Phil Collins vs. Ticket Brokers: Who Really Won?

Bill Graham Productions was boasting last week that Phil Collins’ unprecedented concert-ticket sales scheme, designed to freeze out L.A.’s powerhouse ticket brokers, was an unqualified success.

But now the experiment looks like a bust.

Here’s what happened: As part of a new anti-broker offensive, Graham Productions and Avalon Attractions put tickets on sale--one to a customer--just one day before Collins’ Sept. 24 show at the Wiltern Theatre. Fans were given a signed receipt, which they could exchange for a ticket the night of the concert only if they brought a photo ID.

Graham Productions told Pop Eye last week that fans who lined up Sunday morning bought 1,500 of the Wiltern’s 2,200 seats.

Now those numbers are in dispute. Area ticket brokers--and a respected local promoter who helped organize the show--say that the Graham organization’s numbers were considerably inflated.

“I was there Sunday and they didn’t sell anywhere near 1,500 tickets, not even in the ballpark,” said Ticket Outlet agency chief Mark Leib. “They were lucky if they did 700. They didn’t even sell any of the balcony or loge levels. They had to go to Ticketmaster on Monday and have them sell most of the tickets.”

Avalon Attractions promoter Brian Murphy acknowledged that the Graham figures were off. “We probably ended up selling about 700 seats on Sunday,” he said. “Initially we probably had about 400 people early Sunday and when that line gave out, we went ‘Whoops!’ and got word to radio stations to help move more tickets.”

How does the Graham organization explain the huge discrepancy?

Explanation No. 1: “Fifteen hundred is an accurate figure,” Graham talent buyer Sherry Wasserman said last week. “I don’t know why anyone would be giving you any other numbers. The issue isn’t how many tickets were actually sold on Sunday. The real issue is that, with the exception of the one-ticket-per-person quota, the system worked beautifully.”

Explanation No. 2: “If you really think the numbers are important, then I wouldn’t call 1,500 the exact figure,” Wasserman said in a second call several hours later. “We actually sold 1,097 seats on Sunday. Ticketmaster sold 1,121 more on Monday.”

Ticketmaster president Fred Rosen would not confirm or deny those figures, saying that “only the promoter” can supply ticket information.” He did say that “it was our original understanding that the Wiltern was going to sell all of its tickets through the box office.”

Rosen said Ticketmaster did not add a $5 service charge to each $25 Collins ticket, as Pop Eye was told last week. He said Ticketmaster took a $3 service charge, with the Wiltern taking a $2 facility charge.

So was the ticket system too complicated? Avalon’s Murphy admits that it needs fine-tuning.

“It didn’t work as well as we’d wanted,” he said. “In all candor, by putting all the restrictions on ticket sales and only taking out one newspaper ad, we made it more difficult to accomplish what we wanted than it needed to be.”

“If this was supposed to be a revolt against ticket brokers, it was a total failure,” said Southern California Tickets agency owner Curt Autenrieth. “They couldn’t sell tickets because the system was too complicated. I had six employees who went down to the show Monday night, bought tickets there and went to the show themselves. The system simply didn’t work.”