Britney Spears kicks off her two-month Femme Fatale summer tour (with Nicki Minaj supporting) tonight in Sacramento (it wraps up August 13 in Toronto). Tomorrow, poorly-shot phone videos will give us an idea of what the performances will look like, but until then, there are five burning questions on the lips of fans and observers alike. Here’s a breakdown of what the answers might be:
HOW ARE TICKETS SELLING?
Britney’s fanbase was up in arms when Ticketmaster first offered presale tickets for the August 2 Nassau Coliseum stop of the tour (see for example the March 29 Perez Hilton post on the topic)?but the story cooled?when other venues’ prices were revealed to be less high. Nevertheless, a few Ticketmaster searches for tonight’s show found a number of options available for 8 seats in a row in the $47 ticket range (the second-lowest after the sold-out minimal-quantity $27 tickets), on both upper and lower levels of Sacramento’s Power Balance Pavilion. This is after 1,400 tickets (at the $47 and $87 price points) were discounted on Groupon (to $30 and $52 respectively). All told, over 18,000 tickets were sold at discounted prices through Groupon for fifteen of the first 24 dates of the tour. The Groupon deals for shows in Seattle, Winnipeg, Minneapolis, and Atlanta actually expired before all available discounted tickets were sold. A sixteenth Groupon deal is currently active for the August 6 Atlantic City date?and all of this is before tickets for August 9th’s Hartford, CT show have even gone on sale. All told, the shows look to be under-attended in smaller cities, even as, in metropolitan areas like Greater New York City, new shows have been added. It remains to be seen whether this could have been remedied by better price optimization, or whether the tour’s ambition was more outsized than its actual draw.
AFTER LACKLUSTER PERFORMANCES IN RECENT VIDEOS AND AWARD SHOWS, IS BRITNEY STILL A WORLD CLASS PERFORMER?
Not-quite-unbiased source Perez Hilton witnessed a dress rehearsal of the show, and moderately praised the show, comparing it favorably to the 2009 Circus tour and recent television appearances. He estimated that 40% of the show is sung live, compared to 0% in 2009. He also answers the question no one really wants to put into words: “Is it Old Britney? No.” (He refers, of course, to Spears prior to her knee injury, public media troubles, conservatorship, etc.)
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