When it comes to buying concert or event tickets, frustration over high prices is a common experience, and Ticketmaster often takes the brunt of the blame. However, the reality is more complex than it may seem. While Ticketmaster is a key player in the ticketing industry, several other factors contribute to the soaring costs of tickets, many of which are beyond their control. Here are 10 reasons why Ticketmaster may not be solely responsible for the high prices, shedding light on where the real money is going.
- Artist Pricing Decisions: Many artists or their management teams set the base price for tickets, especially for VIP packages and premium seating, aiming to maximize revenue. A LOT of decisions go into this. What similar artists are on tour at the same time? Who sold out? Who didn’t? And what was their price range?
- Demand-Driven Dynamic Pricing: Ticket prices often increase due to dynamic pricing models, which adjust based on supply and demand, a strategy used to prevent resale and scalping. Guess who decides the increase? The artist, management, and agent. Every single company in the world does this – charge too little for your product, get popular, and you have to make a decision to keep the price, or raise them and risk a lower amount of customers.
- Venue Fees: Venues often impose additional fees for maintenance, security, and operations, which are passed on to the consumer. The venue has to stay in business, and collects a fee for each ticket sold. Anyone who saw the sheer amount of venues close post-COVID knows how valuable these places are to a music fan.
- Promoter Costs: Promoters, responsible for organizing and marketing concerts, sometimes set higher prices to cover their expenses and ensure profit. They’re putting up the risk, and should be rewarded for when shows sell-out, since they often lose money when they don’t.
- Production Costs: Large tours involve significant costs for staging, lighting, sound, and logistics, which are reflected in ticket prices. If you think you’re paying too much in gas, food, and hotels, imagine what tours that bring in a staff the size of a small town are paying.
- Market Scalping and Resellers: Third-party ticket resellers and scalpers frequently inflate prices on secondary markets, making tickets appear more expensive. Artists have been recently fed up seeing their hard-earned work and pay go into a third-party scalpers hands. Maybe artists are finally realizing they might have undervalued the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to see them live, if tickets are selling for 10 times on the secondary market.
- Limited Ticket Availability: High-demand events with limited tickets naturally drive up prices, sometimes beyond what Ticketmaster or the artist intended. Fans need to stop thinking they deserve to see their favourite band when 10 million others want to see them, too.
- Local Taxes and Surcharges: Government taxes and local surcharges are added to the ticket price, contributing to the overall cost. Not much you can do about this.
- Service and Convenience Fees: While Ticketmaster charges service fees, these are common across ticketing platforms and are often used to cover operational expenses like technology and customer support. I don’t know about you, but I’d rather take my shot online, than lining up in the streets for days and nights. Fun times, but my back hurts.
- Consumer Willingness to Pay: Ultimately, fans are willing to pay premium prices for popular events, which can drive market rates higher regardless of the original price set by Ticketmaster. Notice the artist doesn’t reveal ticket prices anymore when announcing the tour like they used to?
So, the next time you’re cursing Ticketmaster for the price tag on your dream concert tickets, remember—there’s a whole orchestra of factors playing behind the scenes. From artists and promoters to production costs and scalpers, it’s a complex system that goes beyond a single player. Ticketmaster isn’t the villain here—they’re just one piece of the puzzle. And let’s be honest: if you’re willing to pay for that once-in-a-lifetime experience, the market will keep moving. At the end of the day, we all just want to be there when the lights go down.
