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The Quinnipiac Chronicle

The Student News Site of Quinnipiac University

The Quinnipiac Chronicle

The Student News Site of Quinnipiac University

The Quinnipiac Chronicle

O.A.R. ticket sales not matching Ke$ha

If O.A.R. had tried to start its college-born music career at Quinnipiac instead of Ohio State University, its underground popularity may not have been enough to get the band a real record deal.

Pop artists, such as last year’s performer Ke$ha, had Quinnipiac students lining the hallways of the student center for hours the first day of sales for the $20 arena seats and $25 floor seating. For this year’s Wake the Giant concert on Sunday, April 22, O.A.R. tickets are $10 apiece for arena seating and $15 for floor seating, said Nick Sczerbinski, head of stage crew for the Student Programming Board concert.

“In the summer, when they were on tour, I heard it was $50 just for lawn seats, and here you can get $15 for floor tickets,” Sczerbinski said.

Stubhub.com’s lowest ticket pricing for O.A.R is around $50.

This is the first year SPB has made tickets available both online and in the student center, Mainstage Chair Jamie Kloss said. The purpose was to increase ticket sales and avoid long lines in the student center as there were with Ke$ha last spring.

“SPB has taken the initiative to make them more accessible for students,” Kloss said.

Students have not taken advantage of this reasonable pricing because many only know a few of the band’s songs while others have never heard of them before, said sophomore Kathieya Odiah when asked if she was excited for the spring concert.

“I don’t even know who they are, so excitement is not the word I would use to describe it,” Odiah said.

The last time Quinnipiac had an alternative spring concert was in 2009 when Third Eye Blind performed.

“We were trying to do something different and go back to an alternative show which we haven’t had in two years,” SPB Director of Volunteers Kristin Foley said. “We were trying to have a different type of show to reach a different type of student.”

Sczerbinski said that the lagging ticket sales may be because women tip the scale of the student body ratio at Quinnipiac and may have less interest in an alternative concert.

“I think this being a mainly girls campus helped Ke$ha a lot,” Sczerbinski said. “O.A.R. obviously isn’t as top of the charts as Ke$ha is or was when we had her, so I think that had something to do with it. The fact that it is on a Sunday night and not on a Friday or Saturday night which are more of ‘go out nights’ probably added to the problem too.”

SPB is continuing tickets at the Carl Hansen Student Center tables as well as online. With only three weeks left until the concert, SPB is trying to do a promotional push through contests on Twitter and Facebook to win tickets. They will be having a “song of the week” promotion to familiarize students to more O.A.R. songs.

“It is going to be a really good show so people should just go for it,” Sczerbinski said.

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