Live Music / Ticket Prices

You Should See What They’re Charging for a Seat in the Top Deck These Days

If you are a live music fan, you already know.

Ticketmaster is the devil, everybody knows that. Not that they mind, since they’ve put themselves in that position by making profit hand over fist, by tacking on exorbitant surcharges to every concert ticket purchase.

It wouldn’t be so bad if there were other options. But in North America, at least, if you want to go to see a band or artist live, Ticketmaster essentially has you by the proverbials.

Apparently, it’s not on the face value price of a ticket where most of their profit comes from, but rather on the resales. There was a time not too long ago when a certain amount of physical tickets for any event would be scooped up by scalpers. Don’t call them that anymore, though, they’re ticket brokers now. Anyway, these gentlemen would once have been found standing outside an event for a few hours ahead of time, asking, “who needs tickets?” The most wizened punter would arrive, hang back, and swoop in to scoop up a deal about five minutes after the start, when it was panic time. That whole process and the people involved in it have virtually disappeared.

I say virtually because they still exist on the Ticketmaster platform. I’ve never been in that racket, but if I buy a ticket from the website and discover I can’t use it or no longer need it, there are a few options for shifting it. One of these, the most convenient way, is to resell it on the Ticketmaster website. I will be charged a fee to do that, and if I am successful, the purchaser will pay another surcharge. That ticket will now have been surcharged three times.

Ticketmaster has successfully cut out the middleman by becoming its own middleman for a product that it has already sold once before. It’s genius.

The restarting of the concert scene in most cities after the Covid disruption was a welcome relief for those who love live music. Though I was living out of the country at the time, in a place where touring acts didn’t frequent anyway, one of the things I was looking forward to in returning to Vancouver permanently was the chance to see my favourite bands again. I saw my all-time number one two weeks ago at a small venue in the city.

Global acts have gotten into the….well…act…as well. In the past month, Rihanna, Madonna, Taylor Swift, Guns n’Roses, Bruce Springsteen, and most importantly to me, Depeche Mode, have announced world tours.

The prices for the most distant seats in the stadium at which they’ll perform are eye-watering, to say the least. Even if you have no hope of getting anywhere near the stage, you better really like this band if you are going to commit and click purchase.

I wrote a few months ago about the first show I ever saw, Sting, in the summer of 1988 at BC Place Stadium in Vancouver. As a mere slip of a lad then, I cut enough lawns to scrape together the desired $26.75 to see my erstwhile Police hero. I think a t-shirt came in at around $20. It was worth every penny.

My desire to be a part of live shows only went stratospheric from there. The next big acts to roll through town were the Who in 1990 and the Rolling Stones for their Steel Wheels extravaganza in 1991. Everyone thought that it would be our last chance to see these legends. Little did we know they’d be at it for decades yet. Tickets for each — and naturally, I still have the ticket stubs themselves — were $33.75 for what can charitably be called the nosebleeds.

That’s another thing I miss, the physical ticket, but that’s a “you kids get off my lawn” rant for another day. And lest anyone think I was only lured by the siren song of massive stadium shows, I recall seeing REM, Neil Young and Crazy Horse, Sonic Youth, and Midnight Oil in those years as well.

Once I was old enough, club shows in the subsequent years were $30 maximum to get up close and a little more personal.

Inflation is what it is, I get it. How much has the cost of living increased in the past 30 years? There is, of course, a website for that too, and what cost $30 in 1990 now costs $53 in this city. In other words, it has almost but not quite doubled.

So it makes sense that I paid $50 a head plus fees for the Charlatans and Ride the other week. I thought that was reasonable. The Manic Street Preachers and Suede in the same place last November were a snip at $70.

You can imagine my surprise and audible gasp when I saw that M83 wants $180 a head in the same place for a show in May. That’s a middling French electronic band (in my opinion) that I saw for about $15 a decade ago in a club that a condo tower has since replaced.

It was a great show…for $15. So, that one is going to get a hard miss.

John Mellencamp, whose last hit was decades ago, wants anywhere between $75 and $250 for his two shows here next month. And he’ll get it, too; it’s sold out, and all that remains are the aforementioned resales.

The Boss and GNR? Well, good luck to them, not that they need it. I’ve seen both, and while both are memorable shows, we may now be getting to the point at which fans have an embarrassment of choices and, at the prices that are being asked, are being forced to make their own choices.

So Depeche Mode is the one I made. I saw them in Bogotà on their 2018 tour, and they were so good that I have to see them again. The front of the top deck, close-ish to the stage, is $190 a head. But let’s face it, you can’t put a price on some things.

Or, you can, and somehow it still makes sense.

Everything else has increased in price, so why would we expect concert tickets to stay the same as they’ve always been? They cost whatever the market will bear. Somebody will pay for them, and somebody will make money off of it. Or they won’t, and things will come down eventually.

I won’t hold my breath for that, though.

A concert tour of even a modest size is a massive logistical undertaking. When a global brand like Depeche Mode goes out, hundreds of people go with them, and every last member of the crew and entourage needs to be transported, accommodated, clothed, fed, and watered, to say nothing of paid.

You want to go to shows in 2023? Then it costs what it costs. Get used to it.

I really do hope that you like what you have just read. If you want unlimited access to thousands of writers, consider a subscription to Medium. It will set you back $5 a month, and if you use the link below, then I get a slice of that. They aren’t giving these tickets away.