Less than two days after 4,800 tickets for the fall concert featuring Post Malone went on sale, floor seats and general admission were sold out, leaving interested students scrambling to find tickets.
Some students, like Rachel Zielinski, a senior majoring in biology, are trying to find tickets in various Binghamton University Facebook groups, including the “Binghamton University Class of 2019” page.
Zielinski said that she originally tried to buy tickets through the University two days after they were released, but after looking away from her computer for what seemed like a moment, the tickets were sold out.
“I actually was on the webpage and able to click on the link and then went to talk to my roommate and a second later I couldn’t click on it,” Zielinski said. “I was going to have my best friend from home come and visit to see Post Malone but now she’s not, which is very sad.”
When Zielinski tried to look for tickets in Facebook groups, she said that the people she contacted were selling tickets for $125.
Floor seats originally cost $40 and general admission were $25, so students could be paying more than five times face value for a resold ticket.
“Honestly the whole situation has been frustrating and depressing,” Zielinski said. “I get that Post Malone is popular, but I just wished I would have had a warning in regard to how fast tickets were going to sell out.”
Libby Aliberti, the Student Association Programming Board (SAPB) vice president for programming and a senior majoring in biology, said this year’s fall concert sold out more quickly than any other that she’s aware of.
“Our tickets went on sale at 9 p.m.,” Aliberti said. “The floor tickets sold out in 90 minutes. The tickets officially were sold out by the third [of November]. In our time here, the arena has not sold out.”
However, the SAPB said it can’t do anything about overpriced, resold tickets.
Ashley Blake, the concerts chair for the SAPB and a senior majoring in history, said the board didn’t want students to take such drastic measures to attend the concert, and it plans to address the problem for future shows.
“We’ll be changing the system to try to ensure that more of our students can pay the discounted price we try to give them with the student shows,” Blake said.
Aliberti said that in the future, students will have more time to purchase tickets before members of the public are allowed to. She said the SAPB wants to make students aware that if they buy tickets from a reseller, they’re doing it at their own risk.
“Our only warning to people buying resold tickets is that there’s a possibility that they are fraudulent tickets,” Aliberti said. “We have no way of controlling that now.”
Brandon Link, a senior majoring in mechanical engineering, found out he has a conflict with the concert and is selling his ticket. He said sellers frequent Facebook groups because they think it’s more advantageous to sell to strangers and younger students instead of friends.
“Selling your ticket to a stranger for a higher price is much easier than highballing your friend,” Link said. “Sellers tend to be targeting the younger classes because they seem more willing to spend a higher price on tickets.”
Because the concert sold out so quickly, Blake said the SAPB feels they no longer needs to heavily promote it.
“We expected the show to do well, but not less than two days sold out,” Blake said. “We had a lot of plans for advertising that now there’s no need for.”
Post Malone’s performance at the fall concert is scheduled for Thursday, Nov. 30 at the Events Center. Doors open at 6:30 p.m. and the show begins at 8 p.m.
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