Seeing your favorite artists is becoming harder and harder every time they go on tour. Tickets are getting more expensive and there seems to be less of them to go around. It’s almost as if there’s only 500 tickets for 50,000 people to fight over.
By now, many people have figured out that this phenomenon is due to scalpers. A scalper is someone who buys a bunch of tickets not caring about the price and immediately puts them up on resale websites like Stubhub for double (sometimes more) than the original price. It’s making the process of buying tickets nearly unbearable and almost impossible. The scalpers are always getting their hands on the tickets and if you can get your hands on tickets the added fees are usually outrageous. However, there is always a reason why something like this happens.
Concerts are a huge part of economies for the town’s that host big artists like Taylor Swift, Beyonce, or Noah Kahan. There are thousands of people fighting for the tickets and thousands of people migrating to one place to see their favorite artist.
In an article from the Ticketmaster website called “The Truth About Ticket Prices” it states, “basic economics applies to concert tickets…so strong demand naturally leads to higher ticket pricing.”
Another part of why tickets are so expensive is because of the fact that the music you’re hearing is live. Streaming your favorite songs is easy to do but seeing them performed live comes at a price and that situation is something that Ticketmaster calls “experience economy”. Experience economy relates to the supply of goods, services, and staging of a concert.
Concerts are expensive to host on the venue’s behalf. Increasing ticket prices allows for the venue to hold the concert and still have money left in their bank account afterwards. But just how much are people willing to pay?
A survey sent out to some students at Mundelein showed a variation of how much people are willing to pay for concert tickets. That range is between 100 and 300 dollars, depending on how much they want to see their artist of choice. Price; however, isn’t the only deciding factor when it comes to buying tickets.
The same survey showed that 100 percent of the sampled students have the location of the seat as a deciding factor in whether or not they will buy the ticket. After all, if you’re going to spend a ton of money you should be able to see the person you’re paying to see.
All in all, it’s clear that concerts are becoming more and more unaffordable, but there are always reasons behind it. Concerts are a part of the economy and the economy is always fluctuating.
The survey detailed that most students only attend one to two concerts a year. The tickets may be expensive and that’s not going to change, but it’s up to you to decide whether or not you want to pay the price.
