PBS had a fund-raising show on the other night and advertised tickets for the next live concert at $400. I was aghast. But then I shouldn’t be as prices have been going up for years.
Post-pandemic prices are higher as well. The average ticket price is now $146.51 - I don’t know what they averaged, but it seems that anything “live” is expensive. People point to Ticketmaster as having a monopoly on pricing. That was most apparent during the Taylor Swift ticket release in November 2022.
The criicism is over dynamic pricing. Prices go up and down according to demand and competition. That’s how Ticketmaster works - it sets price based on demand - the more people waiting in line for tickets, the higher the prices go. So it is more about ticket prices going up rather than coming back down.
Live Nation continues to buy up venues and centralize control. Toronto’s Opera House is now under their control. That was just a few days ago. Do you want to see the list of venues that they manage the tickets to or own? It is a long, long list. Here it is on their website:
