The soaring cost of concert tickets is a complex issue driven by the consolidation of the live entertainment industry, the decline of music sales, and the rise of the resale market, all of which disproportionately burden fans.
Mind Map
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For decades, fans have gotten very
emotional about seeing their favorite artists.
But today, it's harder than ever to see
In 2024, Taylor Swift fans paid $24 on
average for tickets to her era's tour.
The average resale price for the tour
was $3,800.
>> The most that we've paid for tickets are $8,000.
$8,000. >> Wow.
>> Wow.
>> That's more than $2,800
per ticket.
60 years ago, when the Beatles played
the first major stadium concert in
history, the most expensive ticket sold
for $5.65.
That's about $58 today.
A lot of people point the finger at Live
Nation Entertainment, the company that
owns Ticket Master, manages artists,
promotes tours, and owns and operates a
Live Nation blames the resale market for
the industry's problems. These runaway
resale markets that are run by and for
broker interests.
>> Resale companies like StubHub throw the
blame right back at Live Nation.
>> Any company that's being investigated by
the Department [music] of Justice and 40
attorneys general from uh blue and red
states alike. [music] If I were them, I
would be trying to deflect. Um as well,
some musicians call out both resellers
and Live Nation Entertainment for
driving up ticket prices. But Live
Nation points out that it's the artists,
not them, setting the price.
>> It's sort of like a Jenga tower where
you start to pull out one block and the
whole tower starts to shake and
stakeholders start getting mad at you.
We spoke to musicians, a music
journalist, lawyers, government
officials, Live Nation, StubHub, and
customers. And everyone says it's
someone else's fault.
All while the fans pay more and more. It
isn't easy to untangle why concert
tickets have become so expensive.
We investigated every angle to find the
real reasons it cost so much to see your
Concert ticket prices have soared about
four [music] times faster than the rate
of inflation for nearly 30 years.
But rewind to the 1960s, concerts were
practically pocket change.
>> I mean, one of the most iconic events
was the Beatles at Chase Stadium that
cost $5.
>> We found Rolling Stones tickets for $475
in 1965
and Bruce [music] Springsteen tickets
for$,750 in 1985.
To be fair, concerts today are much more
elaborate than those early stadium
tours. As for the artists, touring just
wasn't seen as a main source of income.
Artists, for the most part, viewed live
performance as marketing. [music]
They were making most of their money
from recordings. So, they'd go out on a
tour to help support that particular album.
This all changed with the internet.
The rise of peer-to-peer file sharing
platforms like Napster allowed users to
download recorded music for free.
>> Consumers suddenly realized that they
don't need to go to their local Tower
Records or Strawberries. As a direct
result, revenues that are generated by
artists drop rather precipitously. From
1999 to 2009, sales of recorded music in
the US were cut in half.
Meanwhile, revenue from concert ticket
sales in North America tripled over the
same decade. While legally downloading
music and streaming are often credited
as saving the music industry, the
massive loss in record sales revenue
fundamentally reshaped the landscape.
David Bowie saw it coming as early as
2002. you'd better be prepared for doing
a lot of touring because that's really
the only unique situation that's going
to be left.
By 2010, top artists were making the
So, how much do artists actually [music]
make from ticket sales? Deals can vary
between artists and touring teams, but
in a typical arrangement, artists
[music] receive an advanced payment or a
percentage of total ticket sales. Say
the total ticket price is $140, which
was around the average ticket price in
2024. Roughly $102 of that is the
ticket's face value. The remaining 38
goes towards taxes and ticketing fees.
Before anyone gets paid, around 30% of
the face value, or about $30, covers the
production costs of the venue and the
promoter. [music]
That leaves roughly $72 to split between
the artist and the promoter, such as
Live Nation. [music] In many cases, the
artist takes home about 70 to 85% of
what's left, let's say $60 in this case,
while the promoter keeps [music] the
rest, or $12 in this scenario. But once
the artist pays [music] for their
touring expenses, crew, and management,
their real profit per ticket can drop to
$30 or less.
And that's before adding ticketing fees,
[music] which can tack on another 25 to
30%. Most of those fees go to the venue
and a smaller share goes to the ticketer
around 5 to 10% of the total price or
about $6 in this case. Ticket prices
weren't always divvied up this way. To
understand why most players blame Live
Nation Entertainment for steep prices, [music]
[music]
we have to go back to when it was two
separate companies, Ticket Master and
Consumers didn't always pay sky-high
ticket fees. In the 70s, fans paid
smaller ones since venues and promoters
also covered the cost. [music] That all
changed in 1982 when Fred Rosen stepped
in as ticketm [music]
CEO. He offered to pay venues if they
used Ticketmaster instead of its
competitors [music] like Ticktron.
