Faye Wong’s "Fantasy Music" concert is about to be held in Shanghai on December 30. Because it is Faye Wong’s second concert after six years, and it is the only one, it has always attracted much attention, especially the ticket price and the box office situation have become a matter of great concern to fans and the industry. In recent days, news of the box office collapse has suddenly spread, and the media have reported that Faye Wong and her agent joined hands with the organizers to use "hunger marketing" to raise ticket prices, causing fans to resent it, resulting in the current price reduction and slow sales of tickets.
Is this the truth?
As early as June this year, rumors appeared on the Internet that Faye Wong would hold a concert at the end of the year, and even said with certainty that the concert had set a sky-high price of about 10,000 yuan. Soon after, Faye Wong’s agent Chen Jiaying publicly refuted the rumors and stated that the concert at the end of the year was indeed under preparation, but the specific number and ticket price had not yet been determined. On September 9, Faye Wong finally held a "fantasy music" press conference in Beijing, officially announcing that the concert had been scheduled for December 30 in Shanghai, and the ticket price was set at 1800 yuan, 5,800 yuan, and 7,800 yuan. At that time, Faye Wong explained that in order to ensure the quality of the performance, there will be no tour this year, but only one, and in order to meet the needs of more fans, Tencent Video will exclusively broadcast the concert in VR.
Faye Wong engaging in hunger marketing and making profits at sky-high prices?
Organizer: All tickets handled are sold at their original price
On December 5, the ticketing website Damai began to officially sell tickets for this concert. The website specifically stated that this pre-sale needs to be bundled with the ticket buyer’s ID card, and each user is limited to two purchases. According to statistics released later, after the pre-sale started at 8 o’clock that night, 390,000 people grabbed tickets online at the same time, and the tickets were sold out within 32 seconds. But less than a day later, it is said that the tickets that have been sold out have begun to appear in large numbers on various second-hand ticket websites. The price has doubled compared with the face price. Tickets with good individual locations have even been fried to tens of thousands of yuan.
Just last week, the founder of NewRadio and a veteran music DJ, Yang Yue, said on Weibo that the vast majority of tickets for Faye Wong’s concert were still in the hands of the organizers. In fact, only 800 tickets were pre-sold on Damai.com, which had been spiked before, instead of the 8,900 tickets in the audience. Yang Yue also questioned that Faye Wong and her manager, Chen Jiaying, were "running out of water and fishing", meaning that the ticket speculation was carried out at the behest of the artist.
Also last week, Wang Sicong, the son of Wanda Group chairperson Wang Jianlin and an Internet celebrity, said that the minimum ticket price for Faye Wong’s concert of 1,800 yuan and the maximum of 7,800 yuan is already outrageous, and the reason why it is set so high is also due to the wishes of Faye Wong and Chen Jiaying, because the higher the ticket price, the higher the box office, and the more money the artists can get.
In an interview with the media, Zhuang Ming, the head of Shanghai Magnolia Culture Company, the organizer of the "Fantasy Music" concert, admitted that the original pre-sale of tickets to Barley Network was indeed only 800, but the rest of the tickets were not left to accumulate by themselves. "As the organizer and the organizer, we can’t control everything. There are more than a dozen sponsors for this concert, and each sponsor will get a certain amount of tickets. In addition, whether it is for Faye Wang or us, everyone has relatives and friends, and internal ticket purchases are inevitable. In addition to sponsors and internal ticket purchases, there are only 800 tickets that can be sold publicly. At present, we have no more tickets in hand."
In the face of speculation about making profits from sky-high ticket prices, Zhuang Ming’s words showed some grievance: "All the tickets sold from our organizers are sold at the original price on the ticket. As for the price in the hands of fans and spectators, it has nothing to do with us. Maybe our evaluation of the market was a little lower. At that time, we thought the price of 7,800 yuan was OK, but for the market, Faye Wong only held one event after a lapse of six years. Consumers’ evaluation of this ticket price is higher, and the ticket price will be fired. For us, only the pricing power."
Ms. Z, who has been in the performance industry for many years, told the Beijing Youth Daily reporter that the average artist rarely directly participates in the pricing of concert tickets, and rarely participates in the later box office share. They only take the performance compensation that has been negotiated in advance, that is, the appearance fee. The ticket price is usually determined by the organizer according to the cost and market demand. For example, for a singer of Faye Wong’s level, the appearance fee is definitely not low, and this one has only been held in 6 years. The market trend is optimistic, and the high price is logical.
Why go to a second-hand ticket website for tickets?
Organizers: Sponsors and performance companies
Yang Yue also revealed in Weibo that the largest ticketing agent for the concert was not Damai.com, but Tencent’s Entertainment Ticket, because these tickets did not sell well. Entertainment Ticket withdrew the project after 20 hours of sale and sold the tickets to the second-hand ticket website. At present, the 7800 yuan ticket cannot be sold at all, and has begun to sell at a price lower than the face price.
How do the tickets go to second-hand ticketing websites and scalpers? "After we give the tickets to the sponsors, the right to use them already belongs to them," explains Mr. Zhuang. "We don’t interfere at all with what they do with the tickets. They can give them away, resell them, etc. And these platforms may be familiar with some sponsors to get those tickets."
Ms. Z also introduced that part of the concert tickets will indeed be distributed to sponsors and related institutions, and many scalper tickets will also flow out. But whether the amount left to the organizers is less than 1/10, or 800, as Zhuang Ming said, outsiders have no way of knowing. It is reported that there are often cases in the industry where performance company staff and scalpers collude to sell tickets.
The price of 10,000 yuan tickets was rejected by the Price Bureau?
Industry insiders: There is no government price limit in the performance market
Wang Sicong also "broke the news" last week that the artists and organizers had also tried to set the maximum price of Faye Wong’s concert to 10,000 yuan, which was later rejected by the price bureau.
In this regard, Ms. Z believes that the possibility is very small, because the ticket price scheme is reported to the relevant cultural authorities for approval and filing together with the concert project, and the price bureau will not participate at all.
To sum up, the sky-high price of concert tickets was not controlled by Wang Fei and Chen Jiaying, and it can basically be concluded. The news of the box office crash that circulated recently has also been verified to be exaggerated. Beiqing Daily reporters saw on several major regular ticketing websites and second-hand ticket websites yesterday that the 1,800 yuan tickets have indeed been sold out, the 5,800 yuan tickets are not much left, and only 7,800 yuan is still more than enough, but there are still restrictions such as a limit of 4 tickets at a time, and the starting price is still maintained at face value. Only one second-hand ticket platform has reduced the starting price by 100 yuan to 7,700 yuan, which is far from the extent of a significant price reduction promotion.
Text/Our reporter, Cui Wei