Yesterday, Billboard updated it's recent Boxscore data without Lady Gaga's most recent shows in Los Angeles, Las Vegas, Montreal, and other places where ticket sales were said to be okay, but not nearly well as expected. In fact, plenty of tickets were given away for Lady Gaga's shows in Los Angeles and St. Paul.
After Lady Gaga cancelled her tour and claimed it was due to hip surgery, Billboard said the tour was almost "completely" sold out, but then claimed that approximately 200,000 tickets were being refunded for 22 shows. As others have mentioned, that averages about 9,000 tickets per show. It is interesting to note that the venues Lady Gaga scheduled her dates at held a capacity of 15,000 or more seats.
While it's true that many of the seats behind the stage aren't sold, the general admission seating on the floor more than makes up for it. A magazine such as Billboard should be completely ashamed of misleading their readers with false information and Live Nation should be ashamed at reporting many of Gaga's shows as "sold out" even though many of those shows were far from being filled to capacity.
Many people have told us that Live Nation can report a show as sold out even if the venue is only filled 50 percent; Live Nation may not put a full venue up for sale. In Lady Gaga's case, this is far from the truth. They lowered the "capacity" to meet the attendance numbers -- this is very misleading. Let's hope that Lady Gaga is recovering quickly and that -- in the future -- Billboard reports the truth.
