For the past few years, Garth Brooks has been touring all over the country with Trisha Yearwood on his record-setting World Tour. Tickets to Brooks’ shows are prized by country fans far and wide, as his shows tend to sell out fast.
So imagine how thrilled residents of Denver were when they heard that Brooks’ World Tour would be bringing him and Yearwood to their city. Excited to finally catch Brooks in concert, thousands of fans bought tickets to attend the show on Sunday (August 13) at Fiddler’s Green Amphitheatre. But what these fans didn’t know is that they had just been scammed by a ticket scalper.
After being contacted by dozens of Brooks’ furious fans, 9NEWS out of Denver wrote a detailed report on what could be one of the biggest ticket scams in country music this year. It turns out that the show these upset fans bought tickets for was not a part of Brooks’ World Tour, and Yearwood wasn’t there at all.
Instead, the show was set up as a concert to celebrate the induction of new members into the Colorado Music Hall of Fame, including Joe Walsh & Barnstorm, Caribou Ranch, and Dan Fogelberg. Other than Brooks, the scheduled performers included Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, Vince Gill, and Randy Owen of Alabama.
Although Brooks was billed on the ticket, he was not named as a headliner of the event. But many of the fans who purchased tickets were tricked into thinking he was after they came across a Facebook event that appeared to represent the Fiddler’s Green show.
The event pictures Brooks in its cover photo, and names him as the only act performing at Fiddler’s Green on August 13. A link is attached to the event for fans to purchase tickets on a site called Paper Stubs, which discusses Brooks’ World Tour with Yearwood and names the tickets as being “verified.” A screenshot of the Paper Stubs website and the Facebook event are included below.
Despite their claims, the Facebook event and the Paper Stubs website were not verified ticket sellers for the Fiddler’s Green concert. But fans didn’t realize they had been scammed until they turned out to the show, and that’s when the uproar started.
Angry comments flooded the fake Facebook event page from fans expressing disappointment and demanding refunds. Many fans began to blame the official ticket seller AXS and Fiddler’s Green for the ordeal, believing that the two had falsely advertised the concert as a Brooks-only event.
Fiddler’s Cove responded to one fan’s messages and made it clear that the venue had absolutely no association with the Facebook event page. They told the fan that the event page was “a scalpers event.”
Chuck Morris, the CEO of Anschutz Entertainment Group (AEG), which owns AXS, further clarified that neither AXS or Fiddler’s Green had anything to do with the event page. He stated that AXS never advertised the show as being a Brooks-only concert, and also sent 9NEWS a copy of the show’s original press release. The official press release does not mention Brooks as a headliner, and in fact, he isn’t named until the second paragraph.
In addition, Brooks was never advertised as the show’s only act on the official website for Fiddler’s Green. The AXS-published story that announced the show in June doesn’t even include a picture of Brooks in the article.
Below is the concert’s official poster and lineup. This poster was posted on the Facebook-verified page for Fiddler’s Green on June 5.
https://www.facebook.com/FiddlersGreenAmphitheatre/photos/a.10151455574427355.467055.92202897354/10158213099762355/?type=3&theater
As of press time, Brooks himself has not commented on the chaos surrounding the Fiddler’s Green show. We’ll be sure to update you when and if he releases a statement.
What are your thoughts on this whole ordeal? Sound off in the comments!