Cheryl James and Sandra Denton of the group Salt-N-Pepa perform at Chevy Court at the NYS Fair. Spinderella, aka Deidra "Dee Dee" Roper, is at rear. (Photo by Jeff Paquette -NYS Fair)
Great New York State Fair in Syracuse had an overall successful year despite ticketing and entertainment lineup difficulties before a major layout overhaul to come for 2016.
Though Great New York State Fair has an impressive lineup of A-list entertainment at its free-admission Chevy Court stage each year, tickets for the scheduled Meghan Trainor concert Sept. 3 ended up on the secondary market via TicketNetwork, reportedly listed for as much as $1,500 complete with false meet and greet backstage passes.
“TicketNetwork became aware of the New York State Fair/Meghan Trainor event after reading an article on Syracuse.com,” said Chris VanDeHoef, director of Government Relations at TicketNetwork. “Once TicketNetwork learned that those tickets were ‘free,’ Don Vaccaro, TicketNetwork’s CEO, immediately ordered the removal of those tickets from the TicketNetwork exchange. Additionally, he instructed TicketNetwork’s Customer Service department to refund any purchaser of those tickets 125 percent of their purchase price.”
Vaccaro then suspended the users responsible for listing the tickets.
The total measurable impact of the fraudulent tickets was very small on the TicketNetwork platform, with two separate orders totaling five tickets.
Dave Bullard, Public Relations for New York State Fair, said that the organization first found out about the false tickets due to a customer call to the main switchboard.
“We checked it out and you could see that there were these automatically generated ads for Meghan Trainor tickets being sold for shows at the fair which, of course, there weren’t any that existed, so we hopped on it,” said Bullard, who added that the fair reached out to TicketNetwork directly. “It took a little while to suss it all out but they shut it down pretty quickly and we put out a press release so fairgoers wouldn’t be misled.”
The attention from the secondary market reflects on the caliber of acts being booked by the fair.
“We’re booking higher and higher levels of talent on Chevy Court, so what we took away is that we need to keep an eye on the secondary market as these shows become more and more desirable,” said Bullard.
Great New York State Fair Acting Director Troy Waffner said that fairgoers should be sure to check out the event website and really understand what they’re doing before pushing the purchase button, “which is really kind of true of anything.”
VanDeHoef offered fairgoers and music fans tips for purchasing secondary market tickets for shows at any facility.
“We recommend buying from the venue box office, authorized ticket seller or reputable online marketplace like TicketNetwork.com. We encourage buyers to make sure there is a guarantee associated with any purchase and to avoid buying from unknown individuals online or in front of the venue, especially cash transactions,” said VanDeHoef. He added that purchasers can further protect themselves by purchasing with credit cards, which generally carry protections not afforded by debit cards or cash. Consumers should also examine any ticket purchased and look for abnormalities.
After all of that excitement, Meghan Trainor’s performance ended up being canceled for health reasons anyway, along with a performance from Snoop Dogg. Great New York State Fair had nearly two weeks notice with the Meghan Trainor cancelation and tapped last year’s best-attended performer, Jason Derulo, to fill in. Derulo played to about 25,000 people this year. With the Snoop Dogg cancelation, the facility had about 24 hours notice to figure out an alternative.
When there’s a cancelation, “we get on the phone and start calling agents to find acts that work,” said Waffner. “With Jason (Derulo) he was familiar to us because he was our biggest act on Chevy Court last year, but with Snoop we had much less notice.” The event wanted to stay with an act of the same genre and was looking at a couple of possibilities. NAS ended up being available and was booked at the last minute. Though Steve Miller Band brought the highest number of people to Chevy Court (36,900), NAS ended up drawing the second-largest crowd of the entire run of 23 performances.
The fair said that acts aren’t traditionally paid until they’re at the facility to perform, so there weren’t any contract breaches or penalties to figure out with cancelations.
“We don’t really have anything wrapped up in the concerts financially except for advertising,” said Waffner.
Triangle Talent has booked shows at the facility, though the Great New York State Fair contract is going out to bid again for the 2016 event.
This year’s concert series smashed attendance records, with the previous record of 175,600 broken just eight days into the 2015 event. The 2015 series set an all-time attendance record of 283,000 people watching the 23 concerts, increasing average attendance per concert by more than 30 percent.
One question stands out: How?
Well, one way is by raising the entertainment budget by a couple hundred thousand to a total of $1.5 million, but Waffner admits that some of it is “just dumb luck.”
“I think it was just a perfect year for booking concerts at Chevy Court,” he said. “We were able to check off all our boxes for diversity, genre — everything people wanted.”
Overall attendance for the 12-day fair reached 908,147. The facility previously had an additional concert venue for paid shows with its Grandstand, which will be dismantled for next year’s season.
“We figured out that we spend one third of the money to get four times the acts that garner three times the attendance when it comes to Chevy Court,” said Bullard. The Grandstand can only seat 17,000, whereas Chevy Court can accommodate more than 30,000 people. “Based on the numbers, it just makes sense to focus our efforts on Chevy Court.”
According to Waffner, the free general admission shows generate income in ways other than ticket sales.
“It’s gate admission. It’s parking. It’s food and beverage,” he said, adding that fairgoers are able to bring in food and that patrons attending an 8 p.m. show will often get to the fair around 5 p.m. and stay through dinner. “On a Steve Miller night you can definitely see the spike in beer sales.”
Interviewed for this story: Dave Bullard and Troy Waffner, (315) 487-7711 x1377; Chris VanDeHoef, (860) 644-4000 x1382