Blink-182 tickets are selling by the thousands. And they are also lost
Travis Barker, Mark Hoppus and Tom DeLonge, members of the band Blink-182
Mark Hoppus has had a successful battle with cancer, Travis Barker has settled into sweet marriage duties with one of the Kardashians, and Tom DeLonge has put his UFO-seeking obsession on the back burner to get back where he belongs. What does it mean? The rebirth of Blink-182, the iconic punk rock band that rocked countless radio stations at the turn of the millennium. And everything corresponds to the fact that their return will be greater than expected. It will feel even in Prague.
Blink-182 announced a few days ago that they are returning to the music scene in their original line-up. Singer and guitarist Tom DeLonge, who founded the band with Mark Hoppus in 1992, returned to the team after seven years. But the announcement that rock fans had been waiting for for so many years was not just about “personnel changes”. Along with that, they kicked off their biggest world tour to date and teased the arrival of a new studio album.
In order for the iconic punk rock band to attract millions of fans to their concerts, they basically don’t even have to release a new album. It would be enough for the trio to play the hits from the thirteen-year-old project Enema of the state like All the little things, What’s My Age Again? or Adam’s song and the crowds would go crazy. Even more so if they would include it in the concert repertoire I miss youone of the band’s most successful songs ever.
But Blink-182 conceived their so-called reunion differently, more spectacularly. At more than seventy stops around the world, from South America to New Zealand, they will mainly play songs from the upcoming album Piping, for which, among other things, a bloody music video for the song of the same name was released over the weekend, which brought Mark Hoppus, Travis Barker and Tom DeLong together again after about seven years. It collected over 5.5 million views in three days.
There is an extraordinary interest in the tour. Already in the first days after the announcement, i.e. the start of (pre)sales of tickets, the management of the famous American band started to add more stops. Here, something similar is also planned for Prague, where Blink-182 will perform in September next year at the O2 arena, but they don’t know yet – as concert organizer Live Nation tells CzechCrunch, it will be seen depending on the demand.
“The interest in tickets meets our expectations. After all, this is an exceptional event when the band returns to the stage after many years in such a strong line-up,” Ondřej Pojzl from the Echo Promotion agency, which handles PR and communication for Live Nation, tells CzechCrunch. And he adds that several thousand tickets were sold through the Live Nation service in the first days of pre-sale alone.
“Thousands more have sold since the main sale started yesterday morning. I believe the concert will sell out in a few days,” mentions Pojzl. Tickets for the Prague concert are still available at the time of writing, via both providers (Tickermaster and Ticketportal). Prices range from 1,400 to 2,390 crowns if fans want their own seat.
However, the ticket prices did not exactly attract positive reactions on the Internet from a number of fans who object that they are too high. We are primarily talking about the American market, where basic tickets cost more than 300 dollars, i.e. over 7.5 thousand crowns. however, they argue that it is a “big return that carries a higher amount.” Along with that, I also use the often insufficiently well-managed process of their purchase.
After all, this was confirmed by Mark Hoppus himself, who out of curiosity tried to buy tickets for two of his group’s concerts, only to find out that he “lost” them immediately after putting them in the virtual basket. And he wasn’t alone, various fans who wrote about it on Twitter experienced something similar.
In a post on the Discord communication service, the co-founder of the band he mentioned, that he is frustrated by this – as well as by the admission prices, which he says Blink-182 as a band cannot influence in any way. This is so-called dynamic pricing and is set by each organizer.
Blink-182 will make the first stop of their upcoming tour on March 11 in Tijuana, Mexico. Then they will pass through South America and return to the United States and Canada, from where they will head towards the old continent. There they will also play in the German cities of Hamburg and Berlin, and the day after the Prague stage on September 19, they will head to Vienna, Austria. The tour ends in New Zealand on February 26, 2024.