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.