- 5 weeks ago
Seeing your favorite artist onstage has never been more expensive. In the 1960s, a ticket to see The Beatles could cost around $5. In 2024, the average concert ticket in the US was nearly $136. And on the resale market, prices can jump to almost double that, with some Taylor Swift fans paying thousands of dollars for a single seat.
Business Insider spoke with individuals across the live music ecosystem — including Live Nation and Ticketmaster, resale sites like StubHub, musicians, lawyers, government officials, music journalists, and fans — to unravel why concert tickets have become so expensive and why many people believe the system is rigged against ordinary fans.
Business Insider spoke with individuals across the live music ecosystem — including Live Nation and Ticketmaster, resale sites like StubHub, musicians, lawyers, government officials, music journalists, and fans — to unravel why concert tickets have become so expensive and why many people believe the system is rigged against ordinary fans.
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00:00For decades, fans have gotten very emotional about seeing their favorite artists.
00:10But today, it's harder than ever to see live music.
00:20In 2024, Taylor Swift fans paid $204 on average for tickets to her Eros tour.
00:26The average resale price for the tour was $3,800.
00:32The most that we've paid for tickets are $8,000.
00:36Wow.
00:37That's more than $2,800 U.S. dollars per ticket.
00:4160 years ago, when the Beatles played the first major stadium concert in history,
00:46the most expensive ticket sold for $5.65.
00:51That's about $58 today.
00:53So, who's to blame?
01:00A lot of people point the finger at Live Nation Entertainment.
01:04The company that owns Ticketmaster, manages artists, promotes tours, and owns and operates a lot of venues.
01:13Live Nation blames the resale market for the industry's problems.
01:16These runaway resale markets that are run by and for broker interests.
01:22Resale companies like StubHub throw the blame right back at Live Nation.
01:26Any company that's being investigated by the Department of Justice and 40 attorneys general from blue and red states alike,
01:35if I were them, I would be trying to deflect as well.
01:38Some musicians call out both resellers and Live Nation Entertainment for driving up ticket prices.
01:45But Live Nation points out that it's the artists, not them, setting the price.
01:50It's sort of like a Jenga tower where you start to pull out one block and the whole tower starts to shake and stakeholders start getting mad at you.
01:58We spoke to musicians, a music journalist, lawyers, government officials, Live Nation, StubHub, and customers.
02:07And everyone says it's someone else's fault.
02:10All while the fans pay more and more.
02:14It isn't easy to untangle why concert tickets have become so expensive.
02:19We investigated every angle to find the real reasons it costs so much to see your favorite artists on stage.
02:28Concert ticket prices have soared about four times faster than the rate of inflation for nearly 30 years.
02:44But rewind to the 1960s, concerts were practically pocket change.
02:50I mean, one of the most iconic events was the Beatles at Shea Stadium.
02:56That cost $5.
02:57We found Rolling Stones tickets for $4.75 in 1965 and Bruce Springsteen tickets for $1,750 in 1985.
03:07To be fair, concerts today are much more elaborate than those early stadium tours.
03:13As for the artists, touring just wasn't seen as a main source of income.
03:18Artists, for the most part, viewed live performance as marketing.
03:22They were making most of their money from recordings.
03:26So they'd go out on a tour to help support that particular album.
03:35This all changed with the internet.
03:39The rise of peer-to-peer file-sharing platforms like Napster allowed users to download recorded music for free.
03:46Consumers suddenly realize that they don't need to go to their local tower records or strawberries.
03:54As a direct result, revenues that are generated by artists drop rather precipitously.
04:01From 1999 to 2009, sales of recorded music in the U.S. were cut in half.
04:09Meanwhile, revenue from concert ticket sales in North America tripled over the same decade.
04:14While legally downloading music and streaming are often credited as saving the music industry,
04:21the massive loss in record sales revenue fundamentally reshaped the landscape.
04:27David Bowie saw it coming as early as 2002.
04:31You'd better be prepared for doing a lot of touring,
04:33because that's really the only unique situation that's going to be left.
04:38By 2010, top artists were making the majority of their income from touring.
04:42So how much do artists actually make from ticket sales?
04:50Deals can vary between artists and touring teams, but in a typical arrangement,
04:54artists receive an advanced payment or a percentage of total ticket sales.
04:58Say the total ticket price is $140, which was around the average ticket price in 2024.
05:05Roughly $102 of that is the ticket's face value.
05:08The remaining $38 goes towards taxes and ticketing fees.
