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Eric Church will embark on an ambitious 2017 tour that will bring him to more than 60 cities, including Duluth.
The country rocker, who played Atlanta last summer with Kenny Chesney at the Georgia Dome, will launch his "Holdin' My Own" Tour on Jan. 13 in Nebraska and roll through Infinite Energy Center on Feb. 16.
For the first time in Church’s touring career, there won’t be an opening act. Church and his ECB will play two full sets with an intermission.
Also new for this tour, an elaborate ticket-buying process designed to thwart scalpers and ensure Church’s fans can purchase tickets at face value.
Church and his team have developed a new fan club pre-sale system that will allow them to remove scalpers from the pre-sale process. Members of the “Church Choir” will pre-register for the fan club pre-sale prior to it starting. Once verified, fan club members will receive buy links via text message when the pre-sale starts.
Scalpers found to be gaming the system and posing as real fans won’t receive the buy link at all.
Church’s team has secured a larger allotment of fan club tickets than in the past so “Church Choir” members will have better success buying tickets in the pre-sale. The “Church Choir” pre-sale will be the only pre-sale – there won’t be any venue, credit card or radio pre-sales.
As on past tours, Church’s team will continue to cancel any orders found to be made by scalpers.
To combat the scalping issue, Church commissioned a proprietary technology that scrubs ticket purchases using up to 10 different data points and automatically flags orders made by scalpers. Orders may be cancelled at any time and without warning. Church cautions fans to stay away from the secondary market because it’s likely that tickets found there will be invalid by the time the show happens.
Finally, delivery of all ticket orders will be delayed until the days leading up to each show. Church hopes that this will make it impossible for scalpers to complete their transactions.
“In this era where growing inequality seems to be the norm, we wanted to do everything within our power to put the advantage back in the hands of true fans rather than those that take advantage of the system, and by extension our people,” said John Peets, Church’s manager, in a statement. “It was important to us to invest time into evaluating and redesigning the ticket buying process and build the technology to level the playing field.”
Pre-sale registration for the tour is available now through Aug. 23.
Pre-sale purchase links and unique codes will be sent directly via text message to pre-registered standard and premium fan club members, giving them a three-day window to purchase tickets to the “Holdin’ My Own” tour. The fan club pre-sale begins at noon Sept. 9 and ends on Sept. 11 at 12:59 a.m.
For more information, visit www.ericchurch.com.
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