Tickets for Jason Aldean and Luke Bryan at the New York State Fair have been put on hold, pending a completed contract with the fair’s ticketing company.
The “multi-year” contract with Ticketmaster expired in May of this year, said Troy Waffner, the fair’s assistant director. The group sent out requests for new bid amounts and received about a half-dozen responses back.
Waffner says the Fair is close to making an award on the bids, but until then, ticket sales are put on hold for “at least” three weeks. That means tickets for Aldean and Bryan, scheduled to go on sale May 19, have been delayed until mid-June.
While Waffner will not say which company will be awarded the ticketing work, he did say consumers could see some savings with the new contract.
“What you’re going to end up seeing is a ticket company that gets awarded this contract that is [about] one-third less of a service charge than you’ve been seeing previously,” he said.
Those charges, he clarified, are not the price of the tickets. That will stay steady, but the processing fees could be lowered.
Should the ticketing company be different, Waffner says the hiatus will allow time for employees to be trained on new equipment and computer systems.
Ticketmaster has held the contract “for a number of years,” Waffner said.
