Trump’s Arena Tour With Bill O’Reilly Struggling to Sell Tickets — With Thousands of Seats Available

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When tickets go on sale for a popular artist or major sporting event, they are often fully gobbled up within minutes. But alas, that has not been the case for former President Donald Trump’s arena tour with Bill O’Reilly.

In a Friday morning article, Politico highlighted the Trump-O’Reilly tour’s lagging sales for its four dates in December. Tickets have been available for more than a month, and yet thousands remain unsold at each venue.

The tour opens in Sunrise, FL on Dec. 11, then heads to Orlando on Dec. 12, followed by a pair of Texas stops the next weekend in Houston on Dec. 18, and Dallas on Dec. 19. A select few tickets close to the stage at each venue are priced at $1,000, but most of the seats are being sold in the $100-$300 range.

Searches on Ticketmaster and AXS for each of the four venues shows thousands of seats available at all of the tour’s stops. Practically entire sections are unclaimed at numerous venues — with Orlando standing out as a particularly tough sale.

“We have concerts that are doing a lot better than this,” an unnamed employee at Orlando’s Amway Center told Politico — citing Bad Bunny’s recent sellout in two days for a show being held next March.

An employee for Houston’s Toyota Center told Politico that “60 to 65 percent” of the Dec. 18 show’s tickets are still available — a figure which seems to be confirmed by the current map of availability by AXS.

Politico noted how Trump’s sales compare unfavorably not only to music acts, but to several of his predecessors who held similar tours:

But former presidents — and even their spouses — don’t usually encounter hurdles in selling out their appearances and speeches. Tickets for Michelle Obama’s “Becoming” book tour in 2018, for example, sold quickly, with most tickets for her Chicago United Center stop selling out within minutes and the cheapest tickets for all the venues selling out in less than two days. Her average venue size was similar to Trump’s, although Trump’s four venues have a slightly higher capacity.

Bill and Hillary Clinton’s joint Live Nation tour in 2018 and 2019, meanwhile, saw events sell out within a week or two weeks, according to a person familiar with that tour, although the venues were smaller than the four Trump events.

In a statement to Politico, Trump spokesperson Liz Harrington defended the lackluster sales.

“The History Tour has already sold over $5 million of tickets, and the excitement and enthusiasm is unlike anything we’ve seen before,” Harrington said. “Come December, the sold out shows will be a memorable night for all.”

O’Reilly, for his part, touted the sales as robust, and pointed out that promotion for the shows has not yet begun in earnest.

“We have more than $7 million in the bank,” O’Reilly told Politico. “We haven’t spent a nickel on marketing, nothing. All those 7 million for four shows were done on the announcement. Marketing will start in about a week. Nobody has sold tickets this fast at this price, and VIPs are sold out at three of the four venues.”

O’Reilly called it “bullshit” that Orlando ticket sales have been slow. But a Ticketmaster map showing inventory as of 9 a.m. Friday morning shows the vast majority of tickets for the Dec. 12 engagement have not been sold. (Blue dots indicate available seats, and tickets behind the stage are not being put out for sale.)

Trump has been packing in the crowds at the few public speeches he’s made since leaving office. But admission to Trump rallies is free, and the former president speaks extemporaneously, without an intermediary breaking up the flow.