Trump-O’Reilly Stadium Tour

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Trump-O’Reilly Stadium Tour Jul 17, 2021 20:49:09 GMT

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Post by Admin on Jul 17, 2021 20:49:09 GMT

Donald Trump is having trouble selling advance tickets for his upcoming speaking tour with conservative pundit Bill O’Reilly, according to interviews with ticketing officials for the venues.

Early last month, Trump and O’Reilly, the one-time top Fox News host, announced a joint “History Tour” featuring four stops in December. O’Reilly said his conversations with Trump “will not be boring,” while the former president promised “fun, fun, fun for everyone who attends.”

Tickets went on sale for the events on June 14. While most seats are priced between $100 and $300, a “VIP Meet & Greet Package” goes for more than $8,500 and includes getting pictures taken with Trump and O’Reilly and a pre-show, 45-minute reception.

The events are not until the end of the year, Trump’s camp notes. But so far, the pace of purchases has been slow compared to other acts, arena officials say.

In Orlando, where the duo is hosting an event at the 20,000-capacity Amway Center on Dec. 12, a box office employee for the arena said, “There’s still a lot of tickets open.” The person, who like others for this story insisted on anonymity to share confidential sales data, added: “We have concerts that are doing a lot better than this.” A Bad Bunny concert being held next March recently sold out within two days, for example, and the majority of seats for a Dec. 3 Kane Brown concert have been sold already.

At the 20,000-seat American Airlines Center in Dallas, home to the NBA’s Dallas Mavericks and NHL’s Dallas Stars, a large number of seats remain open for the Dec. 19 Trump-O’Reilly event, according to a stadium employee who works in ticket sales.

For Trump’s Houston event with O’Reilly at the 19,000-seat Toyota Center, home to the NBA’s Houston Rockets, 60 to 65 percent of seats remain unsold, an employee with access to ticket sales information estimated. And in Sunrise, Florida, a box office employee at the BB&T Center said that they would have expected sales for the Trump-O’Reilly event there to have been “definitely higher” by now.

“It hasn’t been [selling] like crazy,” the person added, noting that events for comedian Katt Williams and podcast star Joe Rogan have done “significantly” better than the Trump-O’Reilly duo thus far.

As of Thursday evening, Ticketmaster pages for the Orlando, Dallas and Sunrise events and the Axs page for the Houston event show wide swathes of available seats, with some large sections only having sold a few tickets.

The difficulty Trump and O’Reilly appear to be having in filling up stadiums may be a reflection of the times. After a year-plus on lockdown, Americans seem eager to reengage culturally while disengaging politically. Cable news ratings, for example, are down substantially.

O’Reilly said he and Trump had sold $2 million worth of tickets for Dallas and that the Sunrise, Florida, event was almost 75 percent sold out. He noted that not all of the 19,000 seats at the Houston event will be available for purchase. And he also said that it was “bullshit” that ticket sales for Orlando have been lackluster. But when asked how many tickets have been sold at the venue, he said he didn’t know.

“I don’t have that information,” he said. “I do grosses. I’m not the ticket counter.”

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Trump-O’Reilly Stadium Tour Jul 18, 2021 20:16:35 GMT

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Post by Admin on Jul 18, 2021 20:16:35 GMT

Advance ticket sales have been on since June 14 for former president Donald Trump and former Fox News host Bill O’Reilly’s stadium tour, but they haven’t come close to selling out.

As Politico pointed out Friday, Ticketmaster listings for the Orlando, Dallas and Sunrise stops and the AXS page for the Houston event still have plenty of available seats. What’s more, Politico spoke to employees in the box offices of the venues Trump and O’Reilly selected for their “History Tour” and got the inside scoop on how the sales — or lack thereof — compare to those for other upcoming events.

“We have concerts that are doing a lot better than this,” one box office employee in Orlando is quoted as saying in the Politico piece.

The tour is slated for December of this year and most tickets cost between $100 and $300. There is, however, a VIP meet-and-greet available. For over $8,500, VIPs can take photos with Trump and O’Reilly and attend a pre-show reception that lasts 45 minutes.

Politico noted that former first lady Michelle Obama, as well as Bill and Hillary Clinton, were able to sell out venues in a relatively short amount of time, although the sites of the “History Tour” are slightly larger than the ones chosen by Obama for her book tour and the Clintons for their Live Nation tour.

The website Mediaite tweeted a seat map of one of the venues that shows a significant portion of seats for the tour as unsold.

Bill O’Reilly called it “bullsh*t” that ticket sales for his arena show with former President Trump have been slow.

But a Ticketmaster map of the venue shows otherwise (the unsold seats are in blue). t.co/ONe26JjVRv pic.twitter.com/Ihd1shLvzv

— Mediaite (@mediaite) July 16, 2021

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Trump-O’Reilly Stadium Tour Jul 18, 2021 22:38:33 GMT

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Post by Admin on Jul 18, 2021 22:38:33 GMT

Former Fox News host Bill O’Reilly reportedly threatened to sue a Politico reporter over an article revealing that sales for his “History Tour” with former President Trump were low, citing conversations with venue ticketing officials.

