I’ve been a Bruce Springsteen fan since 1970. I can’t afford his Kansas City tour stop
As I’ve been checking and rechecking ticket sales at Kansas City’s T-Mobile Center for Bruce Springsteen’s concert next February, I’ve been seeing messages: “Large selection of tickets! “Huge inventory selling fast!” “Wide selection — great seats!” And the kicker? “High demand!”
Well, hardly, when Springsteen should have sold out the arena weeks ago and is still lagging behind with about 1,800 unsold seats, according to my count on the Ticketmaster website. This does not count general admission floor spots for $661, since no information was available about how many of those tickets remain.
I went back to pictures I took during Springsteen’s 2016 stop at the same venue. I was in Section 109 overlooking stage right. Safe to say, the view was OK for about $75 apiece.
Asbury Park Press reporter Chris Jordan recently wrote: “The pricing of the 2016 and ’17 River Tour, the last E Street Band tour, was below the industry average at $68 to $150 for a typical arena show.” I really wonder what made this man so much more special today than he already was then. The lack of touring? The pandemic? Dynamic pricing?
Comparing prices for Section 109 in 2016 versus today, seats now range from the $75 I paid then to $200, $300 and up. In the highest level, more than 60 seats remain open; the next lower, more than 700 tickets; and 200 on the floor for extremely steep prices that run to thousands of dollars.
A handful of seats scattered around the arena are easily avoidable at $600-plus from T-Mobile Center’s box office. I spotted two in the second row on the floor labeled as “Official Platinum” for $985. A real steal — but who’s doing the stealing?
General admission — $600-plus, standing room only — fills the space between the stage and floor seating, and yet those seats are costly at $2,000 to $4,000. And face it: Everybody who buys floor seats will have to stand anyway once the show starts. Ridiculous for sure.
Just who is in charge of this fiasco? The Boss himself? Or Ticketmaster and the industry of greed?
As for accessibility issues, our Section 109 for Springsteen in ‘16 was convenient, considering the angle of the floor the and the width of the steps.
A few months later there for the Dixie Chicks, our Section 222 high above stage left was too steep and uncomfortable. We knew we could never go that high again because of the discomfort.
Six years later, both my wife and I avoid high places and questionable footing in stadiums, arenas and theaters. I don’t even do ladders anymore. Getting older is not for the faint at heart, but many of us still feel young and enjoy concerts.
Easy-to-reach seating exists in T-Mobile Center in the lower sections, but the cost cancels us out. At our age (I detest this phrase) and retired, we do not dare waste so much money, which would include paying for lodging within walking distance. Night driving in downtown Kansas City is out of the question. This just adds another $200 or more, reaching an astronomically impossible $1,000 or higher.
I first saw and met Springsteen at the Hullabaloo Club in Richmond, Virginia, in 1970. That was before the formation of the E-Street Band, when he was still fronting Steel Mill. I have caught his shows ever since. I once even saved a seat at the bar — at his personal request — during a 1972 Bruce Springsteen Band show at the Back Door Club in Richmond. We talked on and off all evening.
Evidently, many of us in 2022 and into the future are being told to sit this tour out, because both cost and a safe setting in huge arenas are beyond our means. Or in other words, “Shell it out or stay home.”
I am beyond disappointed. I had really wanted to hear him performing his latest album “Letter to You” — or at least a few songs that mean so much to me.
Kevin Gray is a former Paola High School journalism teacher and a former Osawatomie Journal news editor, reporter, columnist and photographer. He lives in Paola.
