Contrary to the popular TikTok sound “You finna’ be in the pit” you’re most likely not “finna’ be in the pit” with concert tickets skyrocketing.
Refreshing the Ticketmaster page has become a ritual for music lovers all around the world, with many music fans noticing that concert ticket prices have increased, making concerts less accessible and extremely expensive. Artists like Harry Styles, Noah Kahan, and Taylor Swift, among others, have spoken out or taken measures to make purchasing concert tickets easier for fans and harder for resellers.
“The increase of price is overall ridiculous as it makes tickets inaccessible to actual music enjoyers,” said Alexa Fiegen-Ghavimi, a sophomore in QUEST.
Mallory Smith is a Millikan RSP teacher and states, “Depending on the stadium and place that you go sometimes nosebleed tickets can be $200-$300 and if you’re trying to sit on the floor it can be around thousands of dollars especially for artists who are really popular. That’s significant because you know you’d be spending $500-$600 per ticket.”
For example, after his nearly three years away from touring Harry Styles announced a new album “Kiss All the Time. Disco, Occasionally” and for his upcoming tour this year, but the majority of fans couldn’t spend the money for the expensive tickets. According to an Instagram post by Ticketmaster and Harry Styles in regards to tickets at Madison Square Garden, originally 19% of the tickets were supposed to be under $50, 77% were going to be under $95 and 100% were under $130. Due to resellers buying multiple tickets on various accounts, prices increase a lot for concerts.
“Trying to get tickets for Harry Styles at Madison Square Garden was almost impossible for me to afford. Good seats were around $500 as well as tickets selling out incredibly fast due to resellers,” adds Fiegen-Ghavimi.
This has prompted some artists to put in measures to prevent the tickets from being too high or getting resold. For instance, Noah Kahan made non-transferable tickets for his upcoming tour to try to stop increasing prices by partnering with the selling companies themselves.
When buying tickets from ticket sellers like Ticketmaster or StubHub, they charge fees from ticket sellers which adds onto the already expensive tickets. Ticketmaster charges on average 20%-27% of face value in fees so a $100 ticket becomes around $120-$135 which is similar to StubHub’s process as well.
The process and pattern of dynamic pricing (which is where pricing will adjust based on the real time demand), causes a sale of a $90 ticket to go up to $120 or higher because of an abundance of people trying to get tickets.
In the LA area, this has started to harm the overall concert culture and its making it less accessible for concert-goers with these unrealistic prices.
