Music Fans Are Spending Big on Concert Tickets – And Nothing Else
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Here's your money briefing for Wednesday, April 26th. I'm Danny Lewis for The Wall Street Journal, filling in for J.R. Whelan. How much would you pay to see a Taylor Swift or Beyonce concert? Live shows for big acts have always been pricey, but now some Swifties and the Beehive are paying upwards of $1,000 for one ticket on the resale market. And they're not the only stars whose fans have to shell out a lot more money to see.
These aren't people who are necessarily going into debt to go see Taylor Swift. They're just prioritizing that splurge over basically anything else for the month, especially people who don't have kids and who can sort of afford to pay it. They're just going without elsewhere.
Coming up, Rachel Wolf from the WSJ Life and Work team joins us to talk about why concert tickets are so expensive now and how some fans are stretching their budgets to afford them. That's after the break.
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The summer concert season is just around the corner.
How much have concert ticket prices risen recently and who is affected?
And if you're looking to see an A-list music act like Taylor Swift, Beyonce, or Bruce Springsteen, get your wallet ready. In the last few years, the face value for concert tickets has risen over $100 on average. And on the resale market, those same seats can go for anywhere from $250 to over $1,000, depending on the artist. Rachel Wolf from the WSJ Life and Work team joins us to explain how concert tickets became such a splurge. Rachel, why are they so expensive now?
So there are a few different things going on. Experts point to unprecedented levels of demand driving up the base price, but also the fact that there are now a lot of added fees and other costs associated with tickets that weren't there before.
So if you're a big Swifty or part of the Beehive or the BTS Army and you aren't usually able to just toss off hundreds of dollars for a ticket, what do you do?
Some people I spoke to are getting second jobs just to afford a concert ticket. But really, I was speaking to consumers who are scrimping elsewhere in order to splurge to see their favorite artists because those who aren't able to get tickets during an initial drop are forced to rely on resale and those tickets are shooting up as well.
Inflation has meant that consumers' dollars don't go as far as they used to. Why are people still willing to spend so much money on a single show?
So the people that I spoke to said that after not being able to go to concerts during the pandemic and just with everything now being so expensive, they want to decide how they're splurging. So they think that it's a valuable experience. Groceries are going to be so expensive and going to the movies is going to be so expensive. They aren't surprised that going to see a concert is now so expensive, but they would rather go see a concert than go out to eat.
Yeah, it's kind of that split brain decision making kind of thing, right?
Exactly.
So how are some fans changing their lives and spending habits in order to afford some of these tickets?
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