05:12Before anyone gets paid, around 30% of the face value, or about $30,
05:17covers the production costs of the venue and the promoter.
05:21That leaves roughly $72 to split between the artist and the promoter, such as Live Nation.
05:26In many cases, the artist takes home about 70% to 85% of what's left, let's say $60 in this case,
05:33while the promoter keeps the rest, or $12 in this scenario.
05:38But once the artist pays for their touring expenses, crew, and management,
05:43their real profit per ticket can drop to $30 or less.
05:47And that's before adding ticketing fees, which can tack on another 25% to 30%.
05:53Most of those fees go to the venue, and a smaller share goes to the ticketer,
05:58around 5% to 10% of the total price, or about $6 in this case.
06:03Ticket prices weren't always divvied up this way.
06:06To understand why most players blame Live Nation Entertainment for steep prices,
06:11we have to go back to when it was two separate companies, Ticketmaster and Live Nation.
06:22Consumers didn't always pay sky-high ticket fees.
06:25In the 70s, fans paid smaller ones, since venues and promoters also covered the cost.
06:31That all changed in 1982, when Fred Rosen stepped in as Ticketmaster's CEO.
06:37He offered to pay venues if they used Ticketmaster instead of its competitors like Ticketron.
06:43He goes to the venues and he says to them,
06:45what if instead of that, you made money?
06:48What if we raised service fees from $0.50 to $1.50,
06:55and then instead of it being a cost center, ticketing would be a profit center?
07:00And all of a sudden, this revolutionized just the very idea,
07:04the concept of what service fees could be.
07:08Venue after venue signed contracts,
07:10making Ticketmaster their exclusive ticketing platform.
07:15By 1995, Ticketmaster owned about 80% of the ticketing market
07:20and had acquired its competitors, including Ticketron.
07:25Not everyone was on board with Ticketmaster's growing dominance.
07:28In 1994, Pearl Jam filed an antitrust complaint with the Department of Justice,
07:34alleging that Ticketmaster had an illegal monopoly on ticketing.
07:38The following year, the DOJ closed the investigation without action.
07:47Around the time Ticketmaster gained dominance, Live Nation was just getting started under the name
07:53SFX Entertainment, founded by Robert Sillerman.
07:56Robert Sillerman has the idea that he's going to purchase these local promoters,
08:03make them part of one big national company, and then it would be much easier from his perspective
08:12to route artists across the U.S. and also make money on the sponsorship side.
08:19The acquisitions continued to grow from there.
08:22In 2000, Sillerman sold SFX to radio station owner Clear Channel Communications,
08:27which strengthened its foothold in not only live events and concert promotion,
08:32but also venue operations.
08:34Following a series of antitrust investigations by the DOJ,
08:38Clear Channel announced it would spin off Live Nation solely as a music promotion business.
08:43By 2008, Live Nation was the largest concert promoter in the world,
08:49controlling about 90% of major amphitheaters in the United States.
08:54Then in 2009, Live Nation and Ticketmaster announced their plans to officially merge.
09:00The possibility of a merger sparked widespread backlash.
09:04Senator Chuck Schumer criticized the deal, saying it would create
09:07unrivaled power over concertgoers and the prices they pay.
09:12On Wall Street, stock prices for both companies dipped.
09:16And in a letter to his fans, Bruce Springsteen suggested that the merger would
09:20return us to a near-monopoly situation in music ticketing.
09:25In 2010, the Department of Justice approved the merger,
09:29which created Live Nation Entertainment.
09:37After the merger, Live Nation Entertainment just kept growing.
09:44Fast forward to 2025, and the company had expanded into artist management,
09:50music festivals, sponsorships, and the resale market.
09:5415 years since the merger, the cost of concert tickets in the United States has continued to rise.
10:01Average ticket prices have climbed by as much as 120% since 2010.
10:07And particularly surged post-pandemic.
10:10It isn't just the face value price of tickets that's frustrating fans.
10:14It's also the numerous fees.
10:17A 2018 report from the Government Accountability Office
10:20found that fees averaged 27% of the ticket's price before resale.
10:29We saw this frustration first-hand, while speaking with fans outside J-Hope's concert.
10:37The fees are too much.
10:38Me and all my homies hate f***ing tickets.
10:40Oh, and one thing, what the f*** are $150 fees?
10:44I'm sorry.
10:45Fees are ridiculous.
10:46Fees are...
10:47Y'all deserve jail time.
