Bon Jovi Joins Van Halen in Scalping Game

By Alfred Branch, Jr.

It appears that you can add Bon Jovi to the list of artists scalping tickets to their own shows for hundreds, even thousands, of dollars above face value. The New Jersey-bred band, headed by heartthrob Jon Bon Jovi, is currently on tour supporting its top-selling album “Lost Highway.”

TicketNews discovered that within minutes of tickets going on sale this month on Ticketmaster.comfor several Bon Jovi shows, tickets that had not been made available to the public originally were posted on Ticketmaster’s TicketExchange website, often for exorbitant prices. Bon Jovi’s current tour has been a top seller overall, but the band struggled a bit when it tried to sell out a 10-date residency at the new Prudential Center in their home state. Those shows eventually sold out.

Bon Jovi joins Van Halen and other artists in the ticket scalping game as a way of maximizing revenues on their current tour. Band, promoters and venues are now routinely withholding blocks of premium tickets from fans, which they later resell at significantly higher prices through various means, such as StubHub!, fan sites, Ticketmaster or auction sites.

They typically get away with it because the identity of the reseller is not always obvious, but they also face a potential firestorm, as in case of the wildly popular Hannah Montana/Miley Cyrus tour, if fans believe they are being duped.

Bon Jovi’s publicist, Rob Shuter of Dan Klores Communications, did not reply a message seeking comment.