This Ain't Your Momma's Concert Market

There are few moments in life when I can feel my heartbeat through my whole body. When I’ve just finished running my third mile, remembering that high school history presentation I fumbled, or when the pretty barista asks if I want to sub whole milk–whatever the case, none of it has compared to sitting with Ticketmaster open and the queue moving slower than straight people on the sidewalk. Anyone who has gotten concert tickets in the last handful of years will tell you the same thing: it is fucking impossible to move to checkout. We have no choice but to blame the hets for hogging the tickets, too… totally kidding.

Fighting for a seat with a good view for a reasonable price (one that won’t leave us skipping grocery runs to save money) is as close as we can get to non-deadly Hunger Games. Ticket sellers like Ticketmaster, SeatGeek, or StubHub have infected concert culture with a disease of waitlists, fan verification, and hidden fees. Concert-going wasn’t always a battle ground, so why does it feel like it takes an army to see our favorite artists?

TAKING A LOOK AT TICKET PRICING

Confession: I once spent $500 on a BTS concert ticket. Right before COVID hit the U.S. in 2020, tickets for the Map of the Soul World Tour went on sale and I was fully prepared to drop my hard earned money from dogsitting for a chance to see my favorite boy group. My mom, as she sat with Ticketmaster open and ready to hunt for two available seats, said she would never have paid this much when she was my age. And why would she? When she was my age–the 1980s—the average ticket was less than twenty bucks.

Back in the day, before the age and domination of online live ticket sales, stubs went for as low as pocket change and maxed out at what would now get you a nosebleed view. The top grossing tour in 1988, courtesy of Pink Floyd, earned a total of 27.6 million. That sounds like a lot, right? Wrong. Taylor Swift’s Era’s Tour that (recently) surpassed 1 billion. Pick your jaw up off the floor, the market economy won’t hire someone to do it for you and they definitely won’t help you pay off that credit card debt you acquired for a few nosebleed seats.

SIZING UP THE COMPETITION

Take Taylor Swift and her blowout with Ticketmaster: eager fans with their credit cards in hand waited for up to two hours or suffered website crashes. According to Variety, of the 3.5 million users that signed up for pre-sale, only 1.5 million were given the chance at tickets. Granted, not everyone is THE Taylor Swift, so sold out shows within minutes may not be a threat to everyone. But the issue isn’t necessarily fans fighting for the right spot, it’s the verification that you’re not a poser. That is to say, Ticketmaster’s fan verification that decides who moves beyond the waitlist.

In my experience, undergoing the torture of two waitlists for Swift and Olivia Rodrigo, I have been unsuccessful. The Verified Fan system is a flawed one. Artists with a huge following will come in tow with a bigger crowd grappling for the chance to see them live. The more fans with access, or attempting access, to seat selection, the more online traffic it causes. Thus, the crash. Online sales are hard to monitor to prevent the system from shutting down, so, when an artist sells out a stadium, the companies have no choice but to slow us down.

POCKETS FULL OF FEES

Since 1985, concert tickets have more than quadrupled in price. It makes you wonder what the difference is. I mean, obviously the economy and inflation and blah blah blah, but a huge chunk of the charges come from the sellers. Once you’ve made it through the queue, selected a seat (and hopefully kept it), and moved onto checkout, you get hit with the hidden fees. Almost every middleman marketer will tack on some extra charges on top of the actual ticket regardless of the price. 

The American Economic Liberties Project–hilariously a part of a group that refer to themselves the Break Up Ticket Master Coalition–found that the excess fees add up to an extra 30 percent of the original ticket price. The fees aren’t always disclosed until actual checkout and then you have to make the life or death decision of your bank account. You have a few opportunities to place your blame, but it’s almost always the ticket seller. Ticketmaster will, without a doubt, dollar and dime you based on public demand.

TO SPEND OR NOT TO SPEND THIS SEASON

With the spring and summer months approaching, so is the season of tours and music festivals. Personally, I’m mourning my hard earned money because I’m addicted to live music–but there are ways to be better than me. You could wait until the last second to snag some cheap seats, or buy them second hand through graceful resellers, or hunt down social media stans trying to get rid of the tickets they can’t keep. It’s not foolproof, and chances are you’ll have to give into the old fashioned way.

Be wary of the different sellers and don’t be afraid of buying through an artist or event’s official website–surprisingly, the Lollapalooza site was the speediest I’ve ever secured a ticket. Cross reference, I cannot stress enough how essential the different discounts are that you can scour for online (shoutout to my friend that told me too late that I could have save twenty dollars to see Faye Webster). Concert-going takes a lot of guts, but after you have your ticket you’ve already made it through the hardest part.