I wanted to take my girlfriend to see a decent band next month and the cheapest tickets were like $150 each before fees. A few years ago I could catch similar shows for half that. Are venues just charging whatever they want now, or is there something else driving prices up?
Don't assume it's pure greed - there's actually a bunch of legitimate cost pressures squeezing venues and promoters right now. Inflation hit labor, insurance, and security hard over the past few years, artist guarantee fees went up as touring became more expensive post-2020, and demand for live events rebounded so sharply that venues realized they could charge more without hitting capacity problems. Ticketing platforms also take a bigger cut than they used to, and most venues pass that straight to you rather than eating it themselves.
The secondary market doesn't help either - bots and resellers grab chunks of inventory and flip them at markup, which artificially props up what "the market will bear" looks like. Honestly, $150 before fees for a decent band in 2026 isn't crazy compared to what I'm seeing, but that doesn't make it less painful on your wallet.
The venue and artist take isn't the whole story - a lot of that markup comes from resellers and secondary markets. If you're checking sites like StubHub or similar platforms, you're often paying double or triple what face value was because scalpers bought up the good seats the moment they dropped. Try going straight through the official venue box office or the artist's website when tickets first release, and you might find significantly lower prices. That said, the base prices venues set have genuinely climbed due to rising costs for everything from venue staff to insurance to sound equipment maintenance, so even the legitimate floor price is higher than it was a few years back.
Ticketmaster and the major promoters have basically locked down the market, so they can set prices knowing you don't have a ton of alternatives. But the real killer is that secondary market markup - if you're buying through resale platforms, you're often paying what scalpers or bots grabbed them for initially, plus their cut. Those sites take a pretty chunky percentage too.
The underlying costs have genuinely gone up for venues though. Staffing, security, insurance, and venue rental itself all got more expensive. Artists' asking prices went up too. So there's real pressure from multiple angles, not just someone at a desk deciding to squeeze fans for extra cash. That said, none of that fully explains why a $75 ticket in 2022 is now $150 - some of it definitely is what the market will bear at this point.
Your best bet is hunting for tickets right when they first drop on the official venue site before resellers get their hands on them. Or catch smaller venues if that band has any local shows - the economics are different there and prices tend to be way more reasonable.
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