10:48Jail time.
10:49In conclusion, jail time.
10:51We also saw for ourselves how fees change in real time.
10:56We filmed our colleague AC's attempts to buy tickets to Beyoncé's Cowboy Carter tour in early 2025.
11:02There has to be somewhere with two tickets left.
11:06Please, no.
11:07Okay, here's what I'm going to do.
11:10I'm going to get two tickets that are in the same section that are $3.89 a piece.
11:17And then I'm just going to see on the day of if people will move.
11:21Let us sit next to each other.
11:23Order.
11:24Let's see if that worked.
11:28Oh wait, I only got one ticket.
11:29I thought I got two.
11:31I thought I got two.
11:33I only got one ticket.
11:36What am I doing?
11:37What am I thinking?
11:37What am I...
11:38Oh, this was really bad.
11:39This was bad all around.
11:41Okay, to conclude, this was a mess.
11:42I got a really bad placement in line.
11:46I was overwhelmed.
11:48I thought I was getting two different tickets.
11:49I only got one ticket for $3.89.
11:55The service fee was 70 bucks.
11:57Plus a processing fee of $5, so I paid $4.64 for one ticket.
12:02Well, I don't know what to do.
12:06I guess that's it.
12:08No artist is immune to rising frustration from fans.
12:12In 2022, Live Nation Entertainment faced backlash from one of the fiercest fan bases in the world.
12:19Swifties.
12:19When tickets went on sale for Taylor Swift's Eras Tour in November that year,
12:33Ticketmaster crashed under the weight of about 14 million people trying to score tickets.
12:38And fans were upset.
12:50Even Taylor Swift spoke out.
12:52In a statement on Instagram, she called the ticketing chaos excruciating to watch,
12:57but didn't name Ticketmaster directly.
13:02In December 2022, Taylor Swift fans sued Live Nation Entertainment over the debacle.
13:07We have filed almost a thousand cases against Ticketmaster, maybe more.
13:12This is Jennifer Kinder, a lawyer who, along with John Genga,
13:16represents the 355 Swifties suing Live Nation Ticketmaster.
13:23We're also adding what's called a RICO violation.
13:25Since they control every aspect of the ticket purchasing experience and the live entertainment industry,
13:35that's where you get into not just monopolistic behavior, but racketeering behavior.
13:41The lawsuit is still ongoing, but no matter how this case pans out, the fan's anger led to more
13:48scrutiny from Capitol Hill, culminating in a Senate hearing and an even bigger ongoing lawsuit against
13:55Live Nation Entertainment.
13:58In May 2024, the U.S. Department of Justice filed an antitrust lawsuit to break up the company.
14:05While monopolies aren't inherently illegal in the U.S., the Department of Justice alleges that Live Nation
14:11uses its dominance to intentionally stifle competition.
14:16So what we do in the monopolization complaint is really explain all of the ways that Ticketmaster
14:24and Live Nation are this dominant intermediary that artists, venues and fans cannot escape.
14:32That's Doha Meki, who helped launch the DOJ case.
14:36Since we spoke with Doha in late 2024, she's left her position at the DOJ.
14:41The lawsuit is still moving forward, with a trial scheduled for March 2026.
14:47The DOJ claims Live Nation Entertainment's flywheel business model enables the company to engage in
14:53anti-competitive practices.
14:56It extracts service fees and revenue from fans.
15:01It is often a default ticketer at the venues where artists want to play.
15:07It owns 60 of the 100 largest amphitheaters.
15:11It has acquired promoters.
15:13It signs up artists through its Live Nation promotion business.
15:18And what we allege in the complaint is that this flywheel is really mutually reinforcing.
15:24You can't compete, you can't enter, and you can't escape Live Nation's flywheel.
15:30Those allegedly anti-competitive tactics include locking venues into long-term exclusive contracts
15:36to limit competition from rival ticketers, and restricting artists' access to venues,
15:41unless they agree to use Live Nation as their promoter.
15:48Live Nation executive Dan Wall has an entirely different take on the DOJ lawsuit.
15:53Any allegation that our business practices are explaining these ticket prices is just cynical and untrue.
16:03If you take that $100 ticket, face value ticket, remember the promoter's going to
16:08make maybe $2 out of that.
16:11And then when you look over to the fee side, people always make the assumption that those fees are Ticketmaster fees or whatever the primary ticketing company is.
16:22They're really not.
16:23If you've got a $30 fee on top of that, then the ticketing company is going to get $4 or $5.
