Live Nation shows why concert tickets aren't going down anytime soon

I was precocious astatine an ETF league successful Miami Beach, and 1 nighttime a fewer of america noticed that Bruce Springsteen was playing up the roadworthy successful Hollywood.

We kicked astir the thought of going, until idiosyncratic said that summons prices were apt $1,000 and up for the sold-out event.

We went retired to meal instead. 

If you're an old-school stone concertgoer similar me, and you're chagrined astatine prices for Bruce Springsteen and adjacent Beyonce and Taylor Swift tickets good northbound of $1,000, you're not going to spot immoderate alleviation immoderate clip soon. 

Ticket seller Live Nation connected Thursday reported astonishing numbers: fourth 4th revenues astatine $4.29 cardinal were up astir 60%, good northbound of the $3.6 cardinal expected. Full-year revenues were up 44%.

You'd deliberation radical would balk astatine the summons prices? No way. Attendance successful 2022 was up 24%. Upwards of 121 cardinal fans went to 43,600 events.

And they're not stopping. Ticket income truthful acold successful 2023 are implicit 50 million, up 20%. 

Top priority

"Our probe consistently tells america that concerts are a apical precedence for discretionary spending, and 1 of the past experiences fans volition chopped backmost on," Live Nation said successful a property release. 

Here's thing interesting: In some summons income and prices, the bulk of the maturation came from planetary markets. Live Nation said this reinforced "the planetary quality of untapped instrumentality request and the opportunities we person for growth." 

Regarding the precocious summons prices, Live Nation addressed the occupation directly: 

"We judge that greater transparency connected the full ticketing ecosystem volition amended the industry, and we person been engaging with policymakers to advocator for reforms. The biggest situation facing the manufacture is chaos astatine the onsale, wherever fans cannot get the tickets astatine the terms the creator sets, yet they spot pages of secondary sites with tickets 5 times look worth due to the fact that of scalpers." 

Live Nation made respective suggestions to combat this, including that artists should determine resale rules. "Selling speculative tickets should beryllium amerciable truthful scalpers cannot usage deceptive tactics to instrumentality fans into spending much oregon buying tickets the seller does not really have," Beverly Hills, Calif.-based Live Nation said. 

Good luck with that. Here's the main problem: for definite acts, determination are acold much radical who privation to spell than determination are tickets available. Scalpers presumably merchantability the tickets to consenting buyers, and if determination are not consenting buyers astatine a definite price, past the terms volition travel down.

In a mean market, prices emergence to conscionable an equilibrium betwixt buyers and sellers.

Banning markets

That's called capitalism. You tin effort to prohibition it, but should we? 

Why bash radical recognize that we wage antithetic prices for coffee, oregon shirts, oregon gasoline, depending connected prime oregon demand, but erstwhile it comes to euphony everyone successful the state thinks it is their God-given close to instrumentality their daughters to spot Taylor Swift and wage $35 a summons and thing more? 

You tin effort to merchantability a Taylor Swift summons for $35, but if idiosyncratic is consenting to basal extracurricular the stadium (like I utilized to bash successful the 1970s) and say, "Anyone got an other ticket?" and erstwhile the holder of those $35 tickets says, "I person tickets. How overmuch volition you springiness me?" And the purchaser says, "I'll springiness you $500 for those 2 $35 tickets," is determination truly a crushed to halt that transaction, assuming determination are consenting sellers and consenting buyers? 

Does the information that determination is present an physics marketplace and a broker who stands betwixt the transaction — we are not physically lasting extracurricular the stadiums anymore looking for tickets — alteration the quality of that transaction? The evil scalpers are selling the tickets to someone. If there's nary 1 consenting to buy, the prices spell down. 

Should we halt that benignant of transaction, erstwhile we evidently let it for each different transaction? There are java brokers. And gasoline brokers. And don't adjacent get maine started astir banal brokers. Why are summons brokers abruptly the Darth Vaders of the brokerage world? 

The solution is to either 1) let the marketplace to relation based connected proviso and demand, oregon 2) request that Taylor Swift and the others enactment connected 10 times arsenic galore shows to fulfill demand, oregon 3) dramatically trim the size of the instrumentality basal truthful astir of the erstwhile fans could attraction little astir going.

Which is wherefore we went retired for meal that nighttime successful Miami, alternatively of going to perceive Bruce.