Published December 17th 2015
In the good old days, you would wait outside the artist entrance of a venue – for some reason, always in the cold – to meet your favorite star and maybe, just maybe get your photo taken with them.
No one really made too much of a thing out of it. But nowadays, even that fan photo and the meet and greets are big business.
Meet The Artist Before The Show
Almost every artist sells VIP packages when they tour to big venues. The VIP access that once exclusively belonged to competition winners, business partners, friends and family of record company execs, are sold as part of the usual presale.
So far, I’ve seen prices for these VIP packages range from $400 – $700, depending on the popularity of the artist.
Justin Bieber’s Ultimate Experience is Priceless
Justin Bieber is getting ready to take his “Purpose” tour on the road. Presales have already begun and of course a lot of shows have sold out their regular tickets, which leaves fans to dream about those platinum tickets or VIP packages, they can’t afford.
Justin Bieber’s promoter went overboard with the VIP packages offering the “Ultimate Purpose Experience”. It’s the only package that allows you one selfie with Justin. The costs of this is $2000!
The “Ultimate” packages are not available for each of his shows. They were offered for the show in Amsterdam, but for some strange reason were made unavailable, when people started talking about this on social media.
Is It Worth It? Do You Have Other Options?
Justin Bieber officially takes the crown in VIP charges and I wonder if there are people who actually believe the package is worth it.
In this case, regarding Amsterdam’s Ziggo Dome, you can then better spend the money on a one year’s VIP pass on the venue itself. This allows you to pick and choose a few concerts a year and gets you good seats as well. But, I’m just saying….
BTW, another package that includes meeting Justin Bieber and have a group photo taken costs about $900. Insane.
I almost feel obliged to say, though I’m not saying you should do anything with this information, that he’ll probably stay at the Amstel hotel and he doesn’t strike me as the type to stay indoors. I’m sure he won’t be able to resist a trip to The Bulldog, the place where all the rock stars get their, uhm, ‘coffee’ *wink wink*.
Of course, now there’s a price on his head, so he might not be smart allowing you to take selfies with him anywhere else, but I think you’re chances of getting one for free are greatly enhanced under these circumstances.
Otherwise, offer to get him one of his ‘coffees’. That will probably get you a few selfies with him for much less than the Ultimate package *wink wink*.
All kidding aside, it is a shame that meeting a celeb has turned into an official product or service, or whatever it is.
Keep An Eye On The Official Ticket Sites
For getting some concert tickets, there is still some hope. Because these VIP tickets rarely sell out, many promoters usually allow row that was previously reserved for platinum tickets, to go into the regular pre-sale a few weeks before the event.
This is where those extra seats suddenly come from due a “change in seat planning”. These extra tickets are usually announced through social media by official ticket sites like Live Nation, but you can also just start checking back with the site about a month or so before the event.