RSS FeedWant Spice In Your Life? It’ll Cost You $80…
The (recently reunited) Spice Girls are on tour and they are bringing their glitz, glamor and pop to the Verizon Center next February. I know because I saw an event calendar listing the show but I nearly fell out of my chair after seeing the listing. Why? Ticket prices. That’s why.
How much will all that Spiciness set you back? The cheapest seat is $72.50 excluding the “convenience” fees. For amusement I checked Ticketmaster.com, home of the ever expanding convenience fee, to run a few ticket scenarios. The best seats will set you back $122.50 plus a $19.30 charge for fees. That’s for one seat and all the convenience imaginable. I couldn’t run the costs on the $72.50 tickets because there are none left but I imagine it hits $80 after the digits hit your credit card. Head over to StubHub.com and the price range was $165 to $1048 per ticket. Not a typo.
At those prices, you’d think that Sexy, Scary, Posh, Sporty and Baby are royalty and should be referred to as Your Spicinesses. The naming scheme always sounded a little too Seven Dwarfish to me but marketing is marketing. I know Ozzy Osbourne and Rob Zombie aren’t as good looking and the music is a little edgier but admission there starts at $39. Although secondary market prices are out of sight, Hannah Montana/Miley Cyrus, outrageously popular with tweens, set their lowest face value at $43.50. Bon Jovi clocks in at $49.50. You can’t arbitrage the Spicy Ones on geography either. The cheapest tickets of all the US dates are $69.50. See where I’m headed here.
I’m for free market economics as much as any American but these prices weren’t picked out of the air…this is intentional. As The Spice Girls sing in their hit Wannabe, “If you want to be my lover, you have got to give. Taking is too easy but that’s the way it is.” When it comes to ticket prices, nothing could be closer to the truth. If you need to find me, I’ll be at the 9:30 Club with change to spare.
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Comments
My guess is that those crazy ticket prices won’t even get you one live note from the Spice Girls. Since their entire performance on the recent Victoria Secret Holiday Show was completely lip sync’ed, I’d imagine this tour will follow suit.
Hey, give me the $100+ a ticket and I’ll throw on a wig, run around the stage and move my mouth to the pre-recorded tunes.
The prices weren’t near what they are now, but they weren’t the “IN” thing in the US. Have a controversial baby, marry a popular soccer player, breakup, and have many “ALMOST” regroupings. Instant ticket sales. But in some areas overseas they were big bux. I was in Europe about when they originally came out and the fan base was insane. It’s not worth $700, but I’d pay $200 for center floor seats in front though. Anywhere else and the acoustics in Verizon are sheeeeet.
Oh and they ARE singing, most of them anyways. Victoria’s singing is questionable, but it always was anyway :)..
11 years later and I still love me some Spice Girls 😉
take the average between the high and the low (97.50) – multiply by 18000 seats and you get a one night haul of $1,755,000. That’s a lot of spice.
Just stop, haters. They’re fantastic. I saw them at GTE Amphitheater and Nissan Pavilion in 1996 for $19 each time. I’m seeing them in Newark for $80 next Feb. Just bummed they waited so long to announce the DC show. Would rather see them here…
wow – who’d pay $5 to see some 35-40 year old women pretending to be “girls” and who never had a lick of musical talent? the only place I’d go to see the “girls” is at some free concert like they used to have at 8th & E…
Sheryl Crow – yes, I’d pay $40-50 to see her.
Julia Fordham, Melissa E, et al. There are lots of 40-something WOMEN who HAVE TALENT…
save your money, folks…
There is the nostalgia factor, they are entertainers, can dance and the show effects show be pretty darn good.
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I wonder if their tickets were this pricey circa 1996 (or whenever it was when their first single hit)?