Paul McCartney Syracuse tickets now on sale to public; reseller prices up to $11K

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Paul McCartney Syracuse tickets now on sale to public; reseller prices up to $11K
By Geoff Herber
May 01, 2017


Drummer Abe Laboriel, Jr. and Sir Paul McCartney rock the sold-out Times-Union Arena in Albany on the "Out There" Tour. July 5, 2014 - Photo: Warren Linhart

Update: Syracuse University said Monday that McCartney's concert is already "close to being sold out."

Tickets for Sir Paul McCartney's first-ever Syracuse concert are now on sale to the general public.

The Beatles legend will perform at the Carrier Dome on Saturday, Sept. 23 at 8 p.m. Tickets are available through Ticketmaster starting at $27.50, plus fees.

Prices have soared on reseller sites like StubHub, Vivid Seats and Ticket Liquidator. One listing has a single ticket in section 120 available for more than $11,000; seats in that lower level section were originally just $165 through Ticketmaster.

It's unclear how many tickets are available on third-party reseller websites, but Ticket Liquidator said it had more than 2,000 ranging from $100 to $11,200 each. StubHub has more than 1,900 available, ranging from $98 to $10,600.

Syracuse University has not said how many tickets will be available for McCartney's concert. McCartney was previously booked to perform at the Carrier Dome in 1993, but canceled to prepare for a Fox TV-televised concert; at the time, about 20,000 of some 35,000 available tickets had been sold.

As of 10:30 a.m. Monday, searching for tickets on Ticketmaster yields no results for pairs of tickets, though some are still available by searching for one ticket.

Last fall, Gov. Andrew Cuomo signed a law cracking down on "ticket bots" in New York state. The so-called "bot bill" creates penalties for scalpers who use ticket bots, or software that can circumvent limits on the number of tickets one person can buy, and then resell them for higher prices.

New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman's office said last year that it found third-party ticket resellers often use ticket bots to purchase large blocks of tickets, which are resold at a high mark-up. More than 50 percent of the tickets were kept from the public for some NYC concerts by high-profile artists like Justin Timberlake & Jay Z, Coldplay and Fleetwood Mac.

Known worldwide for dozens of Beatles hits like "Yesterday" and "Let It Be," McCartney also found success as a solo artist, staying on the UK and U.S. charts throughout the '70s and '80s. He has been inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame twice, as a member of the Beatles and as a solo artist.

McCartney, 74, is a two-time inductee in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a member of the Beatles and as a solo artist. He performed in Albany in 2014 and Buffalo in 2015, but this will be his first time performing in Syracuse; Ringo Starr headlined a Lakeview Amphitheater concert last summer.

McCartney, who typically performs three-hours shows, is married to Nancy Shevell, vice president of administration for the trucking company New England Motor Freight. In 2012, the couple visited Syracuse on McCartney's private jet to stop by NEMF.