16:30But the DOJ lawsuit claims that by acting as both the ticketer and the promoter, Live Nation can double dip and inflate fees and revenue, all at the expense of fans.
16:43Although ticketing may earn Live Nation just $4 to $5 for every $100 spent on tickets, the company's 2024 financial results reveal that it's actually the most profitable arm of the business based on adjusted operating income.
17:00Live Nation CEO Michael Rapinoe said so himself in a 2018 earnings call.
17:07If we get 98 million, 90 million customers in our flywheel on a positive basis, we can sell them more food, we can sell them more sponsors, we can sell them more ticketing services.
17:17All higher margin businesses than the low margin flywheel.
17:20When it comes to the DOJ's allegations of anti-competitive practices, Dan points out that it's industry standard for venues to have exclusive deals with promoters and claims that competitors are doing the same thing.
17:33The ticketing market evolved in a way that ticketing contracts are granted by venues on an exclusive basis.
17:45So AEG was our biggest competitor, also is a very major owner and operator of venues.
17:53They have lots of venues and our policies are pretty much exactly the same.
17:59Sometimes we let our rivals in, sometimes we don't.
18:02But the two aren't exactly created equal.
18:07Live Nation controls a dominant share of the U.S. concert promotion and venue operations market, far outpacing AEG.
18:15So today the industry is at a standstill.
18:19And everyone is pointing the finger in a different direction.
18:22Live Nation Entertainment says high prices reflect demand.
18:33And ultimately, it's artists who set the base price for tickets, not them.
18:37And while the band we spoke to agrees that artists set these base prices, they point the finger right back at Live Nation for high ticket fees and controlling the industry.
18:53In January 2023, following the Taylor Swift lawsuit, musician Clyde Lawrence, of the band Lawrence, appeared at the U.S. Capitol to testify in a Senate hearing.
19:06Clyde shared that Live Nation often assumes the roles of promoter, ticketer and venue operators simultaneously, a claim echoed in the DOJ antitrust case.
19:15If they want to charge us $250 for a stack of 10 clean towels, they can and have.
19:24In their song, False Alarms, Lawrence even included the lyric, fame's overrated, Live Nation's a monopoly.
19:31Beyond the lyrics, band members were a bit more cautious when we caught up with them in their studio, saying that Live Nation isn't solely to blame.
19:39There is a lot of consolidation and part of working with Live Nation does mean that you are going to work with Ticketmaster and part of working with AEG means that you are going to work with AXS or AXS.
19:51When we're ragging on Live Nation, in a lot of ways, it's because they are the biggest company and so they have the power to set industry standards.
20:00And that's a really powerful position to be in.
20:03While Lawrence says companies like Live Nation Entertainment carry a lot of the blame, the band joins Live Nation in calling out another key player, the resale market.
20:14I think one piece of ticketing that artists don't have any say in is the secondhand ticketing market.
20:20In 2024, more than 250 musicians, including Billie Eilish, Lorde and Fall Out Boy, signed a letter urging lawmakers to help reform the broken system of predatory resellers and secondary platforms.
20:39And there's data to back them up.
20:41This chart made by the Government Accountability Office in 2018 lists three studies that found that resale prices could range from about 15% to 112% more than the face value price.
20:55And a 2023 NITO study of 65 concerts found that resale tickets averaged nearly double the original ticket price.
21:04We talked to StubHub, the first online resale ticketing site.
21:08In 2024, on average, 80% of our tickets were under $100.
21:15So I know that, like, these Taylor Swifts, they get a lot of headlines, but they're actually not illustrative of the real experience on the platform.
21:22Those numbers are based on StubHub's internal data, which they did not share with us.
21:28And like Live Nation, StubHub says they're not responsible for setting the ticket price.
21:33We make suggestions to them, hey, your ticket's not selling, you might consider lowering them.
21:37So it's really up to the salary.
21:38We have no role in setting those prices.
21:41So it's really where the market is.
21:43But that doesn't address the issues of fees, which are where StubHub makes its money.
21:48The same 2018 study from the Government Accountability Office found that resale platforms often charge higher fees, about 31% of the ticket price on average, compared to 27% on primary sales.
22:01So the secondary marketplace, the resale marketplace, is enormously responsible for the inaccessibility that exists with live entertainment in this country.
22:13That's Senator James Skoufis.
22:15He's been working on live event ticketing reforms and regulations in New York.
