Bill & Hillary Clinton Resort To Groupon To Sell Speaking Tour Tickets, Some On StubHub Sold For As Low As $5
When Fortune announced that Bill and Hillary Clinton were planning to embark on a 13 city speaking tour titled “An Evening with the Clintons,” the news was delivered with a straight face, nary a hint of sarcasm to be seen. Boasting prices of upwards of $700 for some of the better seats at the more intimate venues, the tour promised “a unique perspective on the past, and remarkable insight into where we go from here.”
Things did not pan out as planned, with the Daily Mail reporting that the Clintons were forced to resort to hawking unsold tickets for some venues on Groupon, offering up general admission tickets at a 60 percent discount — for $35. The venue in question — The Forum, which seats approximately 17,000 souls in Inglewood, California — was apparently hit with low attendance numbers. Regardless of large marketing messages advertising the Groupon offer, exclaiming “limited time remaining” and that “tickets are selling fast!” only 450 Groupon customers bought the discounted tickets.
Despite the fact that California is a decidedly “blue” state — one that afforded Hillary Clinton 8.7 million votes in 2016, as contrasted with 4.4 million votes for Donald Trump, nearly doubling his total — it appears that it was a tough slog for the Clintons to sell tickets in the friendliest of territories.
'Evening with the Clintons? Audiences will love it!' said the Clintons.https://t.co/cA2HrXyFr1
— Bruce Tomaso (@brucetomaso) December 2, 2018
Sales performance for “An Evening with the Clintons” on Canadian soil proved to foster even more dismal results. Per the Daily Mail, an event held in the heart of the Canadian province of Ontario, in the urban sprawl of Toronto, saw last-minute tickets to the event being sold for 6.35 in Canadian dollars — or approximately $5.
Canadian media outlet blogTO, out of Toronto, provided a detailed account of the event in question.
“Needless to say, current U.S. president and political rival Donald Trump came up quite a few times during the conversation, and not too favourably…Fortunately for him perhaps, not nearly as many people were present for the talk as organizers had hoped there would be…When asked how many tickets were sold to the event, Ticket Master said that it could not ‘share background on our clients.’ The Daily Mail reports nonetheless that officials said about 3,300 seats were sold in total… For a venue that can hold more than 19,000 people, that’s not a great look — nor is the fact that organizers cut the Scotiabank Arena in half and blocked off the entire upper level for the event.”
An Evening with President Bill Clinton and former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton is coming to @ScotiabankArena on November 27! Join the Facebook event for more details: https://t.co/FUqMzfeh8O pic.twitter.com/J9BtmHwt8H
— Live Nation Ontario (@LiveNationON) October 8, 2018
With the event lasting approximately 90 minutes in total — and spanning topics of discussion ranging from Jamal Khashoggi to how Hillary and Bill had first met — it appears that those who did attend received exactly what it was that they were expecting. Including, of course, a great deal of talk about President Donald Trump, the man who had defeated Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential election, and who was, according to the above quote, not painted in the best of lights.
There is no news as to whether Bill and Hillary Clinton plan to promote another speaking tour in the immediate future, nor any definitive answer as to whether Hillary Clinton will once again seek the presidency.
