Ready to Spring for Bruce Tickets?

Want a ticket for Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band? Be sure to get to the ticket outlet early on Saturday--and if you want to really work every angle, consider bringing a laptop computer and a cell phone.

Tickets go on sale at 10 a.m. for Springsteen’s Oct. 17 and 18 shows at the Staples Center, and they won’t last long--the hotly anticipated reunion tour sold out most of its initial 33 East Coast shows in, oh, about 10 minutes.

But the good news is that fans have a variety of tactics to try in their attempt to land ducats to the year’s most eagerly awaited concerts.

You can get in line at a Ticketmaster outlet, where, about 9 a.m., officials will hand out randomly numbered wristbands to determine the queue order, or you can try the phone-in sales approach, or you can go the online route to try to buy them through https://ticketmaster.com. Or maybe all three?

“I can imagine some people waiting in line with a cell phone and laptop and trying all three to see which gets a ticket first,” says promoter Brian Murphy, whose Avalon Attractions firm is handling the shows. “In the psychology of buying tickets in Southern California, the outlets have always been the biggest sellers, but the phone sales are catching up, and now there’s the Internet option.”

The bad news is that you may try all three and still fail. In fact, odds are stacked against your being among the 34,000 or so ticket holders who will watch the first musical event at the new downtown arena. The tour, which has already sold 1.25 million tickets through the first 60 shows on the East Coast and in Europe, could easily sell out four or more nights at Staples Center, observers say, but so far the local stand has been limited to two shows. Will that change?

“I can’t talk about it,” Murphy says, which may suggest some hope for a third night, but Staples Center officials have maintained that no extra shows will be added.

However, Murphy did say there are “some rumblings” that the tour will be extended into the spring, and that may mean a return swing through Southern California.

Say you don’t want to take that risk and you don’t want to wait in line on Saturday. Instead you want to wait a few days, avoid the hassle and then spend some big bucks with a ticket broker to get a seat in the first 10 rows. Bad idea.

Determined to deter brokers and scalpers, the organizers of the L.A. Springsteen shows have put special restrictions on the best seats.

Tickets for the first 25 rows will be sold in only pairs (all the other seats are limited to four per person) and only via Ticketmaster’s charge-by-phone service. Moreover, those plum tickets will not be mailed to buyers, but will be turned over the night of the show at the Staples Center box office.

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The buyers will need two forms of identification (including the credit card used for the ticket purchase), and then they will be escorted directly into the arena’s floor section.

“Bruce is determined to get all the really good seats into the hands of fans and not on the street being auctioned off by some scalper,” says Terry Barnes, president and CEO of Ticketmaster. “And this is the best way to do that.”

Several leading brokers were contacted for this story, but each declined comment.

Another obstacle to getting tickets: battling the “company town” syndrome. Los Angeles is the hub of the music industry and ground zero for celebrity culture, which means a lot of VIPs will be competing with you to get into the hottest show on the calendar.

“In Los Angeles, it’s different than anywhere else because there’s a bigger drain on the overall pool of tickets,” says Bob Merlis, a longtime executive at Warner Bros. Records, who cited a recent acoustic Neil Young show as a prime example. “The more special the event, the bigger the drain.”

Indeed, it’s not unusual to see 15% of a ticket pool held back for industry types, notes Paul Tollett of Goldenvoice, a major local promoter. “It can really cut into the numbers,” he said.

Adding to the allure is Springsteen’s status as the debut musical event for the glittering new arena. Several industry insiders say, consequently, that some tickets will be set aside for politicos, corporate partners and others who have close ties to the venue.

So how many tickets are actually going on sale Saturday? No one interviewed for this story would give a definitive answer, but promoter Murphy said Springsteen and his managers take an active role in limiting the seats that are held back by industry insiders and guests.

“With Bruce it’s a different story than some major pop star coming in with a big record and interest from TV and film,” Murphy said. “Bruce is stringent about this. He and his management insert themselves into the situation to limit the tickets held back.”