Within 15 minutes, tickets to see Vince Gill at the Brown County Music Center this August were sold out.
“That threw me for a loop. But I was very excited and thrilled,” said BCMC Executive Director Dana Beth Evans. “We were actually running bets offline of, ‘I’ll think it’ll be 12 o’clock.’ ‘I think it will 2 o’clock.’ ‘I think we’ll sell out by 5 o’clock.’ Nobody had 15 minutes.”
When tickets went on sale to the public on April 19, about 1,000 were available in the 2,000-seat theater. Two days prior, members of the Vince Gill Fan Club had an opportunity to get theirs early. The next day, Ticketmaster offered up tickets for Citibank cardholders.
After tickets sold out, a mention was made on the BCMC Facebook page about possibly having Gill perform a second show. But last week, Evans said that was not going to happen.
Gill will be the first act to play at the venue, which is scheduled to open Saturday, Aug. 24 behind Salt Creek Plaza in Nashville.
At the Brown County Visitors Center, fans waited in line to buy their tickets in person. People from Bargersville, Bloomington, Columbus and Plainfield all used that option, county commissioner Diana Biddle said last week.
Evans said she ran a report to see where people were living who bought tickets online. They are from 20 states, including New York, California, Texas, Colorado and Florida along with neighboring states Illinois, Ohio, Kentucky and Michigan. “A lot of that is the (Vince Gill) fan club, because I know (someone from) Georgia called me and went, ‘I have my tickets. Now where do I stay? And what do we do?’” Evans said.
Bruce Gould, who owns the Cornerstone Inn, had guests staying with him the night before because they wanted to be in line first to buy tickets. Gould also serves on the music center’s management group.
Another local innkeeper told Evans about her entire inn being rented for a weekday evening in October because grandparents had bought tickets to see the Peppa Pig Live! show on Wednesday, Oct. 16 with their grandchildren.
“She was very excited. She sent me a text and said, ‘It’s working.’ We were very pleased about that. The hotels are getting a lot of calls, so I’m excited,” Evans said.
At the management group meeting last week, Evans said that Peppa Pig Live! had sold more than 300 tickets so far and that she expected it to sell out closer to time because it’s a children’s show.
Tickets for Clint Black, the venue’s second country music show, went on sale last week with a presale that was for Brown County residents only.
This Friday, tickets for ‘80s rock band Tesla and folk musician Art Garfunkel will go on sale. Tesla will perform Saturday, Sept. 7 and Garfunkel will take the stage on Thursday, Sept. 12.
Brown County residents will get another chance to buy tickets for both of those shows before they go on sale to the general public. A presale for locals will be on Thursday, May 2 at the Brown County Visitors Center from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. All purchases must be made in person and fans will have to present identification or a driver’s license verifying they live in the county.
What about scalpers?
Social media comments from frustrated fans who were unable to buy a ticket to see Gill stated that scalpers were also a factor. A quick search of other ticketing sites, like vividseats.com, shows tickets going for $584 each for two seats in row A for that show.
“That’s with any venue. I don’t care who you are, what venue you’re in, scalpers play a part in it,” Evans said.
“There’s a limit — you can only buy eight tickets online at a time — but you have these scalpers who have elaborate systems that can bypass those things. We’re doing as much as we possibly can, as is Ticketmaster, to try to limit it as best we can, but it’s just difficult.”
As far as any concerns about those seats remaining empty the night of the show, Evans said that scalpers will decrease their ticket prices closer to the show.
She said there were several safeguards in place to prevent scalpers from getting tickets before fans could, such as the eight-ticket limit.
At the management group meeting last week, resident Keith Baker said that since tickets sold out in less than 30 minutes, that shows the prices were too low. “Why are we leaving all of this money on the table?” he asked the group.
Management group co-President Barry Herring said that Live Nation provided the venue with the different ticket level prices since it was their first show, and they were not sure how to price it. “It’s not out of our control. We can set whatever price we want,” Herring said.
The maximum ticket price was $150 for seats in the pit section for Gill’s show.
Herring said he’s heard opinions on both sides about ticket pricing. “If you price the tickets too high some of the locals are saying, ‘They’re priced out of our pocketbook reach.’ But then if we don’t price it high enough, the ticket scalpers will grab them and take the profit for us,” Herring said.
“That’s the frustrating thing is to see a $150 ticket go for $500 within 24 hours. We’re the ones that have to worry about making that (mortgage) note. I want to see that money stay as close as we can to home,” Baker responded.
Herring said he agreed and that it comes down to a judgment call.
At a Convention and Visitors Commission meeting last week, Herring said that the venue had already made a profit on the Gill show because they had collected more money after paying Gill. The venue also saved marketing dollars since the show sold out within the first hour.
The venue will also get 45 percent on all concessions sold at the shows.
The management group entered into a contract with DLS Events LLC, a concessionaire that provides refreshment services within many entertainment and sporting venues throughout the country, who will provide refreshment services for virtually all events there.
