Concert tickets have become increasingly expensive over the last decade. The concept of going from a show has evolved past just seeing one of your faves perform into a fusion social media event and community interaction? But one man thinks that you’re still getting a bargain out there for wildly overpriced tickets to events. So, the Ticketmaster saga rolls on unabated and fans weighed in on these wild comments.
During CNBC and Boardroom’s Game Plan conference, Live Nation’s CEO Michael Rapino talked about the concert ticket landscape. Attendees in Los Angeles probably didn’t think they were going to hear the Ticketmaster boss slam the idea that tickets were too expensive. But, as you know reading this site we just can’t have nice things. Here’s what Rapino had to say about the prestige that comes along with buying a ticket to an event.
“Music has been underappreciated,” Rapino argued. “In sports, I joke it’s like a badge of honor to spend 70 grand for a Knicks courtside [seat]. They beat me up if we charge $800 for Beyoncé.”
“We have a lot of runway left,” he added. “So when you read about ticket prices going up, the average concert price is still $72. Try going to a Laker game for that, and there’s 80 of them. The concert is underpriced and has been for a long time.”
Apologies to my Knicks fangirls reading this article right now. But for a large part of the last 20 years, they should have been paying you to watch Eddy Curry and Chris Duhon light it up in Madison Square Garden. (Calm down my Knickstape sisters, the team is mad enjoyable now, but that was still a wild thing to say in front of a microphone!)
Ticketmaster is wilding right now
Over the course of the last few years music fans, sports fans, and even comedy fans have taken aim at Ticketmaster for the exorbitant pricing model that we all live under right now. A functioning form of government would have stopped some of this price gouging years ago. But, they’ve had their hands full with other stuff… I guess? We hope???
Just this week, Ticketmaster announced that they’d be giving fans more advanced information about ticket prices. One of many controversies kicked off when the Oasis reunion tour had a tiered pricing system. All sorts of people were displeased to learn of this pricing structure while they got into online queues for the massively anticipated tour.
The BBC reports that the Competition and Markets Authority confirmed that Ticketmaster “may have misled Oasis fans” with their pricing methods in 2024. Standard price Oasis tickets were going for two and a half times what the standard price was. And, to boot you didn’t really get anything extra for all that money you were selling out.
Jack Antonoff is all of us somehow?
The Ticketmaster CEO’s comments managed to reach further than maybe he ever expected. Super producer Jack Antonoff, you know the man who played a small part in “this,” Sounded pretty disgusted by the comments. On social media he had to share his opinion about concert tickets being “underpriced.”
Unfortunately for these businesses, Antonoff is not alone. On social media, other less prolific posters were making their opinions about Ticketmasters whole operation felt. Concert tours have reserved in a way that seemed implausible a couple of decades ago.
With that increased profile, the need to keep fans feeling good about going to concerts should be paramount. Unfortunately these big brokers have done little in the way to make you feel good about shelling out hundreds of dollars to see your favorite artists in a massive stadium.
“Fans who spend their hard-earned money to see artists they love deserve to see clear, accurate information, upfront,” CMA chief executive Sarah Cardell told the BBC. “If Ticketmaster fails to deliver on these changes, we won’t hesitate to take further action.”
Let’s hope someone can enforce some of this common-sense policy in the future.
(Photo Credit: CNBC Getty & CBS )
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