Hollywood

Chris Rock Comes to Hard Rock — and Ticket Sales are Surging

The spike in sales follows the chaos on the Oscars stage last week when Rock joked about Jada Pinkett Smith starring in "G.I. Jane 2," due to her shaved head

NBCUniversal Media, LLC

Will Smith confronted actor and comedian Chris Rock on stage after comedian made a joke about Smith’s wife, Jada Pinkett-Smith, at the 94th Annual Academy Awards.

After being on the receiving end of the slap heard around the world, Chris Rock is not struggling to sell tickets to his comedy tour.

Rock is set to perform several shows at the Wilbur Theatre in Boston before kicking off his Ego Death World Tour on Apr. 2 with 38 scheduled dates in major cities like Las Vegas, New York, Chicago and — of course — right here in Hollywood, Florida.

After the infamous slap, Rock's upcoming shows in Boston sold out almost instantly, leaving more than a dozen tickets up for resale on StubHub with prices ranging from $444 per ticket to $1,705.

The spike in sales follows the chaos on the Oscars stage last week when Rock joked about Jada Pinkett Smith starring in "G.I. Jane 2," due to her shaved head. Will Smith could then be seen walking to the stage, where he appeared to slap Rock with an open hand.

The joke comes after Pinkett Smith publicly shared that she has alopecia, an autoimmune disorder that leads to hair loss. "G.I. Jane" was a 1997 movie starring Demi Moore as a woman who joins the U.S. Navy and shaves her head soon after.

Rock has yet to publicly address the incident, but fans are hoping that changes when he takes the stage.

One of the stops he'll be making is right here in Hollywood, FL. While tickets are selling fast, there are still open seats for his Hard Rock Live shows on Apr. 14 and Apr. 15. Fans can purchase tickets on TicketMaster, which currently range from $78.25 to $708.25.

StubHub, a ticket exchange and resale company, said it saw 25x the daily sales for Rock's shows in the days following the Oscar incident, exceeding cumulative sales for the comedian's tour during the entire month of March.

"At this stage in his tour, on an average day, we'd expect to see a spike in sales in the 24 or 48 hours prior to a show date as last-minute sales roll in – but it is incredibly unusual to see the spike we have experienced," Mike Silveira, a spokesperson for StubHub said in a statement to CNBC.

According to a tweet from TickPick, an online ticket marketplace, they also sold more tickets to Chris Rock's show in one night than they did in the last month.

Exit mobile version