Absolutely. Having large concerts isn’t one of those routes.
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Not now, no. But once prevalence is brought below a certain level, large gatherings will be allowed again. Required testing at those events is a great way to keep prevalence low.
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We’re looking at a 3-5 year strategy here, at least.
You give TM way too much credit; 5 will get you 10 they’re trying to pull this shit off 6 months from now, if not sooner.
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Agreed, once the prevalence of the virus is a brought down to a reasonable level. That’s not happening for at least a year, vaccine or no vaccine. We’re simply not there yet, and concern for the profits of a notoriously predatory company shouldn’t rush us to that point.
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Agreed. I’m more optimistic about the timeline (six weeks of a solid lock down would crater prevalence, but I don’t think that’s going to happen either).
There’s also a serious quarantine fatigue factor to consider; compliance is dropping, even among people who are taking the disease relatively seriously.
I’m just hoping that within the next six months we’ll have federally-empowered experts who can provide some leadership on these issues. That’s really where we’ve been falling down. It’s maddening.
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Fuck Ticketmaster. That is one of the last companies I’d give my medical info to.
I am glad I mostly do small venue shows, because every large venue I have done you get bent over twice for the show ticket, and all the additional fees. What fucking bullshit.
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I tend to agree, although eight weeks as a national standard would be my target. Get it over with and you don’t get that fatigue factor. With serious support from government (I’m talking putting a freeze/deferral on both rent and mortgage collections and UBI-style stimulus cheques) you’d probably see less economic damage than we’re going to end up with with the assumptions of the neoliberal default driving things.
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Thing is, it’s not just Ticketmaster driving this, non-profits have to figure out a way to safely give concerts or they all die. It can be done, but it requires a lot of rolling up the sleeves and working through all the details, which is what it looks to me Ticketmaster is doing. The catch is that low capacity audiences are essential, which I imagine wouldn’t fly well with pop acts where people are expecting to be dancing around together rather than just sitting and listening while sitting apart.
Just because Ticketmaster is greedy and evil doesn’t mean someone doesn’t need to start the conversation moving on this.
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Whatever you pick up while tailgating with event inadmissible superspreaders is yours to keep
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I’m sorry, non-profits are not dependent on concerts or galas or auctions or other high-capacity gatherings. Some are used to depending on them, but there are other ways to raise money. I’ve seen more creativity from the non-profit sector in this regard than in the for-profit one.
In any case, Ticketmaster is the example brought up here. They have a semi-monopoly on ticket sales (as well as scalping) and are not exactly a trustworthy or good corporate citizen. They’re not altruistically “starting a conversation” on public health policy but looking for a way to save their crappy business (the death of which would be one of the few bright spots of this pandemic) by trying to pack as many people as possible into a venue.
More testing is a goal I fully agree with, but it should be a widespread programme administered by the state (likely with the co-operation of private sector partners) rather than by industry sectors so greedy and lazily managed (I’m looking at the airlines, too) that it took them months to figure out that, golly gee, offering free tests to prospective customers might help their businesses survive.
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You want people to take a vaccine and get rid of this thing, this is the way. Not TicketBastard specifically, but pretty much any voluntary activity that involves groups of people, if the private enterprise running that activity mandates that you have to be vaccinated or have a valid medical exemption to gain entry, I have a feeling most people are just going to give up their adamant mistrust of the vaccine and just take it. The government would have issues mandating this sort of thing, but they can’t do anything about private companies requiring this. Even better than lesiure activities, would be for it to be a requirement for health insurance coverage or premium reductions by all the major health insurance companies.
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People are the worst. At least here on the Big Island we make them take another test when they land. It’s not perfect but it beats relying on people to not cheat. I’m sure as hell not going anywhere near crowds or sitting inside a restaurant again for a long time though.
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…I will never understand how Ticketmaster managed to keep their monopoly on ticket sales…
Former employee of (ClearChannel Entertainment) LiveNation here. They do it the way we did it: they contract ticketing rights with the venue. If you want to hold your concert in a 10,000-seat auditorium or a 100,000+ stadium, the venue owners have already negotiated with Ticketmaster the rights to sell the seats and tack on whatever “service charge” they want.
All is not grins and giggles, though. Big stars (Lady Gaga, Beyoncé, etc) have the clout to literally dictate the number of seats guaranteed to be sold, and the ticket vendor is on the hook for it if they come up short. It all falls down when two or three big stars come to town within a short period of time, because would-be concert goers are tapped out.
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I’m also on the Big Island (Kona), and have an art gallery that depends on part time snowbirds and visitors as the primary demographic, so I keep a keen eye on all of this.
I like the idea of a second test, because I see no downside to any form of testing (except something that leads to significant false negative results), but it still doesn’t detect cases that are acquired via travel.
Thankfully, that is less than many other activities (restaurants, rallies, White House ceremonies), but it is a start. An interesting development is that they say that the second test is not practical in Kona when we see higher numbers of visitors, and they are now switching to only sampling 1 in 4 arrivals, in the hope that it is more of an informational survey than a self-supporting screen that catches the majority of cases that are missed by the first pre-arrival test (a PCR test, not antibody).
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At this point there must be enterprise-grade applications that can allow a large venue to handle its own ticket sales. Although I suppose that’s just the kind of business that Ticketmaster would acquire and kill long before it became a threat.
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Sorry if I wasn’t clear.I’m speaking of non-profit performing arts organizations. Which are actually quite dependent on performing.
Doesn’t matter what their motivations are, here we are talking about it, if, when, and how to safely navigate testing and confirming the status of an audience. Whatever they come up with will be looked at and evaluated by probably everybody in any biz that has an audience.
I’m not as pessimistic about private vs public testing. Unless there is some specific complaint about the quality of testing or the reputation of the testing company (I’m assuming they would be contracting that out), I don’t see a difference. Sort of like NASA vs privatizing, I imagine it will be the same people in the same subcontracted companies that will be doing the work.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m certainly on the side of caution, but as we’ve learned more about how it spreads some orgs have been able to work through the details and have been having success. I do think if they try to cram a capacity crowd in a small colosseum that should be quashed.
