It cost $1.50 in advance to see Elvis Presley in 1956; $5.90 to see the Beatles in 1964; $17 to see Nirvana in 1993 (and Kurt Cobain was shocked that artists would charge $50 at the time).
Even adjusted for inflation, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI inflation calculator, the 2025 prices to see those musical legends would be $17.86 for Elvis, $60.93 for the Beatles and $38.04 for Nirvana — prices nowhere near the wallet-busting sums today’s stars’ shows command.
According to industry group Pollstar, the top 100 tours of 2024 generated $9.5 billion worldwide. Since 2021, live performance ticket prices have increased by 20%. Economists call this phenomenon “inflation.”
But despite astronomical price tags, music fans remain undeterred: Billboard reported that Beyoncé’s Cowboy Carter Tour is 94% sold out, despite tickets selling for $150 and up. In 2023, the average resale ticket to pop megastar Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour cost $1,088.
“Fan demand for live music is stronger than ever — even after a record-breaking year in 2024, ticket sales in 2025 are pacing ahead,” worldwide entertainment promoter Live Nation said in a statement. “As of mid-February, Live Nation had already sold 65 million tickets, up double digits from the same time last year. Fans value experiences and the irreplaceable memories that only live music can create.”
Live Nation also said that this year, U.S. stadium and arena tours are selling through more than 75% in the first week on sale at a higher rate than last year.
The company declined to grant an interview for this story or attribute its statement to a specific person.
General economic inflation makes touring more expensive, contributing to the higher cost of concerts. However, other factors include increased demand, the quirks of an internet-based resale market and dynamic pricing implemented by ticket sellers.
The high cost of touring
So who is to blame for the high cost of concerts? From artists and their management and agencies to promoters and marketplaces to individual resellers, the economics of live shows are complicated.
Ticket sales giant Ticketmaster lays it out on its website: “When it comes to standard tickets: artists, promoters, sports leagues, or teams decide how they want to sell their tickets on Ticketmaster’s marketplace. That includes setting the face value prices, determining how many tickets to sell, and when to put them on sale.”
Ticketmaster representatives did not respond to requests for comment on this story.
Longtime Pittsburgh concert producer and current Point Park University professor Ed Traversari agreed that artists and their management — especially popular artists — have a big hand in setting prices, with promoters also playing a role.
With rising production costs, this shouldn’t be a surprise, he said. The profit margins on touring are notoriously slim and becoming more so.
“It’s really based on the expenses for the show,” Traversari said.
This also means, Traversari pointed out, that if you’re looking beyond stadium shows and pop stars, the prices drop precipitously.
“When you go to see a band in a club, you can still pay a pretty low ticket price because the cost it takes to produce a show in a club is very, very minimal,” he said.
“Live music offers a variety of price points — 65% of primary tickets in the U.S. are under $100, and less than 2% are over $500,” Live Nation said.
They also noted that, for the largest tours, prices vary widely throughout the venue — for example, Swift’s Eras Tour tickets started at $49 for face value. Live Nation said that having higher prices for seats near the front of the venue often allows tours to lower prices for other sections.
Costs incurred by tours include advertising, personnel and materials. And that’s setting aside revenue for the act themselves.
“Where you ultimately pay your highest prices are in the largest venues, because that’s where the bands are getting the most money.”
Another motivator for artists is their dwindling ability to make money from other income sources, especially record sales. With the rise of services such as Spotify and Apple Music, fewer consumers are purchasing physical media and are streaming their favorite music instead — and the artists’ cut from streaming is minuscule. Last year, rapper Snoop Dogg claimed that he earned about $45,000 from a billion streams on Spotify.
Rich Engler, a concert promoter partner in longtime Pittsburgh-area concert promotion company DiCesare Engler Productions, said that promoters have a lot of say in setting prices. He also pointed out that artist guarantees are a big part of cost hikes. He blames promoters who are willing to go over the top to pay any artist guarantee so that they can corner the market on certain tours.
“Whatever it takes for them to get that so-called tour, that also is the barometer for how much the ticket prices are going to be,” Engler said.
Guarantees are the minimum amount of money an artist will be paid by promoters for a show, regardless of how well tickets sell. This incentivizes promoters to raise prices so that they can still make money or, at least, break even.
“When I say the promoter sets the ticket prices, that’s true, but it’s also based on the artist tour guarantee or per-show guarantee,” Engler said.
More than face value
Engler also decried the surcharges that services such as Ticketmaster charge on top of the face-value ticket price. “It is sick. I don’t know how anyone can get their arms around charging this.”
Ticketmaster — which merged with Live Nation in 2010 — charges an average of about 30% of ticket prices in fees. A Ticketmaster blog post from February 2024 states, “Service charges are added to the face value of concert tickets because two important players in the concert ecosystem – venues and primary ticketing companies – get little or nothing out of the revenues derived from the ticket’s face value. That money goes mostly to the performers, secondarily to cover certain show costs, and if anything is left over to the promoters.”
In certain states — Pennsylvania is not one — Ticketmaster is required to advertise “all-in” prices, which shows customers a full price, including fees, when they are weighing their options before purchase on the website. The ticketing platform has also met with several lawsuits about how “deceptive” the fees are, the most recent of which was filed last week in California.
