Perhaps, you are not someone who goes to concerts much. And that’s okay. Please continue to lead a happy, blissful existence where Ticketmaster is a nice website that sells tickets to things in a convenient online format.
Perhaps, you are not someone who goes to big stadium concerts much. And that’s okay. Please continue to support awesome indie bands at small venues in your city for $50 tickets where you can stand and sway and cheer a few feet from the stage.
But if you, like me, attend several stadium concerts a year, please accept my condolences and hugs, and pull up a chair at my group therapy session.
If you have not attended a stadium concert post-COVID, you may be unaware of current stadium ticket pricing. Pre-COVID, the average price for a stadium ticket was in the $125 range, and cheap seats in the upper levels were perhaps $75 at the most.
HA. HA. HA.
These days, lower bowl tickets are often listed in the $300 range, with floor seats ranging up to $800 or even more as they come with a “VIP” package that might be a small merch pack, or early access to seating. Upper level seats might be more like $150.
That’s list price. Ticketmaster has something called “platinum pricing” which means when there’s a crush of people trying to get tickets to a show, they can arbitrarily raise the prices – two or three times the list price – to take advantage of demand.
But if you think that means people aren’t buying, you’re mistaken. The last three stadium concerts I attempted to get tickets to, I was logged into Ticketmaster the very moment tickets went on sale for the fan presale. In all three, I was more than 35000 in line. For some I was over 50000 in line.
If you do get in, and manage to grab platinum priced tickets for a small fortune, you should absolutely do that. Because the only other option (if you really want to go) is the resale market, where tickets sell for even more – easily 3 to 4 times the list price, and even more than that for floor seats close to the stage.
Plus, if you live in a side-city or small-town like I do, chances are good you are travelling to Toronto, if not NYC, for these shows, and that’ll eat up all your vacation time and travel budget for the year.
I can’t explain why there is such crazy demand for live shows now. Relatively new artists with like, two albums (like Gracie Abrams, who I am seeing in July in Toronto for an absolutely bananas amount of money) are headlining tours in huge arenas and stadiums and selling them out. Is it that we were so starved for big events during COVID that we’re making up for it now? Is it that bots are able to snap up tickets faster and easier than humans, and people are building a business by driving up ticket prices for the resale market? Is it that Ticketmaster is evil and shouldn’t have a monopoly on ticketing? (Maybe, probably, and yes.)
Mostly, I’ve gotten used to it. I have many Ticketmaster battle scars, I know how to work the resale market, I’ve prioritized concert-going over any other kind of trip.
Mostly, I just wanted anyone who still thinks it would be a “fun night” to “pop over” to a stadium to see a show by any current top artist to know that they need to brace themselves and buckle up.
It’s a ticketing hunger games out there these days. May the odds be ever in your favour.
TurtleHead 
I don’t think the audience is starved for entertainment. I think the artists are starved to get recoup lost expenses.
I think this is true, but what amazes me is that *people will pay it.* Tickets for Gracie Abrams in Toronto were more than $1000 for floor and lower bowl seats – and it sold out within minutes. That was the list price! I’m not complaining as if prices were lower, it would only lead to more scalping and more horrifying ticketing queues. But I never thought I’d see the day when $1000 a ticket was typical for a single concert.
My first concert: Styx, Grand Illusion tour at the Kitchener Memorial Auditorium. I paid $8 for a floor seat.
Every concert I’ve gone to in the last couple of years has been between $300 and $500 a ticket. (Needless to say, I haven’t seen TS.)
One thing I’ve heard that might explain this is that the price of consumer goods, especially electronics, can be driven down by the economies of scale. Even food can remain (relatively) cheap because of mass production. Live events, OTOH, by their nature, can’t capitalize on this kind of thing, and in a certain sense it’s expected that they should be more expensive than they have been as demand for bigger, flashier, more spectacular shows grows.
I think another thing to keep in mind is that it’s well-known that spending money on *experiences* contributes much more to happiness than spending it on *stuff*. So it might be expensive, yeah, but they are memories that will last a lifetime.
Still though – I paid $8 to see Styx when I was in grade 9, I think. They were already a very successful headlining act at that time. What HS kid can afford to see a concert of that caliber at today’s prices? It’s just not right that these things are out of reach to the un-privileged.
Big yes to all of this. I’m so lucky I’m able to go to concerts because I agree – experiences are where it’s at, and it’s worth it to me to spend my money there. But it’s kind of unfortunate that live concerts are now really only for the well-off.
I’m interested to see if the idea of a “residency” becomes more popular for bigger acts. It’s good for the artist (a more regular gig, able to stay in one place for a while) and good for fans (tends to be more reasonably priced, immune to platinum pricing). I already have to travel to see most of the bigger acts I’m interested in, so a residency would suit me well for bands I really want to see (bonus: I could see them like, 4 times in a week!).
I was actually chatting with friends about this a couple of days ago. Buying tickets online through TM scares me. I’m convinced that pretty much everything is bought by bots and then resold for multiple times higher than the original ticket price. I have no faith in that system at all. I’ve looked online occasionally when an artist I might want to see is in the area and I just don’t trust the system at all. I’ll stick to watching the concert movies instead I guess.