- 7 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.
15:53An 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 make maybe $2
16:11out of that, and then when you look over to the fee side, people always make the assumption
16:16that 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.
16:31But the DOJ lawsuit claims that by acting as both the ticketer and the promoter,
16:36Live Nation can double-dip and inflate fees and revenue, all at the expense of fans.
16:42Although ticketing may earn Live Nation just $4 to $5 for every $100 spent on tickets,
16:51the company's 2024 financial results reveal that it's actually the most profitable arm of
16:56the business based on adjusted operating income.
17:00Live Nation CEO Michael Rapinoe said so himself in a 2018 earnings call.
17:06If we get 98 million, 90 million customers in our flywheel on a positive basis,
17:11we 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.
17:21When it comes to the DOJ's allegations of anti-competitive practices,
17:26Dan points out that it's industry standard for venues to have exclusive deals with promoters,
17:31and claims that competitors are doing the same thing.
17:35The ticketing market evolved in a way that ticketing contracts
17:41are granted by venues on an exclusive basis.
17:46So 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.
18:03But the two aren't exactly created equal.
18:05Live Nation controls a dominant share of the U.S. concert promotion and venue operations market,
18:13far outpacing AEG.
18:15So today, the industry is at a standstill.
18:19And everyone is pointing the finger in a different direction.
18:21Live Nation Entertainment says high prices reflect demand.
18:33And ultimately, it's artists who set the base price for tickets, not them.
18:37So we talked to some musicians.
18:43And while the band we spoke to agrees that artists set these base prices,
18:48they 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,
19:00of 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,
19:10and 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.
19:22In their song, False Alarms, Lawrence even included the lyric,
19:27Fame'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,
19:36saying that Live Nation isn't solely to blame.
19:40There is a lot of consolidation and part of working with Live Nation does mean that you are going to
19:45work 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
19:57they have the power to set industry standards and that's a really powerful position to be in.
20:04While Lawrence says companies like Live Nation Entertainment carry a lot of the blame,
20:08the band joins Live Nation in calling out another key player, the resale market.
20:13I think one piece of ticketing that artists don't have any say in is the secondhand ticketing market.
20:23In 2024, more than 250 musicians, including Billie Eilish, Lorde and Fall Out Boy, signed a letter
20:30urging lawmakers to help reform the broken system of predatory resellers and secondary platforms.
20:37And there's data to back them up.
20:43This chart made by the Government Accountability Office in 2018 lists three studies that found that
20:49resale prices could range from about 15 to 112 percent more than the face value price.
20:55And a 2023 NEATO study of 65 concerts found that resale tickets averaged nearly double the original
21:02ticket price. We talked to StubHub, the first online resale ticketing site.
21:09In 2024, on average, 80 percent of our tickets were under $100. So I know that like these Taylor
21:17Swifts, they get a lot of headlines, but they're actually not illustrative of the real experience on
21:21the 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. We have no role in setting those prices. So it's really where the
21:42market 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
21:53often charge higher fees, about 31 percent of the ticket price on average, compared to 27 percent on
22:00primary sales.
22:02So the secondary marketplace, the resale marketplace, is enormously responsible for the inaccessibility
22:10that exists with live entertainment in this country.
22:12That's Senator James Skoufis. He's been working on live event ticketing reforms and regulations in New
22:19York. And unlike primary ticketers, resellers like StubHub charge fees for both the buyer
22:25and the seller, allowing them to profit more from a ticket than the artists themselves.
22:32So why do you think StubHub deserves more profit, share let's say,
22:36people 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
22:45creating, you know, the show and the event. We want to work directly with artists and teams.
22:52StubHub and resale sites have also been sued in 2024. The D.C. Attorney General accused StubHub of
22:59deceptive 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. Meanwhile, the FTC finalized its junk fees rule for live event
23:13tickets, effective May 12th, 2025. StubHub told Business Insider that the company is in compliance
23:20with the 2025 rule. Ultimately, StubHub brings the blame back to Live Nation.
23:26They're under investigation. They have to point the finger at something else. When they talk about
23:32pointing 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,
23:41something singer Olivia Dean took issue with in November 2025. The criticism led Ticketmaster and
23:48Axis 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
24:01of tickets at a price above their original cost. In public statements, Live Nation Entertainment
24:07distanced itself from other resellers. Speaking of Ticketmaster's resale program, in 2025, the FTC sued
24:15Live Nation Entertainment for allegedly allowing bots to bypass security measures, while profiting from
24:22the additional fees and inflated markups. Live Nation denies the FTC's claims but say it's rolling out
24:29changes to its resale service. Even with those changes, artists take issue with the secondary market
24:38because they don't profit from inflated resale prices. To combat this, Ticketmaster introduced dynamic
24:46pricing back in 2011. Essentially, artists can increase ticket prices in real time when the demand is
24:52high and reap the benefits. Dynamic pricing has made headlines for pushing up the price of tickets,
24:59angering 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? Angry, upset.
25:11We're not about that, to be honest. I'm not about dynamic pricing. Hell no.
25:16They need to stop with this dynamic pricing that normal people can't afford,
25:20and only the Nepo babies and the bots can buy. Because who's buying a $500 ticket? Like,
25:25I gotta eat. I got groceries. Stop scamming us. Please. After all the frustration and finger-pointing,
25:34there was one thing everyone we spoke to had in common. They still remember their favorite concert.
25:42Mother's Day weekend, 1994. I had grown up in New England, so I had seen the band Phish.
25:52That's a tough one. I was fortunate to go to one of the U2 concerts at the Sphere.
25:58In college, a bunch of friends and I saw gym class heroes.
26:05My favorite concert ever was Bruce Springsteen in Spain.
26:12Last year, we were able to go to Paul McCartney's underplay at the Bowery Ballroom.
26:18My daughter has been a Swifty since about the age of three. By doing that together,
26:23that we were less mom and daughter and parent and child, but we were more fellow females in the world
26:33that we live in today. It reminds us why live music matters. It was a night where essentially,
26:39for the first time ever in the band's career, the band is music I care for, they played essentially an
26:46entire improvised second set. People were jumping and screaming to these songs that we've all kind of
26:53played. And he even said from stage, he's like, oh, this reminds me of, you know, in the early 60s,
26:57before we were playing Big Bigs. It was crazy. But if the way the industry operates doesn't change,
27:03more 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
27:16becomes more and more rigged as the industry stakeholders become more and more comfortable
27:24with jacking up prices. There 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, 60,000 seats are filled by normal fans versus rich fans.
27:37I want more normal fans and no seats.
28:07Thanks!
28:12Thesecott, 60,000 seats have been accustomed to BDC.
28:14I'm both glad to reach out and be%, and amこちら.
28:18Thanks for having me.
28:19Do you?
28:22I'll be aucune thiGrant-
28:23if you do, please do you?
28:27I tell you a little bit.
28:28Have you ever been with me?
28:29I tell you a little bit.
28:31I tell you the audio?
28:33I tell you a little bit.
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