ERIC CHURCH BRINGS 2017 HOLDIN’ MY OWN TOUR TO DES MOINES

Des Moines (Friday, Sept 16, 2016) – EMI Nashville recording artist Eric Church will bring the “Holdin’ My Own Tour” to Wells Fargo Arena in Des Moines, IA on Jan 19, 2017.  Tickets go on-sale Friday, Sept 23 at 10AM at Hy-VeeTix.com or by phone at 844-55-HYVEE.

For the first time ever, there will be no support act on this tour. Eric Church and the ECB will play two full sets with an intermission in between. In an effort to ensure his core fans get great tickets at face value, Church is revamping the pre-sale and on-sale process to eliminate scalpers from the equation. 
 
“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. “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.”
  
Church secured a larger allotment of fan club tickets than in the past so Church Choir members would have a much better success buying tickets in the pre-sale.  The Church Choir pre-sale was the ONLY pre-sale. Church and his team developed a new fan club pre-sale system that allowed them to remove scalpers from the pre-sale process before it even happens. Scalpers that are found to be gaming the system and posing as real fans did not receive the buy tickets link at all. 
 
As on past tours, Church will continue to cancel any and all orders found to be made by scalpers.  New for the Holdin’ My Own Tour, 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. 
 
By doing this – investing time and energy to create a more efficient and balanced model – the Church team is not only communicating directly to the fans the best source for face value tickets, but also building a model that protects fans and can be adopted by the industry as a whole.
 
“The way this album came together mandated we release it as a surprise, straight to our fans, as it was important for me to deliver the music the same way the creativity hit me—directly and swiftly. What I didn’t anticipate is that it left me scratching my head a little as this year was supposed to be spent writing.”  Church continues, “What this year’s open schedule did afford us was time to think through the way the fans experience our music live, and it was important to us that we find a way to stick to these same principles when it came to approaching our shows, down to the way they go on sale.”
  
Church’s 2014-2015’s The Outsiders World Tour topped Billboard's Hot Tours consistently after Church set new attendance records in five markets including Chicago's Allstate Arena on March 20 with 18,626 present. Church also shattered Nashville's Bridgestone Arena attendance on January 10 with an unprecedented 18,411 fans assembled, surpassing The Blue Collar Comedy Tour’s record set on Feb. 2006. On April 7, 2015 he also broke the attendance record at Grand Forks, N.D.’s Ralph Engelstad Arena, which was previously set by Sir Elton John's 2012 show. The Outsiders World Tour saw Church performing to over 800,000 fans in more than 65 cities with nearly 20 stops from September 2014 through September of ‘15 and was named one ofRolling Stone Magazine’s Must-See Tours.
 
For further details on the ticketing system plus tour information, "These Boots by Lucchese" and Church's custom-designed Gibson Hummingbird Dark on tour, go to www.ericchurch.com.

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