Bon Jovi announced in April that they are touring Australia in December 2013. Backstage Jon Bon Jovi members, which is the Bon Jovi fan club had the first bite at securing tickets. It isn’t free to become a Backstage JBJ member.

To become a premium Backstage JBJ member for 2 years, it costs $300. To take out a Signature package for 1 year, it costs $160. To take out a Standard package for 1 year, it costs $80 a year and to take out an online membership package for 1 year, it costs $60. Of course, each package has different perks.

So if you are a Bon Jovi fan club member, you had first dibs at purchasing tickets. We will call this the pre (pre (pre(presales))).

If a Bon Jovi fan wanted to sit in Row 1 and purchase a Diamond VIP package, the price of one ticket is $1975 + $10 booking fee.
If a Bon Jovi fan wanted to sit in Rows 2 to 5 and purchase an Emerald VIP package, the price of one ticket is $1475 + $10 booking fee.
If a Bon Jovi fan wanted to sit in Rows 6 to 13 and purchase a Sapphire VIP package, the price of one ticket is $975 + $10 booking fee.

So it looks like the Bon Jovi fan club members didn’t want to purchase the VIP tickets, and they came up on sale via Showbiz which is a pre-sales seller.

For the Sydney show, the Diamond VIP tickets have been sold out, and the Sapphire VIP tickets have been sold out as well. The Emerald VIP tickets remained when I last checked. The other shows, still had all three VIP options available. I am sure that they will sell out eventually, as a fans devotion can yield unexpected results.

The next stage of the sales, is the Telstra pre-sales. The next stage is the Ticketek VISA pre-sales, then the final pre-sales and finally the public release. What a collusive, exploitive and unregulated process.

However, I still believe that what Jon Bon Jovi is doing is plain greedy. If he lowers the entry barrier to his fan club, he will get more people to join. It’s simply economics. Do you want 100,000 fans joining at the higher prices, or do you want 10,000,000 fans joining at the lower prices.

Let’s just say that 100,000 fans take out the $300 option for two years, that is $30MIL paid into his pocket right now and that covers a two year period.

If he lowers the price to $10 a year and have a lot of perks for that like concert recordings, sound check recordings and demos to entice people to join, he will get millions to join. So let’s say that 10 million fans join at $10 a year. This will bring in $100MIL per year. $10 is small change in a fans pocket. More people will part with it. This isn’t just for Bon Jovi to do, all the bands need to be doing this. Building fan to band connections isn’t just for social media. The first port of call is the fan club.

I know what I would want as a muso. It’s all about building connections. That is the new currency.