Imagine your favorite artist is coming to your town. It’s a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. You go to the presale, and the tickets are over $500. You start to panic and check for cheaper seats. The cheapest seats are $200, but they are so far from the stage that it will be hard to see the artist. You realize you will not be able to attend the concert of your dreams. Ticket prices should be lowered because people are unable to afford tickets, prices keep rising, and resellers buy tickets only to sell them for more money later on.
To begin, concert ticket prices are very high, making it hard for people to attend concerts. Forbes states, “‘After presale tickets for Styles’ tour went live on Monday, fans flooded social media with screenshots showing prices as high as $800 to $1,000 for lower-bowl seats. Fans expressed outrage online, with many posting on X that the prices signal the end of affordable live music, calling Styles ‘greedy’ and questioning the pricing” (Forbes). This reveals how costly ticket prices are for good seats. Additionally, simply getting to the concert can be expensive because people have to pay for train tickets, food, and possibly merchandise. The tickets, including the added costs, can be hard for many people to afford. Overall, overpriced tickets are an issue, and reducing ticket prices would make it possible for more people to attend concerts.
Furthermore, concert ticket prices have risen significantly and are continuing to escalate. According to Hypebot, “Concert tickets prices increased 80.5% since 2021 according to a new study. Since 1996, concert prices ballooned 428.7% from just $25.81 to $136.46” (Hypebot). This demonstrates how drastically concert ticket prices rose. Ticket prices are very steep these days, and it can be hard for ordinary people to pay for them. In sum, concert ticket prices should stop rising and become more affordable for everyday citizens.
In addition, over the last couple of years, resellers have been buying an extremely large number of tickets and then reselling them for double the price. In a recent article, Fox stated, “The company [Ticketmaster] said its site was overwhelmed by both fans and attacks from bots, which were posing as consumers in order to scoop up tickets and sell them on secondary sites” (Fox). This expresses the conflicts many civilians face when trying to buy tickets online. When resellers buy all of the tickets and resell them at exorbitant prices, they ruin the true concert experience for fans and make it hard for people to find reasonably priced tickets. Many consumers are outraged by this problem and believe that resellers should sell the tickets at fair prices or not buy tickets at all. However, some people argue that artists need to charge a lot of money to make a salary big enough to support themselves, but for famous artists, they make an immense amount of money each year. However, they still charge a lot of money for their concerts when they do not need the extra profit. In closing, popular music artists’ salaries are already sizeable, and they should reduce ticket prices.
All in all, concert ticket prices have become too extravagant for people to afford, prices are escalating, and resellers are buying them to make a profit; all of which display how concert ticket prices should be moderated. People are unable to attend concerts because they cannot buy tickets at their listed price, and rising prices make it harder for average citizens to afford them. Lastly, resellers have been buying tickets without the intention to go to the concerts, but to sell them at great costs to make a profit. Finally, expensive ticket prices do not just ruin the concert experience. They can ruin people’s opinions of artists and taint the idea of artists sharing what they love to do with the world because of the cost they charge to do so.
