The prices of concert tickets are experiencing an upward trend while increasing by the year. The prices go up overnight and fans claim they cannot afford them, while shows are bought in a few minutes. Tickets are expensive now, and to whom do those high prices benefit? In my opinion, there are several reasons for that.
Performing a program that can be categorically dubbed as a modern music concert is a very costly affair. It can be said that with new developments in sound and lighting equipment, high-technology special effects, large cast and crew, own stages and settings that travel internationally, and impressive costumes and rigging, the costs of production have grown over the years. It is observed that many of the current headline performers are in the $1 million plus per show club. They further extrapolate that these rising costs are recovered through ticket price increases, affecting the fans.
In terms of production costs, expenses increased, and expectations from the audience scaled up the size of touring shows too. This has translated into concerts with elaborate stage design and videos, which are not too far from what one would see at the Super Bowl half-time show. Real pop stars like Beyonce, U2, and even Taylor Swift practically bring an entire portable arena on tour. As seen in analyzing the various factors involved in modern touring production, the magnitude and the difficulty in organizing these shows require a lot of money, and this results in high ticket prices.
Since touring constitutes a significant portion of an artist’s revenue, star performers and their managers have insisted on gaining massive per-show guarantees from the concert promoters, which often fall in the seven-digit range for popular artists. These guarantees can be said to be acting primarily as the minimum guaranteed amount that an artist is entitled to earn in the course of a tour. As a result of these large payouts to the performers, promoters have to hike ticket prices to get their money back. CVs can refer to the biggest names and charge them $500k-$1 million just for making an appearance. Those guarantees end up being loaded into the cumulative total that ticket buyers are saddled with.
On simple grounds of supply and demand, basic economics will tell you that a major part of why these ticket prices are so high is because... Viewers are ready and willing to spend more money on the limited amount of places available for them to sit in. This has prompted promoters to increase ticket prices as a way of covering the costs involved and turning a profit. In the case of hot productions, the promoters could further increase the ticket prices to meet the desires of consumers. But stars also wish that they would be the ones to look out for their fans; thus, very often tickets are priced lower than the market prices would warrant. But some artists like Bruce Springsteen and U2 have set upper limits to the ticket prices on their recent tours to ensure that more of their fans will be able to enjoy better affordability. However, free or $100+ tod prices are the norm for arena shows with headliners.
This has been made possible by third-party ticket resellers, who have introduced a lot of unnecessary complexity into the live entertainment market, leading to very high prices. Ticket reselling companies and websites which operate legally include the following: StubHub, Vivid Seats, and TicketsNow among others, and the common pattern for these brokers is that they sell tickets at higher prices than the face value. Ticket scalpers use automated programs to purchase very large quantities of tickets the moment they are released on the market to sell them for a profit on the resale market. These resold tickets end up costing fans significantly more, and at times, even hundreds of percent more expensive than official pricing. It is important to note that the Artists and concert promoters do not benefit from these inflated prices in any way. But the middlemen alone are the ones who get to earn more money.
Ticket prices themselves are only one part of the story as artists and promoters determine them, and prices fans end up paying often include additional fees. Just the service fees, facility fees, and convenience fees all add up incredibly fast. For the best shows, however, the ticketing websites will make you pay membership fees of up to $50 and even more for the privilege of buying tickets before the masses. Furthermore, 'real-time dynamic pricing’ often means ‘platinum dynamic pricing’ which leads to the most desirable positions being put up for even more money. In that light, what people may consider a ‘$100 ticket’ could sometimes cost as much as $190 after fees are included.
If one thought that the basic ticket prices had gone up very high, then wait until one learns about the artists that give out VIP packages and special options that have exorbitant prices. Musicians can and do offer fans interactions such as meet and greetings, early venue access, limited edition merchandise, and other additional benefits by selling VIP packages ranging in the thousands of dollars. These expensive gestures allow dedicated enthusiasts to avoid the steepness of sitting in the upper tier while getting the red carpet treatment. It seems that now a significant part of the concert’s attendance price goes to VIP experiences, which played a role in the overall cost rise.
In summary, where concert economics once looked very different in the early days of Rock and Roll, they are now very different indeed. From stations to CO2 blasts, and insurance for concerts, to extravagant sets, to projections, to the costs of negotiating and hosting tours and big name shows, upfront show production costs are enormous and often necessitate the expensive seats just to turn a profit; the secondary ticket sellers, who have no fixed overheads and can charge whatever they want as they contribute nothing to the show; and superfans paying for the privilege of being in the seats where For a generation weaned on the coolness of attending concerts by their favorite musicians, there is now a huge dose of sticker shock in store.
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