Uzbeks who want to see Sting play in Tashkent later this month will have to pay $1,000 to $2,000 for a ticket, according to a report on the EurasiaNet website, which in turn cites a CA-news.org report.
The brief says the cheapest ticket “will cost more than 45 times the average monthly salary in Uzbekistan.”
So ordinary Uzbeks won’t get to see Sting. (I know some people who would say, “Lucky ordinary Uzbeks.”) But come on, it’s crazy enough to spend $100, as I have, to go to a concert in the West. One thousand dollars to see Sting in Tashkent? This show clearly isn’t meant for ordinary Uzbeks.
To be sure, there are worse problems to be solved in Tashkent, and I don’t know exactly how those ticket prices came to be set. But this kind of tarnishes whatever reputation Sting had for having a social conscience, no?