>> He goes to the venues and he says to
them, "What if instead of that you made
money? What if we raised service fees
from 50 to $1.50 and then instead of
[music] it being a cost center,
ticketing would be a profit center. And
all of a sudden, this revolutionized
just the very idea, the concept of what
service fees could be.
>> Venue after venue signed contracts
making Ticketmaster their exclusive
ticketing platform.
By 1995, Ticketmaster owned about 80% of
the ticketing market and [music] had
acquired its competitors, including Ticketron.
Ticketron.
Not everyone was on board with Ticketm's
growing dominance. In 1994, Pearl Jam
filed an antitrust complaint with the
Department of Justice, alleging that
Ticketmaster had an illegal monopoly on
ticketing. [music]
The following year, the DOJ closed the
Around the time ticket master gained
dominance, Live Nation was just getting
started under the name SFX
Entertainment, founded by Robert Sllerman.
Sllerman.
Robert Sllamon has the idea that he's
going to purchase these local promoters,
make [music] them part of one big
national company, and then it would be
much easier from his perspective to
route artists across the US and also
make money on the sponsorship side.
>> The acquisitions continued to grow from
there. In 2000, Sillerman sold SFX to
radio station owner Clear Channel
Communications, which strengthened its
foothold in not only live events and
concert promotion, but also venue
operations. Following a series of
antitrust investigations by the DOJ,
Clear Channel announced it would spin
off Live Nation solely as a music
promotion business. By 2008, Live Nation
was the largest concert promoter in the
world, controlling about 90% of major
amphitheaters in the United States. Then
in 2009, Live Nation and Ticketmaster
announced their plans to officially
merge. The possibility of a merger
sparked widespread backlash. Senator
Chuck Schumer criticized the deal,
saying it would create unrivaled [music]
power over concert goers and the prices
they pay. On Wall Street, stock prices
for both companies dipped.
And in a letter to his fans, Bruce
Springsteen suggested that the merger
would return us to a near monopoly
situation in music ticketing. In 2010,
the Department of Justice approved the
merger, which created Live Nation Entertainment.
After the merger, Live Nation
Entertainment just kept growing.
Fast forward to 2025, and the company
had expanded into artist management,
music festivals, sponsorships, and the
resale market.
15 years since the merger, the cost of
concert tickets in the United States has
continued to rise. [music]
Average ticket prices have climbed by as
much as 120% since 2010 and particularly
surged post pandemic.
It isn't just the face value price of
tickets that's frustrating fans. It's
also the numerous fees. A 2018 report
from the Government Accountability
Office found that fees averaged 27% of
We saw this frustration firsthand while
speaking with fans outside J Hope's concert.
>> The fees are too much.
>> Me and all my homies hate tickets. [laughter]
[laughter]
>> Oh, and one more thing. What? What the
are $150 fees? I'm sorry.
>> Fees are ridiculous. Fees are jail time.
>> Jail time.
>> In conclusion, jail time.
>> We also saw for ourselves how fees
change in real time. We filmed our
colleague AC's attempts to buy tickets
to Beyonce's Cowboy Carter tour in early 2025.
2025.
>> There has to be somewhere with two
tickets left.
Please, no.
Okay, here's what I'm going to do. I'm
going to get two tickets that are in the
same section
that are 3.89 a piece.
And then I'm just going to see on the
day of if people will move, let us sit
next to each other. Order. Let's see if
Oh, wait. I only got one ticket. I
thought I got two. I thought I got two.
I only got one ticket.
What am I doing? What am I thinking?
What am I Oh, this is really bad. This
is bad all around. Okay, to conclude,
this is a mess. I
got a really bad placement in [music]
line. I was overwhelmed. I thought I was
getting two different tickets. I only
The service fee was 70 bucks plus a
processing fee of $5, so I paid $4.64
for one ticket. Well,
I don't know what to do. I guess that's
it. No artist is immune to rising
frustration from fans. In 2022, Live
Nation Entertainment faced backlash from
one of the fiercest fan bases in the
When tickets went on sale for Taylor
Swift's era tour in November that year,
Ticket Master crashed under the weight
of about 14 million people trying to
score tickets
>> and fans were upset.
