Rock’s Hottest Ticket : Two Seats to a U2 Concert May Set You Back $2,400

So much for trying to beat the scalpers.

Despite elaborate efforts to thwart scalping at U2’s upcoming Los Angeles Sports Arena shows, prime seats are being sold by independent brokers for as much as $1,200 each.

That’s 48 times the tickets’ $25 face value--double what brokers got for seats to Madonna’s 1990 concerts at the same arena, the previous ticket high in Los Angeles.

“The only reason U2 tickets are so expensive is because we had such difficulty obtaining them,” said one broker, who asked that he not be identified. “In the process of trying to stop brokers, U2 turned their own fans into scalpers.

“You always hear consumers calling us ‘greedy’ for charging $600 for tickets. But what about the so-called fans who got tickets by phone and resold them to us? I actually had to pay one guy $500 for his ticket. I sold it for $600 but he made all the money. All I got was a hundred bucks.”

The cheapest price for a U2 ticket this week is around $125--and that’s for a seat in the nosebleed section, according to a dozen Southern California brokers surveyed Thursday. While prices vary, seats on the main floor generally go for about $650 in Row 30 and escalate the closer you get to the stage.

Demand was so high March 23 when U2’s management instituted the unusual two-ticket, telephone-only order policy to dissuade scalpers from obtaining blocks of seats that local phone lines were jammed as an estimated 1 million phone callers competed for the 26,000 available tickets.

U2’s plan to further reduce scalping by cross-checking orders to ensure that no customer could purchase more than two tickets led to some consumer criticism.

Ticketmaster, which handled the U2 ticket phone sales, received some complaints from concertgoers who thought the “two tickets per order” policy detailed in U2’s announcement ads was misleading. Because the band actually meant to limit orders to “two tickets per household,” consumers who placed more than one order from the same household had their second set automatically canceled.

“The cruel irony is that the intent of the rule was to hurt the scalpers,” said David A. Worthington, an Irvine U2 fan who purchased additional seats as a wedding present for friends who have already booked a non-refundable flight from San Francisco to see the show. “But now, true fans like us are forced to consider greasing the clammy palms of scalpers to get our tickets--the very scum who U2 hoped to cut out.”