Canadian indie pop band Tegan and Sara conducted a pay-what-you-can “experiment” at a concert in San Francisco last night in an effort to counter the secondary market leaving empty seats.
The move was an effort to fill potentially empty seats with “real fans” after hundreds of tickets for their Hey, I’m Just Like You tour date ended up on resale platforms.
The two sisters made a statement via social media yesterday (Tuesday) just a few hours prior to their sold-out show at the 1,800-capacity Sydney Goldstein Theater.
Tegan and Sara wrote: “It has come to our attention that significant numbers of tickets to our show tonight in San Francisco were unethically gobbled up by secondary ticketing platforms during our tour on sale in July.
“While the show tonight is technically sold out, many of these tickets are now being flooded back into the market for re-sale. Because there is little time to sell and we never ask our fans to go to secondary sites, this will likely result in empty seats tonight in the Sydney Goldstein Theater.
“Our goal is to ensure that our real fans are in each and every seat, and to prevent secondary platforms from hurting our show. As an experiment, tonight in San Francisco we will be offering rush seating for all open seats, at approximately 8:15pm.”
Those that showed up to the venue and made a donation to The Tegan and Sara Foundation, the band’s charity which supports LGBTQ+ girls and women, were offered seats left empty due to the secondary market on a first-come-first-served basis.
The band added in its statement that its analysis of secondary sites estimated that more than 200 seats were left to fill at the last minute.
It concluded: “We will be continuing to work on this frustrating problem this week and will keep everyone posted on rush seating and ticket availability to upcoming shows. We can’t wait to see you!”
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