Politico’s Daniel Lippman on Friday reported that tickets for the tour, which has four stops scheduled at locations in Texas and Florida this December, went on sale June 14, though venue officials said sales have so far been slow compared with other events held at the arenas.

For example, a box office employee at Orlando, Fla.'s 20,000-person Amway Center, which will host Trump and O’Reilly on Dec. 12, told Politico, “There’s still a lot of tickets open.”

“We have concerts that are doing a lot better than this,” the employee added, speaking on the condition of anonymity.

The employee said that a Bad Bunny concert scheduled for March at the arena sold out in two days and that tickets for a Dec. 3 Kane Brown concert were almost gone.

Employees at Houston’s Toyota Center, Dallas’s American Airlines Center and Sunrise, Fla.'s BB&T Center all said that a large portion of seats for the Trump-O’Reilly tour remain unsold, with a BB&T box office official telling Politico they expected sales to have been “definitely higher” at this point.

However, Trump and O’Reilly have both pushed back on Politico’s reporting, with Trump spokeswoman Liz Harrington saying in a statement, “The History Tour has already sold over $5 million of tickets, and the excitement and enthusiasm is unlike anything we’ve seen before.”

“Come December, the sold out shows will be a memorable night for all,” she added.

Lippman reported that in a phone interview, O’Reilly said claims that ticket sales were lagging were “false” and “totally ridiculous.”

O’Reilly reportedly argued that ticket sales were at $7 million, higher than the number Harrington gave.

“We haven’t spent a nickel on marketing, nothing,” he said. “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.”

The television personality specifically pushed back on reports that Orlando ticket sales were low, calling it “bullshit,” although he did not know exactly how many tickets had been sold at that arena.

O’Reilly then reportedly threatened Lippman, saying, "You put one word in there that’s not true, I’ll sue your ass off, and you can quote me on that."

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Trump-O’Reilly Stadium Tour Jul 21, 2021 19:51:09 GMT

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Post by Admin on Jul 21, 2021 19:51:09 GMT

Bill O’Reilly is attempting to once again silence Andrea Mackris, the former producer who in 2004 settled a sexual-harassment lawsuit with the then-Fox News star and earlier this month told her story in vivid detail to The Daily Beast.

Mackris was scheduled to appear Wednesday morning on ABC’s daytime talk show The View, but on Tuesday evening O’Reilly was granted a temporary restraining order against his ex-staffer, effectively canceling her TV hit in the process.

“We were notified late yesterday about a temporary restraining order issued by a court against Andrea Mackris. We decided to postpone her interview pending further developments,” an ABC spokesperson said in a statement to The Daily Beast. “We look forward to welcoming her to The View at a later date.”

Upon learning that Mackris was set to appear on The View, O’Reilly’s attorneys petitioned the New York State Supreme Court in Nassau County for a restraining order because, they argued, “Mackris intends to further materially breach her legal obligations tomorrow morning, live on national television.” Her going public with the details of O’Reilly’s alleged conduct has caused “significant irreparable harm” to the former Fox News star, the lawyers further argued. The order was granted on Tuesday evening. O’Reilly did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Bizarrely, the restraining order was not served directly on Mackris. Instead, O’Reilly’s counsel suggested The Daily Beast should forward the court documents to her—a scenario shot down by the court, which wrote that O’Reilly’s team must notify the former producer.

“I have not been served with anything, but apparently Bill O’Reilly was able to interfere with my appearance on The View,” Mackris told The Daily Beast on Wednesday morning. “I hope the days of the law allowing the silencing of women are over. I will continue to fight for my voice.”

In its petition for a restraining order, O’Reilly’s legal team baselessly suggested The Daily Beast “coached” Mackris “concerning her legal obligations.”

As part of her $9 million settlement, Mackris signed a non-disclosure agreement, effectively buying her silence for nearly two decades until she spoke with The Daily Beast earlier this month and detailed the alleged harassment—including lewd, menacing telephone calls from O’Reilly. She said earlier this month that she chose to speak in potential violation of her NDA because “I may not get the past 17 years back, but there is one way I can retrieve my power from this storm of lies, loss, greed, and grief.”

O’Reilly’s lawyers said in a statement that the court “issued an order restraining Ms. Mackris from further violations of the Settlement Agreement with Mr. O’Reilly after learning of The Daily Beast interview with Ms. Mackris and its follow up pod-cast.”

The statement went on to say that “earlier, a federal court had determined the Settlement Agreement was valid and enforceable. Ms. Mackris cannot unilaterally decide that she no longer wants to honor its terms without consequences” and added that Disney, which is ABC’s parent company, “did the right thing by cancelling Ms. Mackris’ planned appearance on The View.”

In response to Mackris claims, O’Reilly’s lawyers wrote in a letter to The Daily Beast earlier this month that “Ms. Mackris issued a public statement in 2004 in which she stated that ‘there was no wrongdoing whatsoever by Mr. O’Reilly.’”