Bill Clinton’s north of the border speech goes south in a big way

This is embarrassing for the former President. Very embarrassing. Which is exactly why we enjoy it so damn much.

What do you do when you’ve agreed to pay Bill Clinton a small fortune to give a speech, but ticket sales are, shall we say, less vigorous than expected?

If you’re the folks who organized the former president’s Saturday speech in Toronto, you take two steps. One: you quickly reconfigure stadium seating so it looks smaller and, therefore, fuller. Two: You slash the price of the remaining tickets to an embarrassingly low $5 at the door.

Only about 7,000 tickets were pre-sold for yesterday’s speech, a drop in the proverbial bucket compared to the 25,000 tickets the organizers expected to sell.

“I’m the eternal optimist. I thought we were just going to sell like crazy at the very beginning and it looks like we’re going to sell more towards the end of this sales cycle,” spokesman David Bednar noted. “I can almost guarantee that we will not sell out.”

Tickets were originally priced at $20, $40 and $50. The good seats sold out, but thousands of the cheaper tickets are, shall we say, still available.

Clinton’s speech is scheduled to occur during Toronto’s popular Canadian National Exhibition, one of Canada’s most popular fairs.

Which gives rise to the question, “Why pay $5 to see Clinton when you can see all the other carnies out on the midway for free?”

Source: The Globe & Mail