Turnpike Troubadours Address Ticket Issues for Red Rocks Shows

This story has been updated.

Presale for the second Turnpike Troubadours reunion show at Red Rocks on Sunday, May 15th, 2022 commences Thursday morning, December 16th at 10:00 a.m. Mountain, with the full sale starting on Friday the 17th. Tickets can be PURCHASED HERE. But even before the presale starts, frustrated fans are already apprehensive of the process after so many were locked out during the first round of ticket sales for the band’s first reunion show on May 14th, 2022.

After the first show sold out almost immediately, fans who missed out on tickets were redirected to secondary market options by the ticket seller AXS, showing tickets that were just purchased now back on sale for huge markups, including resale tickets made available through the AXS platform.

Amid many frustrated Turnpike Troubadours fans sounding off about the process and expecting a repeat experience for the second show, on Wednesday afternoon (12-5), the band released a statement.

The demand for tickets to our Red Rocks shows have been overwhelming, but we want to let you know that we hear you about ticket resellers and that we are doing what we can to address the issue.

To get as many fans a chance at tickets as possible, we’re going to limit purchases for the Sunday Red Rocks show to four tickets per order.

We are working with AXS, AEG Presents and Red Rocks Ampitheater to identify bots and cancel tickets that were purchased fraudulently and get them back to fans, however there are far more people wanting to come to the shows than the venue can accommodate.

Regardless of bots or scalpers buying up tickets, the Turnpike Troubadours statement is correct. With so many fans eager to see their return, and these Red Rocks shows drawing from the band’s nationwide audience base as opposed to local shows only drawing from the immediate region, it is guaranteed there will not be enough tickets for everyone who wants them, even after adding a second show.

Nonetheless, independent music fans who sometimes are not used to dealing with sold-out shows at destination venues such as Red Rocks are still disappointed after getting a rude wake up call about how difficult it is to navigate ticket buying for these events. It’s not just these Turnpike Troubadours Red Rocks shows. It’s the entire system of how event tickets are purchased and sold in the United States that feels inequitable, and stacked against average fans. Congress has investigated the matter and posed legislation. It’s a known, widespread issue.

After the first ticket sale and ahead of the second, some Turnpike Troubadours fans have taken it upon themselves to do their own investigating as well, and they are not liking what they find. As some have pointed out, even before the presale for the second Turnpike Troubadours show starts, there are already secondary tickets available for the show on Vivid Seats.

However, Saving Country Music has confirmed these are just “speculative” tickets, meaning tickets placed on sale by individuals in hopes they secure actual tickets to sell to patrons. Still, it shows just how nebulous the ticket reseller market is.

Since the beginning, other fans have been accusing AXS of purposely holding back tickets to then sell them on the resell market. If this was the case, it would be prosecutable fraud. What people are seeing is scalpers/bots purchasing tickets and then reselling them through the AXS platform. If AXS is running a reselling scheme, they could/should be prosecuted, but at the moment there is no evidence of this.

Hopefully though, the effort by the representatives of the Turnpike Troubadours will help mitigate this concern for the second Red Rocks show on May 15th.

But even if every bot and scalper is locked out, and every secondary market reseller purchase is cancelled, there still won’t be enough tickets for everyone. That’s simply a symptom of the massive appeal for the music of the Turnpike Troubadours, which for years went overlooked and under-counted by many in the music industry. It’s only after a 2 1/2-year absence of the band that everyone is waking up to just how important and appealing the Turnpike Troubadours really are.

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