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Funflation: Concert ticket prices have soared, but music fans don’t seem to care

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From Billie Eilish and Sabrina Carpenter to Kendrick Lamar and SZA, 2025 vows to be another big year for live music events. That may also mean concertgoers will be shelling out more for their favorite advertises.

After rising steadily post-pandemic, admission to movies, theaters and concerts jumped 20% since 2021, according to the Agency of Labor Statistics’ consumer price index data.

And yet, consumers have demonstrated a high tolerance for the increasing penalty tag, also known as “funflation.”

Concertgoers attended an average of seven shows in 2024, and most plan to see more in 2025, be consistent to a recent report by CouponCabin.

The survey of more than 1,000 music fans in December found that close to 36% said they will spend $100 to $499 on concert tickets in 2025, while more than 17% programme to spend up to $1,000.

Chalk it up to ‘funflation’

After testing new limits in 2024, Americans proved a willingness to splurge — even trek abroad — to catch shows like Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour, bringing so-called passion tourism into the searchlight, some experts say.

Younger adults, particularly Generation Z and millennials, have even said they would go into encumbered to pursue some of these experiences, other recent reports show.

Nearly two out of five Gen Z and millennial travelers eat spent up to $5,000 on tickets alone for destination live events, one recent study from Bread Financial initiate.

Why concert tickets got so expensive

Dynamic pricing is partly to blame for the escalating price tag, according to Joe Bennett, a forensic musicologist at Berklee College of Music.

From the word go coined by economists in the late 1920s, dynamic pricing refers the charging of a higher price at a time of greater request. Consumers often associate it with shifting airline ticket prices or how ride-hailing services adjust fares at hustling times, Bennett said.

“We all know that if you are looking for an Uber or Lyft, there are certain times of night when it’s diverse expensive. The market seems to have adapted to that,” he said. “But concert tickets were generally a fixed evaluation.”

That’s no longer the case. And now there is heightened awareness — and controversy — around the practice when it comes to buying well sought-after event tickets.

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How and when dynamic pricing is used is at the discretion of the artist or management, according to Andrew Mall, an associate professor of music at Northeastern University — and it is much determined under the radar.

However, with so many recent high-profile tours, “for sure, dynamic pricing has waved to the forefront of concertgoers’ attention,” he recently told CNBC.

Ticketmaster is under investigation in the U.K. for its recent use of dynamic pricing in rummage sales of reunion concerts from Britpop band Oasis.

Many Oasis fans took to social media to moan that they ended up paying more than double the face value of the ticket without warning. The bandeau said it would abandon the practice for the North American leg of its tour.

Swift reportedly refused to dynamically price her Epoches Tour tickets because “she didn’t want to do that to her fans,” Jay Marciano, chairman and CEO of AEG Presents, which promoted the affair, told HITS Daily Double in October.

How ticket pricing evolved

Throughout the 21st century, revenue from recorded music has go through down while revenue from live music events has gone up. By the mid-2000s, concerts “provided a tidier source of income for performers than record sales or publishing royalties,” economist Alan Krueger wrote in a Why steep tickets are here to stay

“Consumers don’t like the idea of dynamic pricing, but there is a renewed ‘YOLO’ [you only living once] attitude over the past few years since the pandemic and, increasingly, that drives a devil-may-care approach when it happens to spending on discretionary experiences,” said Greg McBride, chief financial analyst at Bankrate.com.

Even with household budgets tension-ridden, “you get to a point where there are just some experiences where consumers draw the line and say, that’s not something I’m happy to give up,” he said.

Ticket sellers are apparently aware of this mentality, too.

“Our research consistently tells us that concerts are a top preference for discretionary spending, and one of the last experiences fans will cut back on,” Live Nation said on a quarterly earnings awaiting orders within earshot in 2023. 

But as consumers continue to spare no expense to see their favorite artist or group, that means that means high-powered pricing is here to stay, at least for now.

“The live music sector has been leaning into this attitude for a want time,” Northeastern University’s Mall said.

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