The Carrier Dome’s decision to sell discounted student tickets for the Billy Joel concert more than a month after the original tickets went on sale was poorly planned and unfair to the Syracuse University student body.

It was announced on Dec. 1, 2014 that Billy Joel would return to the Carrier Dome for the seventh time on March 20. When the tickets first went on sale Dec. 6 at 9 a.m., tickets were available for purchase at Ticketmaster and the Carrier Dome box office for $59.50 and $89.50 before fees.

On Friday, the Carrier Dome box office sent an email to SU students informing them that discounted tickets would become available. The tickets would be sold on a first come first served basis and an SUID would be required when purchasing at the box office. The tickets went on sale at 5 p.m. later that day for $19.50, less than one-third of the price of the original tickets.

While the Billy Joel concert is targeted to the general public, and not put on for SU students exclusively, they should have been considered. The Carrier Dome is a part of the SU campus, and making student tickets available for a discounted is only fair.

But many students felt blindsided when the discounted tickets were made available, because there had been no indication that this was the Carrier Dome Box Office’s plan at the time that the concert was announced.

Concert organizers should have let students know that they would have the opportunity to buy the full price tickets for better seats, or that they could opt to purchase cheaper seats that would be located in the back. Students could have chosen to pay for the better seats, or could have held out for the nosebleeds.

At the time the concert was announced, the Carrier Dome projected that the 38,242 tickets would sell out. On Sunday night student tickets were still available for purchase on Ticketmaster.

Bringing Billy Joel to the Carrier Dome has pleased many students and locals, but this mishandling of the student tickets has also caused frustration. Concert organizers should have been upfront with students about their options, rather than making them pay for tickets that they could get at less than a third of the price a few weeks later.

Published on January 26, 2015 at 12:15 am