Sonia Feldberg is passionate about live entertainment. She attends some of the greatest spectacles, including the Eagles at Sphere this past weekend. She’s a familiar figure at such locals-driven venues as Myron’s, the South Point Showroom, the Composers Room and Notoriety Live.
Feldberg often pays top dollar for shows. She buys blocks of tickets for friends at Myron’s at The Smith Center, selling them at face value to help fill the room. Her nickname is “The Ticketmaster.”
Feldberg, who has lived in the same house in Las Vegas for 50 years, also sees real value in her subscription to the seat-filling service House Seats. She signed on for $200 over two years, with four tickets per show and a discount that makes the second year free. That’s $100 for four tickets, daily, to an array of Las Vegas productions.
“If I go to one really good show, I’ve exceeded what I paid,” Feldberg says. “A lot of big names, just about anybody you can think of, offer some extra seats. They may be in the balcony, but they just want to fill the room up.”
It’s an ideal deal for locals, and the most prominent seat-filling platforms in Las Vegas specifically target local residents (requiring a Nevada ID to join). But the seat-filling culture is a mixed bag for entertainers and producers. Here’s a scan of the seat-filling landscape.
The platforms
House Seats, Fillaseat, Plug In Vegas and VetTix are the most commonly used seat-filling services. House Seats is the longest-standing of those platforms, founded in 2005 by Vegas native and former DW Bistro owner Bryce Krausman.
The entertainment and hospitality pro once worked for Blue Man Group at Luxor and established a Blue Man Group hospitality program to help “paper” the venue when the Blue Men opened in 2000. Company employees were given tickets to hand out to people who could spread the word about this then largely unknown production.
Krausman also worked for a time at “Zumanity” at New York-New York and later “Avenue Q” and “Le Reve” at Wynn Las Vegas. The pressure to fill the seats was intense.
“That was a 2,000-seat theater for ‘Le Reve,’ and many times we had to fill the theater,” Krausman recalls. “We’re on the floor in the box-office manager’s office calling everybody we know to come down, because Mr. Wynn was coming to the 9 o’clock show, and we had to fill 2,000 seats.”
That concept ballooned when Krausman and co-founder Suellen Meyers (a colleague in the ticketing business) premiered House Seats. The company was modeled after seat-filling services for Broadway shows in New York.
In 2009, “The Mentalist” Gerry McCambridge established ShowTickets4Locals, selling the platform years ago.
Fillaseat, founded and still operated by Vegas ticketing vet Ryan Lew, also opened for business in 2009. Lew has been in the ticketing industry for more than 30 years, running the box office at UNLV from 1989 until establishing Fillaseat.
VetTix is unique as it is specific to currently serving military members and veterans. The national organization, which dates to 2008, doled out 8 million tickets nationally last year.
The process
You can sign up for one of the platforms that charge an annual fee, usually $40 to $200 per person, depending on the package options (VetTix is a nonprofit and only charges a service fee).
Box-office staffers, producers and room operators offer any number of tickets to the service to “paper” the house. Lew says this can range from 10 to 200, depending on the show.
Subscribers check their accounts regularly. If you see a new show, you sign up online. Act fast, as tickets to bigger shows are snapped up first-come, first-served. If you accept an offer and don’t show, you might be required to pay a “cancel” fee ($20 in most cases). Chronic no-shows risk their subscriptions being terminated.
The perks
Giving away tickets might seem counterintuitive for any show. But productions sign up because they are an effective way to fill a venue with bodies, and make money at the bar and merch stand.
The opportunities are abundant for smaller shows, such as those at the V Theater at the Miracle Mile Shops at Planet Hollywood, Notoriety Live at Neonopolis, the Westgate Cabaret, the South Point Showroom and the Copa Room at the Tuscany. Smaller venues at Strip resorts are more frequent than resident headliners.
But superstars in residency or on tour do pop up. A notable example is Paul McCartney. Tickets were offered on House Seats in the hours leading up to his show at Allegiant Stadium in October and for his 2018 appearance at T-Mobile Arena.
You can catch a ticketed show at almost any level on these sites. “Almost” means Sphere headliners and “The Wizard of Oz” have not been listed on a seat-filling platform.
When asked if Sphere has ever offered tickets for his company, Lew says, “We have not yet, and I don’t anticipate we will anytime soon.”
But there is a long list of shows for fans to see in the entertainment capital of the world.
“It’s just a matter of who has worked with us, and who knows what we can deliver,” Lew says. “Somebody comes into town that’s new, they may ask, ‘Is there a way to do some papering or giving away tickets?’ And I’m sure they’re told what our companies can deliver, how we can reach thousands of locals.”
The pratfalls
Headliners typically don’t broadcast to the general public that they are on a seat-filling site. The shows offered are often an open secret. But they are not publicized because many entertainers don’t want to disclose the need for seat-filling support.
Also, some Vegas producers would like to see a cut of the seat-filling profits after giving away tickets to those operating the services.
“I’ve always had a little bit of an issue of us not making at least some money out of the deal,” SPI Entertainment founder Adam Steck says. “Maybe $10 or $15 (per ticket) instead of nothing. That’s my personal challenge with it.”
Notoriety Live owner Ken Henderson says the “word-of-mouth” direct marketing value doesn’t always translate into direct revenue for a show or venue.
“What the people do is, they go tell one of their friends they can see these shows for free,” says Henderson, whose venue stages nearly 40 shows a month. “They don’t say, ‘Come see this artist and pay for the ticket.’ ”
Henderson says a required two-drink minimum with a seat-filling ticket would be a boon to room operators. But a mandatory two-drink minimum is not “free,” and typically not included on free-ticket platforms. Consequently, Henderson says he’s considering his own seat-filling platform just for Notoriety shows, where he sets the rules.
The protocols
One off-Strip show over the holiday season was boosted by seat-fillers. This was evident in the crowd’s tepid response, with several in the audience seeing the performer for the first time.
“It’s a definite feel, a different feel, if there are a bunch of people who didn’t pay for their seats,” says Libby Hoover, another active entertainment fan who was on House Seats for three years. “It can be strange for us to be going crazy, and some people not responding at all.”
Henderson recalls a couple who entered a show with free tickets and immediately complained about their seats.
“I’d sat down in front of him, and he says, ‘Oh, now I can’t see, this guy is sitting here,’ ” Henderson says. “Then all of a sudden, I hear this sound, ‘Psssst!’ He’s opening a can of Diet Pepsi, and now he’s drinking his Diet Pepsi. Then afterward, he leaves the can and says, ‘They can clean it up.’ ”
Following the rules and using your best judgment is the point. Support where you can (not with your own can of soda) at the bar or merch table.
The Vegas entertainment community is a for-profit operation. The free sites just offer an opportunity to build an audience to keep their hearts beating.
“If you want to see shows, it is really a great system,” says Hoover, who has ended her participation in seat-filling services. “You can get your money back by seeing two shows. I’m not saying I won’t go back at some point. I’d just seen everything I wanted to see.”
Contact John Katsilometes at [email protected]. Follow @johnnykats on X, @JohnnyKats1 on Instagram.