Engler also referred to a concept called dynamic pricing, which allows online ticketing marketplaces to adjust prices in real-time based on supply and demand. The practice is controversial, even among artists — Robert Smith of rock band The Cure called it “a greedy scam” and Neil Young has publicly rejected dynamic pricing for his upcoming tour.
All of these factors can make it challenging for fans to plan a budget ahead of buying tickets, and with a few frenzied moments online to select seats for super-popular shows, many overspend without thinking.
Engler didn’t mince words. “It’s disgusting,” he said.
Going beyond those direct sales, there is also the ever-expanding resale market to contend with. Adam Budelli, a spokesperson from ticket resale marketplace StubHub, said that the company has been facilitating sellers for almost 25 years.
“We’re the leading marketplace for fans to buy and sell tickets, and we’re selling tickets for tens of millions of events worldwide. Over each year, we are certainly seeing a lot of growth,” he said.
Budelli said that StubHub’s ticket prices are determined by the individual sellers and what they’re able to charge.
“Prices do fluctuate all the time based on the free market supply and demand,” he said.
While markets including StubHub, SeatGeek and Ticketmaster’s own verified resale make the news for the exorbitant prices of big-name show tickets, Budelli said that smaller shows still get plenty of love.
“Eighty percent of tickets sold in 2024 for concerts were actually under $100 on StubHub,” he said.
He added that over 40% of tickets sold on StubHub in the United States in 2024 were under $50.
“I think that shows a lot of great opportunity for fans out there that may be scared away and not think there’s an opportunity. There are so many events out there,” he said.
He said that — factoring in bigger artists — the average ticket price in 2024 was $213 on StubHub, down from $240 in 2023.
But concerns about the resale market for bigger tours are often rooted in the practice of resellers using bots to purchase scads of face-value tickets as soon as they go on sale and then resell them for massively marked-up prices. This can keep ordinary fans from accessing tickets at the prices that artists and promoters set, and it can skew the market massively.
Even though the practice has been illegal in the United States since 2016 — and artists, ticket marketplaces and promoters have put preventative measures into place — bots still commonly disrupt the ticket-buying process for real fans.
In the United Kingdom last year, the mini-tour of reunited rockers Oasis caused chaos during ticket presales when bots bought up seats despite measures put into place by Live Nation and the band. Tickets that started at $100 face value quickly showed up on resale sites at octuple the price. Oasis insisted on provisions that would prevent resellers from using third-party sites to resell tickets above their original price — but in February of this year, legitimate fans were caught in the crosshairs when Ticketmaster accused them of being bots and revoked their tickets.
StubHub supported a bill that passed in the Michigan State House of Representatives last year that would levy large fines against resellers using bots to snap up tickets for entertainment events held in the state.
‘Pretty soon, people are going to stop going out’
Concertgoers are certainly feeling the squeeze. Several music fans said that extra costs on top of ticket prices discourage them even more.
Gyna Handlow of New Kensington goes to a moderate amount of concerts, including the Experience Hendrix Tour on March 13 at the Palace Theatre in Greensburg (tickets for this tour begin at $30 face value and top out at over $100) and the Red Hot Chili Peppers at the Pavilion at Star Lake last summer (one screenshot from social media site X showed dynamic-priced tickets at more than $1,100; closer to the concert date, resale tickets were available for less than $100).
“The prices are crazy,” she said.
She goes to a lot of smaller venues and factors in parking costs when deciding to go to a show.
“In Pittsburgh, parking is crazy,” she said.
Amy Williams of Somerset County goes to a couple of concerts a year; she was at Jeff Lynne’s ELO last September at PPG Paints Arena — where pre-fee tickets started at $47 — and also attends shows of local artists.
She has decided not to go to concerts recently because of the prohibitive cost, including the price of other expenses like travel.
Tina Kasardo, of Elizabeth. said, “My sister wanted to buy tickets for us lately. I live 45 minutes from here, and we can’t afford to go to concerts anymore.”
She also noted the eye-popping prices of concessions like beer and pizza at venues, making a night out with friends an even more dubious proposition.
“Pretty soon people are going to stop going out,” she said.
Christine Firek of Bethel Park used to attend more shows before becoming a parent. Most recently, she’s attended Dave Matthews Band at PPG Paints Arena, but she’s definitely feeling the heat of prices. Week-of tickets for DMB started at $71.
“They increased a lot, like fast,” she said.
Especially with planning around kids, she factors in other costs ahead of time. “Do we have to drive ahead of time? Do we have to get a hotel? Do we have to pay to park?”
Alicia Long of Canonsburg attended her last few concerts because she received concert tickets as gifts. She has pumped the brakes on going to a few shows because of expense.
“A lot of the big-name concerts like Rod Stewart and Billy Joel, I mean, astronomical,” she said.
Tickets for their July 5 Acrisure Stadium show started at $59 at face value when they went on sale in December, but as of this article’s writing, no tickets below $99 were available on Ticketmaster’s website. StubHub had single tickets for $75 and as high as $465 right in front of the center of the stage.
“You have to take out a loan to go to some of these events,” Engler said. “That was never my theory. My theory was that we have great music, let’s share it with the world. The more concerts we could do, that was my goal. To do as many concerts that have people see what’s out there and enjoy the music.”
Alexis Papalia is a TribLive staff writer. She can be reached at apapalia@triblive.com.
