a "sold out" crowd, but not to a packed house.