Ariana Grande. Harry Styles. Noah Kahan. Olivia Dean. These are just a few of the many artists whose concert ticket prices have dramatically increased within the past year, making live music a luxurious privilege that many cannot afford.
Sophomore Zara Patel finds it difficult to budget for concerts, inconvenienced by ticket resale and unreasonable face value pricing. She was especially disappointed when attempting to purchase tickets for Harry Styles’s tour later this year, eventually deciding to travel for the show.
“When I saw that Harry Styles was coming, I really wanted to go, but people were reselling for thousands of dollars,” Patel said. “My family was planning to go to Europe over the summer, so I am probably going to his Amsterdam show because tickets are so much cheaper.”
Although she managed to convince her parents to buy these specific tickets, Patel typically navigates the ticket purchasing process without her parents’ financial assistance.
“Recently, my parents have been making me pay for some of my own stuff because I have a job babysitting,” Patel said. “Concerts are one of the things I have to pay for, so it’s been really hard budgeting when they are so expensive.”
Concert sales often involve calculated tactics that disadvantage consumers like Patel. According to TSE Entertainment, the supply of tickets available and demand for tickets by the market are the two key factors in how much tickets are sold for. When sellers utilize dynamic pricing, the prices rise when demand and buzz spike.
Sophomore Maddie Johnson has tried to avoid the consequences of this strategy, turning to presale in hopes of procuring tickets to Noah Kahan’s upcoming tour.
“My mom was in the queue to get Noah Kahan tickets,” Johnson said. “When it hit 8 a.m., she got on and was in 20,000th place. She thinks that she was behind a bunch of bots buying the tickets to resell for four times the price that they were. I love going to concerts and listening to music, but [expenses] dim the excitement.”
While Johnson still hopes she will be able to attend Kahan’s show, recently, she has discovered her love for smaller shows, attending Mark Ambor’s concert earlier this year.
“It was in a really small venue, and it was all standing room, but we got to be so close to the artist,” Johnson said. “It was actually a really cool experience. You really get to see their personality and character that way.”
On the other hand, sophomore Mahathi Chadalavada’s music taste revolves around bigger artists, having been a fan of global pop star Ariana Grande since 2019. Chadalavada was eager to get tickets when Grande announced The Eternal Sunshine Tour, viewing it as a fleeting opportunity, as it is rumored to be Grande’s final tour.
“When the presale sign up was posted, I immediately signed up, but my parents were at work during the time the tickets would be sold,” Chadalavada said. “So, all the resellers got there first. The tickets were supposed to be my birthday gift, but they turned out to be a lot more expensive than we thought.”
For Chadalavada, this concert was not just a performance, but a culmination of excitement and love for Grande dating back to her childhood. She was extremely let down by the outrageous pricing, with some companies reselling tickets for more than $5,000.
“I’m a very big Ariana Grande fan, obsessed even,” Chadalavada said. “When she went on a very long hiatus in 2019, I told my mom that if she were to ever do another tour, she was definitely going to take me. Now, it just hurts that I can’t go.”
