The Curious Case Of The Underselling Arena Tours
The Curious Case Of The Underselling Arena Tours
It's not just the Black Keys. Why are so many big tours selling poorly?
“Who can afford to go to multiple shows?” says the anonymous tour manager. “Two tickets to a show, you’re talking probably about $200 with fees and everything. You go to a meal around the show, you’re talking at least $100 or $200 for a nice dinner. Then you got parking and babysitters, then you add the VIP stuff to that and you want to make it a special night, you’re talking $500 to $1,000 a night for a couple to go out. It’s capitalism at its best.”
Support local music and musicians. Go to their shows. Buy their CDs and merch. Stop giving big corporations your dollars.
This is a part of it: musicians these days make most of their money on tours. They're not making a lot by you buying the album (although you still should to support your favorite artists).
This is the way.
Our owner class truly believes they can sustain an economy made up of and powered by the 90% almost exclusively for the top 10%.
Almost makes me glad they're also recklessly ending the world (for humans and other not so physically resilient/hearty species, not all life thankfully) in pursuit of even moooaaaar short term growth/metastasis cash crabs. I'd prefer nature go back to the drawing board to having a few humans exploit the value out of most humans very lives in perpetuity.
That ongoing reality makes me ashamed to call myself human, not proud.
Do you believe you’d be happier or more able to pursue what makes you happy as a hunter-gatherer, subsistence farmer, or citizen of any society from the stone age up until the advent of modern industrialization?
I won't pay $1,000 to see anyone. Make ticket prices $35 and the places will be packed.
When they do, ticket re-sellers buy them all up and jack up the prices anyway. The government needs to make ticket resellers illegal like scalping. Live Nation will fight that because it guarantees them sold out shows often.
Any performer that doesn't pursue increased with profit with every new tour is a filthy socialist!
/s
It seems silly to believe every artist with a label can go on an arena tour. In my city arena shows used to be reserved for the biggest of the big. Now no touring bands will play smaller venues and simultaneously perplexed why fans won't show up at $200 a seat. Meanwhile the medium venues are either hosting the same local bands repeatedly, or closing.
What a conundrum.
Big arenas are heavily subsidized by the municipality. They support a constellation of vendors and consultants and advertisers, all vested in its success. They create their own kind of economic gravity that draws the industry in around it. And when they can't bring in customers to justify their existence, they accrue enormous amounts of debt and trigger regional downturns in their collapse.
subsidized by the municipality
This should never happen and they should have never existed if that was the only way they would have been built.
I don't care how wrong my country believes I am, municipal/state/federal aid/tax advantages should never go to any for private profit enterprise, ever, let alone multi billion dollar sport franchises, whats next, subsidizing big oil companies? Lol yeah, this is a dark fucking time-line.
If the city/county/state can afford such things, help people from the bottom up. House the homeless. Fix your shit schools instead of selling them out to the charter school scam. Oh and "it will foster revenue so it's a good deal!" Is always a lie because it's never certain yet is always portrayed as such, it doesn't always work out, and it creates massive failures when the house of cards eventually fall and those dependant on that state sponsored lie also fail as you said.
Cities/counties/states shouldn't be gambling with their citizens money to potentially, tangentially benefit them while further enriching those with too much directly as a sure thing. But of course the rigged market capitalism true believer officials get bribed either way in some of form or another, so it won't stop till the track (society) collapses from its profound, private profit driven neglect.
You still see plenty of small shops in my area.
Sleep Token toured the US earlier this year, and came near where I live. The cheapest ticket prices were $700. That's approaching Taylor Swift prices for a popular, but still niche, metal band.
I would pay $700 to see Mayhem play a live De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas with a resurrected Per "Dead" Ohlin (and no Varg Vikernes, because fuck that guy), but I'm not paying $700 to see Sleep Token.
Not going to bother resurrecting Euronymous?
Oopsie. Forgot him. 😬
This reads a lot like nuance trolling. The “mystery” seems extremely one-dimensional: most fans aren’t “pay a ridiculous amount to see a band from a half-mile away” fans.
If you're selling out, you're not charging enough to maximise profits
$200?
That’s all?
That’s what the nosebleed seats go for at a major show, retail, which you won’t get because the scalpers have already bought everything on Ticketmaster in the first 5 minutes the show goes on sale. Then they’re on Ticketmaster for resale for $300 plus fees. And the prices will continue to go up as the show gets closer.
...good seats have run about $1000 / pair after fees + parking since before the pandemic...
I paid the most I'd ever paid for tickets earlier this year. Then again by a much larger margin last month. It's out of control.
It's a vicious cycle. More groups are skimming artists' revenues off the top. So ticket prices rise. Then customer's demand more glitzy superficial features to justify the value. That adds cost and raises prices more. Rinse and repeat.
The best artists to listen to live are your local sounds at your neighbourhood stage.
Then customer's demand more glitzy superficial features to justify the value.
Do they, though? That's not what I see in my friend and family group.
Just for shits, I recently looked up tickets to Jane's Addicition in CT. $90 for the shittiest seat in the house. Center nosebleeds were $130. That was before fees.
Absolute madness.
HN reckons https://www.showsonsale.com is where the price collusion happens.