A friend of mine in Florida asked me if I wanted to go see Bruce Springsteen.
This was the morning of July 20, and the first round of tickets for Springsteen’s 2023 tour had just gone on sale. He was shocked at the ticket prices — he’d pulled up general admission floor tickets at $655 apiece — and was wondering if they came with a 75-inch television included with the purchase.
He passed on the floor tickets and ended up securing three tix in the 200 level, $455 each, and asked if I was interested. I said no. And that’s the short story of how I won’t be going to see Bruce Springsteen in Miami next year.
Concert tickets have been on the rise for years, and the pandemic — which caused the live touring industry to take a full year off — has only made things pricier.
In the first half of this year, the average ticket price for the top 100 tours in North America increased by roughly 18% from pre-pandemic levels, according to Pollstar, from $92 to $108. That’s along with the rising cost of everything else these days, from food to gas to baseball cards.
But concert attendance isn’t slowing down, not according to the 45,000 people who were at The Weeknd’s concert at Ford Field on Wednesday, the 40,000 who attended Elton John’s farewell concert at Comerica Park on July 18 or the 100,000 who attended the three back- to-back-to-back shows at Comerica earlier this month.
Prices are up, but people are willing to pay them. That’s because a concert is an experience, a night shared with an audience and a performer that you can’t duplicate at home or on your phone. The lights, the sound, the sweat, the cheers, the memories: those come at a cost, and that cost is rising.
Paying the cost to see the Boss
Springsteen has become the unwitting poster child for this price increase as news of ticket prices for his 2023 tour sent shockwaves through his fanbase, and with tales of $5,000 tickets being splashed across social media as well as the pages of Variety and the New York Times.
Certainly, this was a mistake, and Springsteen — the Boss, the blue-collar hero and friend to the working man — couldn’t be charging thousands of dollars for concert tickets. right? right?
Well, yes and no, but mostly yes. Springsteen’s tickets were subject to Ticketmaster’s “dynamic pricing” model, which fluctuates the cost of tickets in real-time due to demand. Demand was high, so prices were too. And the screengrabs don’t lie, some tickets were well into the thousands of dollars. (The dynamic pricing system has previously been used for tours by Harry Styles, Taylor Swift, Paul McCartney and others.)
Tickets for Springsteen’s March 29 Little Caesars Arena concert went on sale Wednesday, and local fans experienced the pinch firsthand. As of Friday, there were still “official platinum” floor seats available for $1,650 each and upper-level “side view” seats available at $400 apiece, along with hundreds of resale tickets. Not all prices were outrageous: one friend was able to quietly scoop up three “nosebleed” tickets for $99 apiece through the general on-sale.
It’s going to be his first time seeing Springsteen, and that was a price he was willing to pay to see him. Others are asking themselves what their ceiling is. No one is making anyone buy tickets to the show, so the cost is what you’re willing to pay. And if you don’t want to pay it, someone else probably will.
How high is too high?
Springsteen, who will be 73 when he gets to Little Caesars Arena, isn’t getting any younger, and neither are his fans. So there are a limited number of opportunities left to see him — he’s got more concerts behind him than he has in front of him — and those opportunities come at a premium.
Is Springsteen supposed to charge less than what people are willing to pay to hear him play “Glory Days” in order to be a good guy? Or let the secondary market — the Stubhubs, the SeatGeeks, those other sites that try to trick you into thinking they’re Ticketmaster — make money off of him?
That’s what he’s historically done; the last time Springsteen hit the road, in 2016 and ’17 on his “River Tour,” ticket prices cost below the industry average at $68 to $150 for a typical arena show, according to the Asbury Park Press (which does, in fact, report on more than just Springsteen news).
This time around, prices are higher. The average price of Springsteen tickets is $202, according to Ticketmaster, which released data on the tour after the social media outcry. Of the sales, 88% of tickets were sold at face value, from $59.50 to $399 before service fees, according to Ticketmaster, with 1.3% of total tickets going for more than $1,000.
Some frustrated fans are feeling frozen out, however, only able to pull up tickets that are way more than what they’re willing to pay. Would you share $1,000 to see your favorite artist? How about $2,000? At what point do you say enough is enough, I’ve seen them enough, and I’m going to sit this one out?
There’s a clip on YouTube of Nirvana, circa 1993, discussing ticket prices for their shows (which were roughly $17 at the time) and other pop acts of the day. “Madonna charges 50 dollars?” Kurt Cobain asks incredulously, the words spilling out of his mouth in disbelief. (Springsteen tickets, for the record, were about $28.50 at the time.)
Looking back now, the clip is funny because it’s so quaint; today, a concert T-shirts will cost you $50. To paraphrase the Boss, they were glory days. And yes, they passed us by.
agraham@detroitnews.com
Twitter: @grahamorama