My wife dragged me… well basically FORCED ME to take her to the BTS concert in Los Angeles over this past weekend. As I was sitting in my seat, which were pretty darn good seats (around 50 yard line row 3,) I couldn’t help but think these weren’t the BEST SEATS in the house. I got to talking to the lady next to me, who had bought her tickets second-hand bec there was no way she could buy it first hand “You know with all the scalpers.” I had to shut my mouth.
Anyway, she then told me her cousin bought 3 tickets in like the 2nd row of section A6 (pic below is seat map of Chicago but it’s similar to LA) for her 2 kids and she paid something like $800 PER TICKET. Ouch. The funny thing is that A6 were TERRIBLE seats because they were on a platform so there’s no way they could have seen them, and they prob spent all of their time staring at the big screen in front of them instead (see pic below)
Anyway, I got to thinking during the concert where were the best seats after all – it turns out section B3 is really the best because you are really close to them. As I’m typing this, row 4 B3 seats for Chicago are going for $2400 a ticket on Stubhub (let’s call it about $3K per ticket all in.) So what does this view look like you ask. Well you can see it here in this video –
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CbXzD-BbnlE
It seems the person is probably in the 2nd row of the show. As I’m typing this, the video has had nearly 1M views already. A quick Google search says 1M views generate about $2,000 in ad money on Youtube. AND THAT’S JUST ONE VIDEO/SONG!!!
Of course the question now is – is this legal? Does she get to keep the money? Will the videos be taken down? Well I found this Youtube link and it doesn’t seem that straightforward. It sounds like you would need to get approval from BTS’s record company. My wife did say that BTS will take down concert footage if you record their pre-recorded videos that play on the big screen, but they seem “okay” with actual concert footage.
Will this work with other acts? Probably not. No one is watching Youtube concert videos of Blink-182 (or maybe they are; I don’t know.) BTS is the #1 group in music today and has lots of teenagers (and my wife) watching Youtube videos all day. So if the stars align for this Youtube person and she is able to collect money on the ad revenue, and let’s assume she gets 10M views for the entire concert, that’s $20K she’s clearing in ad money at a cost of $3K for the ticket. #Hustling.