Old school wins in Tay-Tay rush

Penrith Swifties for the win!

You know you’re getting old when you throw out your first “back in my day” to some younger work colleagues.

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Last week, in all the frantic rush to secure Taylor Swift tickets, a simpler time came rushing back to the memory bank.

It wasn’t so long ago that when you wanted to guarantee yourself tickets to an in-demand concert, or the best seats in the house, you would venture out in the dead of night for an early morning queue at your local Ticketek outlet.

If you were particularly desperate, camping out overnight was the order of the day – it was just the done thing, and there was a sense of achievement when you had those tickets in your hot little hand.

As the son of music lovers, this routine was a reasonably regular occurrence in my childhood. You’d find out about the concert in the Sunday papers, find the best Ticketek outlet and set your alarm nice and early. The modern day version of covering all your bases was sending another family member to a separate outlet, just in case.

No countless pre-sales that reward you for the type of credit card you have, not your loyalty to the artist.

No forgotten Ticketek passwords.

No pretend “queues” or “lounges”, hoping your screen refreshes to give you a chance to buy tickets.

No bots, only a handful of scalpers and certainly no VIP packages.

So there was indeed a wry smile when here in Penrith last Friday, a few dedicated Taylor Swift fans went old school and lined up at Sydney’s last remaining physical Ticketek outlet at Panthers Leagues Club.

While hundreds of thousands of others were watching the same image on their screen for hours, these fans calmly got their tickets with little drama or fuss.

Proof that in a world where technology rules, it does not always win.

I guess we can’t expect Ticketek to go back to the old days and open hundreds of physical outlets across Sydney. I mean, they don’t even have a phone number these days.

But the people missing out with the way we sell tickets these days are the legitimate, true fans of artists.

Back in the day the only way you secured some level of early access to tickets was by being a member of an official fan club, which you generally paid for.

In 2023 having an American Express card qualifies you for first shot at tickets.

Something just doesn’t sit right there.

At the end of the day, not everybody was going to be happy out of the Taylor Swift ticketing experience. The demand far exceeded the number of seats available.

But when you make scoring a ticket a completely random and illogical task, you’re going to disappoint some wrong people along the way, namely loyal fans.

Technology has robbed us of the true ticket-buying experience, but perhaps all is not lost – the Swift fiasco should be what helps govern how we do these things in the future.

It can only be artist-led, however. Ticketek and promoters are generally only interested in one thing, and you don’t need to be an expert to figure out what that is.

Momentum growing in Penrith

Last week I had the great honour of being handed the hosting duties for a special function produced by the Penrith CBD

News...........................................................1-31

Business..............................................32-37

Extra Time......................................39-50

Western Sydney International (Nancy-Bird Walton) Airport – Community Information and Feedback Sessions

The Department of Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development, Communications and the Arts has released the preliminary flight paths for the Western Sydney International (Nancy-Bird Walton) Airport and will be holding Community Information and Feedback Sessions in the Western Sydney and Blue Mountains areas over July & August 2023

More information is available at www.wsiflightpaths.gov.au

Corporation, entitled ‘Momentum Growing in Penrith’.

It was an insightful night that offered the latest news on Penrith’s growth to a room full of Penrith CBD property owners, investors and other interested parties.

One attendee, who has a huge commercial interest in Penrith but lives outside of the area, said to me afterwards that he was blown away by what’s happening in our city.

When you live here, you can often take change for granted or in some cases get a little scared of what that change means.

As we learned from last week’s function, Penrith is placed for an extraordinary few years ahead that, importantly, will result in more and more jobs being based in the area, or very close to it.

Whether it’s the soon-to-be-completed City Park, or the Orchard down by the River, or the countless new cafés and restaurants that call Penrith home, or perhaps bigger developments like the Western Sydney Airport or Nepean Business Park, Penrith really is winning at the moment.

We need to embrace it, and enjoy the benefits of the significant investment being made in our part of the world. It really is a great time to be in Penrith.

A little news from us...

Today you will notice something missing from your Western Weekender

Our Western Property magazine is no longer running in its separate, gloss format.

We really enjoyed bringing you this publication over the last nine years, and we produced 451 issues across that time.

But things change, and from today our real estate content can be found in a brand new exciting section here in the Weekender, called Home & Lifestyle

This section combines our real estate content with our expert columnists on all things lifestyle, as well as our more casual content like horoscopes and puzzles.

With everything now in the one place, there’s no doubt the Weekender is more than ever your complete weekend read.

We hope you enjoy the new section!

Entertainment...............................51-60

Western Property........................61-70

The Experts......................................71-76

Relax & Unwind...........................77-84

Sport.....................................................85-88