A winter-long hiatus has not improved demand for tickets to Bill and Hillary Clinton’s joint “book tour,” and seats can be had for the pair’s final performances for less than $10.
The tour concludes this weekend with stops at the Forum Theater in Los Angeles, California, on Saturday night, and at the Park Theater at the Park MGM resort and casino in Las Vegas, Nevada on Sunday night. Neither venue is sold out and tickets for both appearances are widely available not just on Ticketmaster, but on a number of secondary market sites as well.
On Friday night, the New York Post reports, organizers were forced to “slash listed prices and even offer discount ducats through Groupon to boost sales” at Seattle’s WaMu Theater. Even the best seats in the house, which once cost around $1700, were available Friday night for around $800 — more than half off the suggested retail price.
Even “The West Wing’s” Bradley Whitford, who emceed the event and conducted the interview with Bill and Hillary Clinton couldn’t manage to salvage the affair.
Secondary ticket marketplace, StubHub, has tickets for Saturday evening’s show in LA available for a mere $6 — and that’s for a floor seat. Similar-priced tickets are available in the arena’s first and second bowls. The best ticket currently available on StubHub — a third row, middle, floor section seat — is just $47.50.
Parking at LA’s Forum Theater may actually cost you more than seeing the main event.
Sunday night’s event, at the Park MGM, is at a smaller venue, so ticket prices are a bit higher. Balcony seats will run attendees around $20. The best seat in the house is around $475, but those probably won’t sell, especially when Ticketmaster still has seats available for the event, in the same section but a few rows ahead for just $228 plus taxes and fees; the event isn’t even sold out, and it’s been on the calendar since last year, and was even rescheduled after the Clintons dropped out to go to former President George H. W. Bush’s funeral.
Fortunately, after Sunday night, “An Evening With the Clintons” will be out of its misery.
The Clintons started the tour as a way of “connecting” (and earning major cash) following Hillary’s loss in the 2016 presidential campaign, though the pair promised not to address the “Trump issue,” and focus instead on their collective time in power. Initially, promoters anticipated swift ticket sales and a response comparable to Michelle Obama’s sold out, blockbuster, arena book tour.
It didn’t work out that way. Plagued by bad ticket sales and “exhaustion,” Bill and Hillary Clinton called time on the fall half of their tour, perhaps thinking the spring weather — or maybe the Mueller report — would yield better results. Sadly, that wasn’t the case. Audiences simply weren’t interested, and the were even less interested when it became clear neither Bill nor Hillary had any intention of discussing Trump.
On Friday, Hillary waxed poetic about “constitutional crises” and the “rule of law” but never mentioned her 2016 arch-nemesis.
“I really believe that we are in a crisis, a constitutional crisis,” Hillary Clinton told the Seattle audience. “We are in a crisis of confidence and a crisis over the rule of law and the institutions that have weathered a lot of problems over so many years. And it is something that, regardless of where you stand in the political spectrum, should give real heartburn to everybody. Because this is a test for our country.”
Bill Clinton, who has a stunning lack of irony, added, “These people, they don’t believe the same set of rules apply to them that apply to everyone else.”
The pair said they feel “optimistic” about the 2020 elections, perhaps because they’ll finally be retired.