If Ticket Master’s secondary market buys tickets, Herring said that the venue will receive the fees on any tickets sold through their secondary market sites.
The management group had also set aside tickets for promotional purposes to use to swap for air time on the radio. But after the show sold out quickly, those promotional tickets were not needed and they were released back to the general public. Fans waiting in line at the Visitors Center left their contact information in case tickets became available. When promotional tickets were released, those fans were called in order and given 10 minutes to call back if they wanted the tickets.
“We were able to sell all of those tickets to everyone standing in line,” Evans said.
Will the BCMC connect to the Salt Creek Trail?
During the management group meeting last week, Bill Hamilton asked if the Salt Creek Trail would connect to the BCMC. “I was trying to see how you can get people without having them going through grass or mud from Point A to Point B,” he said.
“It’s not going to be hard pavement, but there is a spot that will come down off of the Y parking lot in the northwest corner of our parking lot,” said Jim Schultz, who serves as the construction chair for the management group.
The music center’s parking lot will be gravel. Paving it was nixed as a cost-cutting measure.
An emerging wetland in the area has also resulted in the venue losing about one-and-a-half acres that was going to be used for parking, Schultz reported last week. “We’re trying to sort that all out to just see what our final budget is whether we have enough money to either put in additional parking in another spot, or what is that Plan B? Until we get all of the dollar and cents worked out, we really don’t know,” he said.
Schultz said construction on the venue is progressing well. He said crews were working on painting, pouring concrete floors and installing Brown County stone in the lobby. He said the sprinkler system was finished and the HVAC system was nearly finished.
Are people saving seats?
For $500, anyone who wishes to participate in the BCMC’s Save Your Seat program will get a seat reserved in the venue all year. Seat-savers still have to pay for tickets to each show, though.
Last week, Evans said that 64 seats had been reserved through this program. Another 20 have been reserved for people who donated $5,000 to the venue’s matching grant campaign through the Brown County Community Foundation.
Seat-savers will receive an email a two weeks before a show asking if they wish to use their seat; if not, the venue can sell them to other people.
The group’s goal is to have 100 Save Your Seats reserved. Last Tuesday, Evans said she had been contacted by eight people who wanted to reserve 16 seats, which would bring the total of reserved seats to 100.
Evans said she didn’t want to increase the number of seats reserved through Save Your Seat because she didn’t want to limit more tickets for the general public to purchase. “I don’t want it to end up being like it was with Vince Gill. We had all of these tickets on reserve, and then all of a sudden it was the day of the show and we had (only) 1,000 seats to sell,” she said.
Did the entertainment tax pass?
A proposal in the state legislature to charge a $1 entertainment tax on each ticket sold at BCMC was approved this legislative session and is awaiting the governor’s signature. The money will go into a capital improvement fund specifically for BCMC, Biddle said. “It’s basically a contingency fund, so the county doesn’t have to use any of the county general fund if there’s any expenses that the Maple Leaf board can’t cover,” she said.
According to House Bill 1554, authored by Rep. Chris May, R-Bedford, the money will go into a performing arts center admissions tax fund. It can be used to pay off the venue’s debt, lease rentals, infrastructure improvement costs and costs related to capital repairs and maintenance.
In February, Herring said $60,000 was a “low end” estimate for what the tax would bring in.
The county council will have to adopt an ordinance to impose the admissions tax, which is expected to happen at the May 20 meeting. To go into effect this year, the ordinance would have to be approved by June 1. If the ordinance is approved, the tax would apply to tickets purchased after June 30 or a later date if that is set forth in the ordinance, the bill says.
The tax would not apply to tickets sold for events sponsored by educational institutions, religious organizations, political organizations or charitable organizations.
Are Brown County people being hired?
Last week, Brown County resident Andrea Swift-Hanlon began working as the audience services manager at BCMC. She will be in charge of box office employees and volunteers.
“We’re going to allow her to grow into that position and eventually it will go into a general manager position. The goal is she will stay around long enough to come in and take over when I leave, which will be awhile,” Evans said.
Currently, the venue has six part-time box office employees who are all local residents. Rich Morpurgo is working as a contracted technical director until the venue hires another director, Evans said.
Lauren McCarroll was hired earlier this month as venue’s marketing manager. Evans took over as executive director last November.
The venue is now looking to hire backstage help. Duties include stagehand work, sound and lights, Evans said. Anyone who wishes to apply can get more information at browncountymusiccenter.com.
Backstage employees will earn $15 to $20 an hour depending on their experience level and duties. Box office employees earn $10 to $15 an hour.
How can I volunteer?
Evans said it will take at least 50 volunteers to help with a sold-out show. Currently, the venue has 66 volunteers signed up, but they need more. “If I have a show on Wednesday, then I have a show on Friday and then we have a show on Monday, I can’t have the same people volunteering, because they’re not going to be able to volunteer all of that time,” she said.
Anyone interested in volunteering can fill out an application on the venue’s website. Positions include coat check, ticket scanner, greeters, ushers and selling merchandise. Volunteers will be able to watch shows for free.
