By Scott Roeben, on December 10 2021
There’s a new Queen of Las Vegas. Her name is Adele.
Just as Celine’s mantle was given to (taken by) Lady Gaga, Gaga’s reign as the Queen of the Las Vegas Strip has been bestowed upon (purloined by) none other than Adele.
It was a given Adele’s residency at Caesars Palace was going to be a hot ticket, but few could’ve guessed the extraordinarily high demand and resulting ticket prices, especially on reseller sites. Some listings have topped $35,000 a ticket.
Adele’s historic crush of ticket sales had a rocky start.
The launch of her tickets sales on Ticketmaster coincided with a major Internet service outage, thanks to Amazon’s cloud service network, Amazon Web Services.
The disruption couldn’t impede the unbridled enthusiasm for Adele as she then went to sell 100,000 tickets in six hours.
Adele tickets were in so much demand, they were never even made available to the public. The tickets were quickly gobbled up by buyers using Ticketmaster’s Verified Fan platform.
According to Billboard.com, those 100,000 tickets generated $50 million in ticket sales, or about $2.2 million per show.
Hello, from the cha-ching side.
Ticketmaster says there were some tickets available for $85 a pop, but needless to say, those were rarer than 3-to-2 blackjack on the Las Vegas Strip.
On the other end of the price spectrum, about one percent of tickets cost $5,000 or more.
While those were the official prices, resellers immediately began quoting astronomically high prices, some as high as the aforementioned $35,000 per ticket, according to TMZ.
Whether fans will actually pay such prices remains to be seen.
Our sources say Adele’s residency at Caesars Palace is expected to last 2-3 years, so we suspect ticket prices will normalize once the current frenzy subsides.
In another telling stat, Billboard says about $600,000 was generated per show from venue and Ticketmaster fees. Fun fact: According to Money.com, about 27% of a ticket price from a primary ticket provider is fees.
“Weekends With Adele” is currently scheduled from Jan. 21, 2022 to April 16, 2022. Here’s more.
Can you believe we’ve waited this long to mention we’re the one who first shared the story Adele would have a residency at Caesars Palace? It’s a little thing called “modesty.” Yes, in quotation marks, don’t make it awkward.
While Adele is the new queen of Las Vegas, there’s room for some co-queening. Lady Gaga continues to perform at Park MGM (now Dolby Live at Park MGM) and Celine Dion will presumably return to Resorts World following a postponement due to medical issues.
Adele’s mind-blowing ticket sales are a reminder the sky’s the limit for the right performer in the right place at the right time in Las Vegas.
Her success also puts a nail in the coffin of the perception Las Vegas is a place where careers go to die. It’s where performers go to become transcendent.
And richer. Just to keep it real.
