Pearl Jam will be performing in Berlin on July 2nd and 3rd, 2024 – these are the only German concerts by Eddie Vedder, Jeff Ament, Mike McCready, Stone Gossard and Matt Cameron in this country. There is correspondingly great excitement for the band from Seattle, who will be presenting their new album “Dark Matter” at the Waldbühne. Shortly after pre-sales started on Friday (February 23rd, 10 a.m.), the official ticket sales outlets Eventim and Ticketmaster stopped working (only Viagogo sold a lot, but you should avoid them for hopefully well-known reasons). You ended up in queues or got “something went wrong” status messages.
It’s all the more surprising to take a look at the ticket situation at Ticketmaster on Saturday. Tickets are still available for both performances – the gigs are not sold out (yet). And where are there other places? In possibly the most sought-after area of the popular forest arena, namely in the lower tier.
An unusual situation for Pearl Jam, who openly rebelled against Ticketmaster’s pricing system and self-image in the 1990s and tried to use alternative venues in the USA. There are still tickets available in the lower blocks A to E (ten blocks in total) – but apart from the interior, they guarantee the best view of the action on stage. So, there of all places: good selection.
What’s going on there? Normally Pearl Jam concerts in Germany sell out quickly. It’s hard to imagine that interest in the “Alive” heroes of the 1990s has waned. However, the ticket prices for these front seats in the Waldbühne are steep. Up to 300 euros per card. This is the price level of Adele or Phil Collins, not that of former indie rock and grunge heroes. It wouldn’t be entirely understandable that the not-yet-sellout could be related to the fact that the band is performing in Berlin twice instead of just once. At their last local double header in 2012 in what was then the O2 Arena (which has a slightly smaller capacity than the Waldbühne), the Tix were soon gone.
Pearl Jam fans, whether registered in the “Ten Club” fan club or not, are a tight-knit community. They uphold ideals of fairness. 300 euros, on the other hand, is an announcement. When Ticketmaster then boldly uses the “dynamic pricing system”, it annoys some PJ supporters, as can also be seen in the Facebook comments on our articles on the topic.
“Dynamic pricing system” sounds quick and cool, but it actually means that cards that initially cost 174.50 euros (the basic price) are now going towards 300 – precisely because demand is so high. It is obvious that this is not considered cool, but seems like exploitation. You don’t have to do much research to find out that these tickets, which are then called “Platinum”, don’t even include a valuable free gift made of platinum metal (which no one needs anyway, but that’s what the name suggests), but simply means that you have one Be a noble fan because you invest so much money in your favorite band.