Time remains to sell out the stadiums. But those familiar with the current sales pace say it lags behind other acts.
Donald Trump is having trouble selling advance tickets for his upcoming speaking tour with conservative pundit Bill O’Reilly, according to interviews with ticketing officials for the venues.
Early last month, Trump and O’Reilly, the one-time top Fox News host, announced a joint “History Tour” featuring four stops in December. O’Reilly said his conversations with Trump “will not be boring,” while the former president promised “fun, fun, fun for everyone who attends.”
Tickets went on sale for the events on June 14. While most seats are priced between $100 and $300, a “VIP Meet & Greet Package” goes for more than $8,500 and includes getting pictures taken with Trump and O’Reilly and a pre-show, 45-minute reception.
The events are not until the end of the year, Trump’s camp notes. But so far, the pace of purchases has been slow compared to other acts, arena officials say.
In Orlando, where the duo is hosting an event at the 20,000-capacity Amway Center on Dec. 12, a box office employee for the arena said, “There’s still a lot of tickets open.” The person, who like others for this story insisted on anonymity to share confidential sales data, added: “We have concerts that are doing a lot better than this.” A Bad Bunny concert being held next March recently sold out within two days, for example, and the majority of seats for a Dec. 3 Kane Brown concert have been sold already.
At the 20,000-seat American Airlines Center in Dallas, home to the NBA’s Dallas Mavericks and NHL’s Dallas Stars, a large number of seats remain open for the Dec. 19 Trump-O’Reilly event, according to a stadium employee who works in ticket sales.
For Trump’s Houston event with O’Reilly at the 19,000-seat Toyota Center, home to the NBA’s Houston Rockets, 60 to 65 percent of seats remain unsold, an employee with access to ticket sales information estimated. And in Sunrise, Florida, a box office employee at the BB&T Center said that they would have expected sales for the Trump-O’Reilly event there to have been “definitely higher” by now.
“It hasn’t been [selling] like crazy,” the person added, noting that events for comedian Katt Williams and podcast star Joe Rogan have done “significantly” better than the Trump-O’Reilly duo thus far.
As of Thursday evening, Ticketmaster pages for the Orlando, Dallas and Sunrise events and the Axs page for the Houston event show wide swathes of available seats, with some large sections only having sold a few tickets.
The difficulty Trump and O’Reilly appear to be having in filling up stadiums may be a reflection of the times. After a year-plus on lockdown, Americans seem eager to reengage culturally while disengaging politically. Cable news ratings, for example, are down substantially.
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Donald Trump is having trouble selling advance tickets for his upcoming speaking tour with conservative pundit Bill O’Reilly, according to interviews with ticketing officials for the venues https://t.co/PnbPwGKQw8
— POLITICO (@politico) July 16, 2021
It might be Bill O who is bringing this tour down. People will sell a kidney to buy a ticket to see Trump. They won’t for Bill.
O'Reilly threatens to sue after media reports "History Tour" with Trump has low ticket sales https://t.co/Prsbr7923L pic.twitter.com/HefmXHkxqr
— The Hill (@thehill) July 18, 2021
Typical Trumpian response — don’t like truth, threaten to sue.
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