Radar Online (all that’s left) ran a story about a $175,000 offering of 2 Oscar tickets and a fancy weekend and travel to go with it.
The “news” is that The Academy is suing to stop it.
The absurdity is that the $175,000 package is an overt lie, most likely intended to get coverage for the ticket scalping company (which I don’t wish to name) by Radar and others.
The Academy does not want tickets scalped.
There has not been an Oscar telecast in the last decade that you could not buy illegally sold tickets to for about $4000 to $7000 a pair.
The real story here is that there are not enough seats in the Kodak (or anywhere except for a stadium the size of Staples Center or bigger) to accommodate all the Academy members who actually want tickets for themselves and their +1s. So every year, there is a lottery and a hierarchy going on at the same time to determine who gets the seats they have, after the studios and media and stars they want and “friends of the AMPAS” get theirs. And every year, some of the “lucky ones” who gets seats sell them to brokers for a few grand apiece.
The other ugly thought is that this silly lawsuit is also in The Academy’s interest because it creates the public perception of an unrealistic interest in access to this event. Yes, it is one of the biggest, toughest tickets of any year. But $175k… $100k… $50k… $25k… come on! If you were willing to shell out $15k for a pair of tickets, there is not a studio in town – aside from the one or two with a lot of people who desperately want to be there with the inevitable winners each year – that won’t find a way to slip you a pair under the table and cover the cost of handling 2 or 3 of their stars for the evening.