Would you spend $362 on a nosebleed ticket for a concert? Well, if you were hoping to make it to Kendrick Lamar and SZA’s Grand National tour at Oracle Park, that’s how much you’ll have to shell out for the cheapest ticket currently reselling on SeatGeek. Tickets for this concert reach over $12,000.
These prices aren’t uncommon for big name concerts. Expecting fans to be able to spend these prices on a single ticket is upsetting. Although the person fans might want to blame most about these prices is the artist themselves, they aren’t always at fault. Ticketing platforms, scalpers, the performer themselves and a plethora of other reasons can be to blame.
Ethnic studies teacher Blaine Dzwonczyk has been attending concerts for over 10 years.
“Although it can often be expensive to go to concerts, if people are able to make that investment, it can be really meaningful, both to connect with the artists of performers that you love and also to experience it with other fans who also enjoy that music,” Dzwonczyk said.
Dywonczyk recounted how tickets have been increasingly more difficult to obtain in recent years, as well as more expensive.
“When I was in high school or college, it was pretty reasonable to get tickets for $40 or less,” Dzwonczyk said. “Now, especially for big name artists, you easily have to pay at least $200 for decent seats, and it can go up to thousands of dollars.”
So where is your ticket money going? The face value price of the ticket goes mainly to the artist and promoter. Then come the fees. The Hustle polled concert-goers on their experiences with Ticketmaster and over 99% believed the fees were too high. Recently purchased tickets were analyzed by the site and average fees took up 28% of a ticket’s value. The company hardly explained what these high fees are for.
One plus to resale tickets is that the initial fees have already been paid, although extra fees are sometimes added. Although, depending on the concert, the resale market might be infested with ticket scalpers, people that buy up large amounts of tickets and resell them to earn a profit.
The resale market has been a breeding ground for issues in recent years. In 2023 with Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour, multiple people were arrested for scamming fans, charging them for tickets they never sent.
Tickets in the resale market, like the ones in Kendrick and SZA’s concert above, can be really expensive. Although the bulk of the tickets are sold by scalpers, there are people reselling tickets who didn’t have the intent of buying them to sell for a profit yet are reselling them at scalper prices. With such high ticket prices overall, it makes sense why someone may want to resale their tickets and make a bit of money.
Although, these practices will just keep the prices high and make it even pricier for fans to get tickets. As consumers, it’s important that fans don’t try to compete with scalper prices to earn a profit. They will just be a part of the problem. It would help reduce prices overall if tickets would be resold at face value more often, and fans can be a part of this change by charging low prices for tickets they may be reselling.
For Billie Eilish’s most recent tour, she opted for Ticketmasters Face Value Exchange program, eliminating the possibility of scalpers given that all tickets had to be either resold for face value or transferred to someone else without payment. This gave Eilish the opportunity to keep ticket prices low and make her tour more accessible to people who can’t spend the prices resellers may ask. Eilish isn’t the only artist using this program.
This program isn’t uncommon internationally. In fact, in many countries it is required by law to have these programs in place. Denmark, Poland, Italy and more all have laws prohibiting ticket resale for above face value. Should the U.S. have this law, it would alleviate so much unnecessary spending on tickets. Additionally, this law in place would help make live music events so much easier to attend and it would help a wider range of people to attend these special events.
Despite all of these solutions, there’s a good chance that change isn’t coming anytime soon. Even though Ticketmaster has already been in Congress and Senate hearings three times since 1994, not much has seemed to change for the better. Tickets are increasingly harder and more expensive to get year by year. Fans are still paying high prices for tickets, selling out tours in minutes. People will complain, but everyone still wants to see their favorite artists live, no matter the cost.
The average ticket price in 2024 was $136. In 1994, the average ticket price was $25.
“People shouldn’t have to pay an arm and a leg just to go out and see a concert,” Pearl Jam’s guitarist, Stone Gossard said.
