This is How Rage Against the Machine are Combatting Scalpers and Donating to Charity
When Rage Against the Machine announced their massive world tour earlier this week, they made a point of noting that they’d be making significant contributions to charities throughout the tour, including 100% of all proceeds on the first three dates, all taking place near the U.S. / Mexico border, going towards immigrants rights organizations.
The band has now revealed more about their charitable activities for the rest of the tour, all part of a plan that also helps combat ticket scalpers and ensures as many fans get tickets at face value as possible.
Tickets for the tour went up on secondary market sites like StubHub earlier this week despite none being available for purchase via official channels yet, sparking the band to post the following update to their website:
“Since the announcement of our tour, scalpers and broker sites have been listing fake tickets for RATM. We want to do everything we can to protect our fans from predatory scalping and, at the same time, raise a substantial amount of money for charities and activist organizations we support in each city.
“At many concerts, up to 50% of the seating is scooped up by scalpers and then resold to fans at much higher fees. We are doing everything we can to protect 90% of the RATM tickets from scalpers, and then WE are holding in reserve 10% of the seating (random seats throughout each venue) to sell at a higher ticket price (but low enough to undercut the scalpers). We will donate 100% OF THE MONEY over the fees and base ticket price to charities and activist organizations IN EACH CITY.
“We are confident this will help many more fans get tickets at face value and put a big dent in the aftermarket gouging. WE HATE SCALPING AS MUCH AS YOU DO and will continue to try to find ways to combat it. Additionally, we are donating all profits from our first three shows to immigrants’ rights organizations and will be supporting multiple charities and activist organizations throughout the tour.”
This effort is certainly commendable, and we should expect no less from Rage, a band that’s staked their whole career around social justice causes. I’m forced to wonder what exactly “we are doing everything we can” means with regards to keeping scalpers away from the 90% of tickets on sale to the public; what, exactly, can one band do to combat bots and career resellers? That strikes me as somewhat of a hollow promise. Still, I absolutely LOVE the band’s tactic of buying up 10% of the tickets themselves to sell directly to fans and can’t ever recall a band employing such a strategy. Even cooler that the profits go to charity!
Tickets are on sale as of 10am local time today, Thursday, February 13. Get yours here or at the links below. Dates:
03/26 El Paso, TX – Don Haskins Center [tickets]
03/28 Las Cruces, NM – Pan American Center [tickets]
03/30 Glendale, AZ – Gila River Arena [tickets]
04/10 Indio, CA – Coachella [tickets]
04/17 Indio, CA – Coachella [tickets]
04/21 Oakland, CA – Oakland Arena [tickets]
04/25 Portland, OR – Moda Center [tickets]
04/28 Tacoma, WA – Tacoma Dome [tickets]
05/01 Vancouver, BC – Pacific Coliseum at the PNE [tickets]
05/03 Edmonton, AB – Rogers Place [tickets]
05/05 Calgary, AB – Scotiabank Saddledome [tickets]
05/07 Winnipeg, MB – Bell MTS Place [tickets]
05/09 Sioux Falls, SD – Denny Sanford Premier Center [tickets]
05/11 Minneapolis, MN – Target Center [tickets]
05/14 Kansas City, MO – Sprint Center [tickets]
05/16 St. Louis, MO – Enterprise Center [tickets]
05/19 Chicago, IL – United Center [tickets]
05/23 Boston, MA – Boston Calling [tickets]
06/19 Dover, DE – Firefly [tickets]
07/10 East Troy, WI – Alpine Valley Music Theatre [tickets]
07/13 Detroit, MI – Little Caesars Arena [tickets]
07/17 Ottawa, ON – Ottawa Bluesfest [tickets]
07/18 Quebec City, QC – Festival d’Été de Québec [tickets]
07/21 Hamilton, ON – FirstOntario Centre [tickets]
07/23 Toronto, ON – Scotiabank Arena [tickets]
07/27 Buffalo, NY – KeyBank Center [tickets]
07/29 Cleveland, OH – Rocket Mortgage FieldHouse [tickets]
07/31 Pittsburgh, PA – PPG Paints Arena [tickets]
08/02 Raleigh, NC – PNC Arena [tickets]
08/04 Washington DC – Capital One Arena [tickets]
08/07 Camden, NJ – BB&T Pavilion [tickets]
08/10 New York, NY – Madison Square Garden [tickets]
08/11 New York, NY – Madison Square Garden [tickets]
08/28 Leeds, UK – Leeds Festival [tickets]
08/30 Reading, UK – Reading Festival [tickets]
09/01 Paris, France – Rock En Seine Festival [tickets]
09/04 Stradbally Laois, Ireland – Electric Picnic Festival [tickets]
09/06 Berlin, Germany – Lollapalooza Berlin Festival [tickets]
09/08 Prague, Czech Republic – O2 Arena [tickets]
09/10 Krakow, Poland – Tauron Arena [tickets]