22:19And unlike primary ticketers, resellers like StubHub charge fees for both the buyer and the seller, allowing them to profit more from a ticket than the artists themselves.
22:32So why do you think StubHub deserves more profit, Sheryl, let's say, people that are directly involved in the event themselves?
22:39I don't. I don't think that StubHub deserves more profit than the artists and the teams who are creating, you know, the show and the event.
22:49We want to work directly with artists and teams.
22:52StubHub and resale sites have also been sued in 2024.
22:56The D.C. Attorney General accused StubHub of deceptive drip pricing and junk fees, which are fees that are hidden until the end of the checkout process.
23:05The D.C. case is still pending.
23:09Meanwhile, the FTC finalized its junk fees rule for live event tickets, effective May 12, 2025.
23:17StubHub told Business Insider that the company is in compliance with the 2025 rule.
23:22Ultimately, StubHub brings the blame back to Live Nation.
23:26They're under investigation.
23:29They have to point the finger at something else.
23:31When they talk about pointing the finger at resale, do they mention that they're also in the business?
23:36Alex points out that Live Nation Entertainment also participates in the resale market, something singer Olivia Dean took issue with in November 2025.
23:46The criticism led Ticketmaster and Axis to agree to refund anyone who paid more than face value, as well as cap future resale ticket prices.
23:55And in the U.K., the government announced in November 2025 that it would ban the reselling of tickets at a price above their original cost.
24:05In public statements, Live Nation Entertainment distanced itself from other resellers.
24:09Speaking of Ticketmaster's resale program, in 2025, the FTC sued Live Nation Entertainment for allegedly allowing bots to bypass security measures while profiting from the additional fees and inflated markups.
24:25Live Nation denies the FTC's claims, but say it's rolling out changes to its resale service.
24:31Even with those changes, artists take issue with the secondary market, because they don't profit from inflated resale prices.
24:42To combat this, Ticketmaster introduced dynamic pricing back in 2011.
24:49Essentially, artists can increase ticket prices in real time when the demand is high and reap the benefits.
24:54Dynamic pricing has made headlines for pushing up the price of tickets, angering some artists, while others faced criticism from fans for using it.
25:05How does it make you feel that people are paying, like, up to $500 for this show?
25:10Angry, upset.
25:11We're not about that, to be honest.
25:12I'm not about dynamic pricing.
25:14Hell no.
25:15That's my, that's my understanding.
25:16They need to stop with this dynamic pricing that normal people can't afford, and only the Nepo babies and the bots can buy.
25:22Because how, who's buying a $500 ticket?
25:25Like, I gotta eat.
25:26I got groceries.
25:27Stop scamming us.
25:29Please.
25:31After all the frustration and finger-pointing, there was one thing everyone we spoke to had in common.
25:38They still remember their favorite concert.
25:42Mother's Day weekend, 1994.
25:46I had grown up in New England, so I had seen the band Phish.
25:52That's a tough one.
25:53I was fortunate to go to one of the U2 concerts at the Sphere.
25:59In college, a bunch of friends and I saw Gym Class Heroes.
26:04My favorite concert ever was Bruce Springsteen in Spain.
26:10Last year, we were able to go to Paul McCartney's underplay at the Bowery Ballroom.
26:17My daughter has been a Swifty since about the age of three.
26:22By doing that together, that we were less mom and daughter and parent and child, but we were more fellow females in the world that we live in today.
26:34It reminds us why live music matters.
26:37It was a night where essentially, for the first time ever in the band's career, the band's music I care for, they played essentially an entire improvised second set.
26:47Second set.
26:48People were jumping and screaming to these songs that we've all kind of heard from.
26:53And he even said from stage, he was like, oh, this reminds me of, you know, in the early 60s, before we were playing Big Bigs.
26:59It was crazy.
27:00But if the way the industry operates doesn't change, more and more fans could get priced out of these concert experiences that mean so much.
27:09The current system is rigged against the large majority of fans, and the system every single year becomes more and more rigged as the industry stakeholders become more and more comfortable with jacking up prices.
27:25There are only 50,000 seats in that arena, 60,000 seats in that arena.
27:30It's a question of how many of those 50,000, 60,000 seats are filled by normal fans versus rich fans.
27:37I want more normal fans in those seats.
27:55I want more normal fans in those seats.
27:56I want more normal fans in those seats.
27:57I want more normal fans in those seats.
27:58I want more comfort sometimes.
28:00I want more
28:18I want more of our national stadium.
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