At this Saturday’s Bruno Mars concert at the Scotiabank Arena, eight lucky fans will have a close-up view of the show from the second row of section 118 — seats they landed for $546 apiece. Sixteen seats away, in the same row, will be another Bruno Mars fan who paid only $191 for a nearly identical view of the show — an eight-metre gap that comes with a $350 discount. A seven-month Toronto Star/CBC analysis of box office sales for the show, part of Mars’s 24K Magic world tour, reveals the hidden tricks of the ticketing trade that allow manipulation of seat prices, create the appearance of scarcity and maximize revenues.The effect: fans pay more — or get left out entirely. The mysterious world of concert ticketing in the 21st century is dominated by Ticketmaster, which has a near-monopoly on major event ticketing and an expanding tool kit of sales techniques that have changed everything you thought you knew about getting in to your favourite show.Face value isn’t a fixed number — it’s a price that rises and falls with demand. Sold out doesn’t necessarily mean sold out. And the guy sitting beside you may have paid hundreds of dollars less than you did — even though you both bought your tickets from the box office.Reporters monitored online seat sales for the Bruno Mars concert between February and September and watched the quantity of seats available and their prices change. The data did not capture every ticket sold — especially early in the buying frenzy — but still provides unprecedented detail on ticket sales.Ticketmaster didn’t disclose how many seats were put on sale when the box office opened at noon on Feb. 16. The investigation, which analyzed the box office seven times in the first hour of sales, found fewer than half of the seats in the arena for sale.In eight sections, not a single ticket was put on sale. But 90 minutes later, these tickets trickled out in pairs and rows.Thes ...
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