Alizabeth Martin

Photo taken at the Zach Bryan “Quittin’ Time” tour, representing concert views.

LOS ALAMITOS, Calif. — As concert ticket prices continue to skyrocket, many teenagers and families are experiencing a newfound struggle to afford admittance to heavily anticipated music events. This price increase has an impact on all people who wish to attend concerts, but, especially teenagers who find great enjoyment in music.

“I wanted to go to the Bruno Mars concert, (but) I lacked the financial success to afford the super expensive tickets,” said Los Alamitos High School sophomore Ethan Tran.

Highly-priced concert tickets are preventing teenagers from being able to attend their favorite artists’ tours. It isn’t fair to expect teens with little to no income to spend hundreds of dollars on one concert ticket.

In the past five years, the skyrocketing prices of concert tickets have outpaced the typical inflation rates. In 2019, the average concert ticket was priced at $91.86. In 2024, Live Music Trade Publication Pollstar found that the average ticket cost has grown to $123.25. This is a 34.3% increase, which greatly outnumbers the estimated inflation rates since 2019 of 11.87%. Realistically, some price growth is expected, with both general prices and popularity for artist tours increasing. However, the already high prices are being amplified by flaws present in ticket vending websites.

One of the largest ticket distributor websites in the U.S. is TicketMaster, which is responsible for 80% of primary ticketing in large venues. TicketMaster is owned by an entertainment company called Live Nation, and together, they currently control 265 concert venues in America. One might hope that a website with such popularity would be the most reliable to purchase from, but Ticketmaster still has many flaws. Currently, TicketMaster is adding multiple unnecessary fees and is unable to manage bots on websites, leading to an increase in resellers and resell prices. 

A basic handling fee is a common price addition when purchasing tickets; however, multiple users of TicketMaster have found questionable or unnecessary fees added during their checkout process. These fees are marked for service, ticketing, processing, per order, facility charges or delivery. While some fees are tolerable and to be expected, many customers are finding up to $50 in additional charges added to their tickets, which is considerably too much.

“An array of fees that (aren’t) seen until checkout can add around 20% to the cost of concert and festival tickets,” said Sky News’ Live News reporter Katie Williams in “Why have ticket prices gone crazy? Here’s what’s behind the spiral.”

When entering a pre-sale or general sale for tickets, users will often find themselves in a queue. The queue process is typically very lengthy and works the same way a line would. However, more often than not, people waiting in the queue experience the TicketMaster website crashing, glitching or kicking them off the site. This is a frustrating experience that is likely due to high amounts of traffic on the website. While a majority of the traffic are people who plan to buy tickets for themselves, unfortunately, there are often bots or resellers who are taking advantage of the initial sale with a plan to resell at very high costs. 

When these ticket scalpers obtain large amounts of tickets, it takes away from actual fans who plan to purchase tickets. Eventually, the scalpers will resell the tickets they have acquired, but they will do so at greatly increased costs, especially with a high-demand concert. 

This phenomena is very evident in resale costs for Taylor Swift’s “The Eras Tour.” When looking at verified resale tickets through StubHub for Swift’s upcoming Miami shows, it can be seen that the lowest price is $1,915 per ticket, and the highest is $8,740. Both the lowest and highest prices are outrageously priced for a concert ticket, especially when compared to the initial sale prices of around $100-$800.

To remedy this issue, companies need to take action to regulate their ticket prices at a reasonable price. Children, teenagers and adults should be able to enjoy concerts without having to make an unreasonably sized purchase.