Prince halts Europe tour tickets over inflated resale
NEW YORK: Prince on Friday abruptly postponed ticket sales for a highly anticipated European tour, outraged that scalpers were already advertising vastly inflated resale prices.
Prince, who in recent years has preferred to announce concerts at the last minute, become slightly more traditional by revealing through press interviews an upcoming tour in which he will play unaccompanied on piano for the fi rst time since becoming famous.
The Minneapolis superstar called off sales moments before tickets were set to go online on Friday in Austria and Britain.
Twitter account @ Prince3EG, which the musician has used with his all-female back-up band, Third Eye Girl, to promote lastminute shows, aired complaints from fans that resellers had already been advertising tickets in the thousands of dollars even though they were yet to go on sale.
@ Prince3EG posted a photo of a vulture with the caption: “Multiple choice: A. Scavenger. B. Vulture. C. Tout. D. All of the above.”
The account retweeted users who sought a return of the lastminute “Hit and Run” shows, calling the approach better suited to true Prince fans.
“Maybe you should build a small hotel next to Paisley Park and sell reservations and tickets for a show!” said a retweeted comment by Cheryl Frey, who was referring to the singer’s mythic studio on the outskirts of Minneapolis.
Prince did not immediately announce a new plan to sell tickets for his “Piano and a Microphone” tour, which is scheduled to start Nov 24 in Vienna and is expected to go to 11 countries, although not all dates have been announced. — AFP