Mark Knopfler

Crockford Management and officialCOMMUNITY care very much about the fan community response to what we are collectively doing with the introduction of Fair Admission presale pre-registration. Our efforts through MarkKnopfler.com are made to serve fans all over the world.

Off the top we want the entire community to have access to great seats to every show that is going on sale in the MarkKnopfler.com presale on Monday, October 29, as usual. As with the last tour, MarkKnopfler.com ticket purchases will include the offer of a copy of a live recording that will be made available by the end of the tour. If you registered for Fair Admission and did not get tickets but you do purchase tickets through MarkKnopfler.com presales on Monday, you will still be seated in advance of other presale participants.

The response from the global fan community to the new MarkKnopfler.com Fair Admission program for the Down The Road Wherever tour has been massive, as we are sure the Mark Knopfler community understands. This great interest in participating in the Fair Admission program does mean that the percentage of fans that can be served before the regular presale is less than all who registered. Based some response from the fan community, it seems to have caused unintended anxiety for those that were not served the opportunity to receive tickets through Fair Admission. For this unintended consequence, we are collectively sorry.

Fair Admission is our serious attempt to minimize and hopefully eliminate MarkKnopfler.com as a source of inventory for the secondary market on this tour. The entire team associated with MarkKnopfler.com is dedicated to this goal. There have been some minor technical bumps which have been detailed on this news item: https://www.markknopfler.com/fair-admission-process-update/

The number of tickets requested through Fair Admission for many shows exceeds the total inventory available to MarkKnopfler.com (by as much as five times in some cases). In most markets, the concert business machine limits the number of tickets that can be sold by the artist to between 8-15% of the total capacity. As with the last four tours, we did get as many seats closest to the stage for MarkKnopfler.com presales.

We have already received many rave reviews from many fans that have purchased tickets through the Fair Admission process. The fan community’s analysis of 20% of requests being able to be honoured is low, but in the range that we would expect.

For the benefit of the greater Mark Knopfler fan community, we would like to take a moment to explain the intention and process involved in Fair Admission:

The word “Fair” in Fair Admission means to us that all the people that asked for the opportunity to buy tickets to this tour are given the same access. Most people attending any event would like front row for the face value on the ticket, but there is only ever one front row. Everyone always wants the best seats they can possibly get for the lowest price. Fair Admission assigns the seats randomly. So, unlike the pre-sale on Monday, success has nothing to do with the ability to type fast or have five browser windows open at once. All that register has a chance to be selected to receive a basket.

There is a modest fee per ticket charged only to those tickets purchased through Fair Admission. This fee is not charged on tickets sold during the presale. The inventory allotted to MarkKnopfler.com is a single inventory. Fair Admission orders are seated before tickets purchased in the presale. More information is available here: https://support.markknopfler.com/support/solutions/articles/4000131577–how-is-inventory-allocated-between-fair-admission-and-markknopfler-com-presales-

In addition to the MarkKnopfler.com pre-sale on Monday, in the US and Canada, where it is hard to get a reasonable quantity of good inventory for presales, we will be arranging additional promoter presales for all those that registered for Fair Admission that we are unable to accommodate directly.

It may also be important for some to know that we have a few shows in North America where the promoter decided not to go on sale until January. As such, ticket pricing and inventory won’t be available until then. The impacted shows are

1) Vienna, Virginia; 2) Denver, CO; 3) Woodinville, WA for two shows

As of writing, we may not be able to operate MarkKnopfler.com presales for Toronto and Nashville. Any markets where we can’t resolve this issue, we will run a Ticketmaster presale for MarkKnopfler.com.

Sincerely,

Crockford Management & The Official Community Corporation