>> And it put me back at [laughter] the beginning.
>> What am I going to do? Even Taylor Swift
spoke out in a statement on Instagram.
She called the ticketing chaos
excruciating to watch but didn't name
Ticket Master directly.
In December 2022, Taylor Swift fans sued
Live Nation Entertainment over the
debacle. We have filed almost a thousand
cases against Ticket Master, maybe more.
This is Jennifer Kinder, a lawyer who
along with John Genga represents the 355
Swifties suing Live Nation Ticket Master.
Master.
>> Uh we're also adding what's called a
RICO [music] violation
>> since they control every aspect of the
ticket purchasing experience and the
live entertainment industry. That's
where you get into not just monopolistic [music]
[music]
behavior, but racketeering behavior. The
lawsuit is still ongoing, but no matter
[music] how this case pans out, the fans
anger led to more scrutiny from Capitol
Hill, culminating in a Senate hearing
and an even bigger ongoing lawsuit
[music] against Live Nation Entertainment.
Entertainment.
In May 2024, the US Department of
Justice filed an antitrust lawsuit to
break up the company. While monopolies
aren't inherently illegal in the US, the
Department of Justice alleges that Live
Nation uses its dominance to
intentionally [music]
stifle competition.
So, what we do in the monopolization
complaint [music] is really explain all
of the ways that Ticket Master [music]
and Live Nation are this dominant
intermediary that artists, venues, and
fans [music] cannot escape. That's Doha,
who helped launch the DOJ case. Since we
spoke with Doha in late 2024, [music]
she's left her position at the DOJ. The
lawsuit is still moving forward with a
trial scheduled for March 2026.
The DOJ claims Live Nation
Entertainment's flywheel business model
enables the [music] company to engage in
anti-competitive practices.
It [music] extracts service fees and
revenue from fans. It is um often a
default ticketer at the venues where
[music] artists want to play. It owns 60
of the 100 largest amphitheaters. It has
acquired promoters. [music]
It signs up artists through um its Live
Nation promotion business. [music] What
we allege in the complaint is that this
flywheel is really >> [music]
>> [music]
>> um mutually reinforcing. You can't
compete, you can't enter, and you can't
escape Live Nation's flywheel. Those
allegedly anti-competitive [music]
tactics include locking venues into
long-term exclusive contracts to limit
competition from rival ticketers [music]
and restricting artists access to venues
unless they agree to use Live Nation as
Live Nation executive Dan Wall has an
entirely different take on the DOJ
lawsuit. Any allegation that our
business practices are explaining these
ticket prices is just cynical and
untrue. If you take that $100 ticket,
face value [music] ticket, remember the
promoter is going to make maybe $2 out
of that and then when you look over to
um the [music] fee side, people always
make the assumption that those fees are
ticket master fees or whatever the
primary ticketing company is. uh they're
really not. If you've got a $30 fee on
top of that, then the ticketing company
is going to get $4 [music] or $5.
But the DOJ lawsuit claims that by
acting as both the [music] ticketer and
the promoter, Live Nation can double dip
and inflate fees and revenue, all at the
expense of fans.
Although ticketing may earn Live Nation
just $4 to5 for every 100 spent on
tickets, the company's 2024 financial
results reveal that it's actually the
most profitable arm of the business
based on adjusted operating income.
Live Nation CEO Michael Rapino said so
himself in a 2018 earnings call. If we
get 98 million, 90 million customers in
our flywheel on a positive basis, we can
sell them more food, we can sell them
more sponsors, we can sell them more
ticketing services, all higher margin
businesses than the low margin flywheel.
When it comes to the DOJ's allegations
of anti-competitive practices, Dan
points out that it's industry standard
for venues [music] to have exclusive
deals with promoters and claims that
competitors are doing the same thing.
the ticketing market evolved in a in a
way that ticketing contracts uh are
granted by venues on an exclusive basis.
So AEG who's our biggest competitor also
is a very major owner and operator of of
venues. [music]
They have lots of venues and our
policies are pretty much exactly the
same. Sometimes we let our rivals in,
sometimes we don't. But the two aren't
exactly created equal. Live Nation
controls a dominant share of the US
concert promotion and venue operations
market, far outpacing AEG.
So today, the industry is at a
standstill and everyone is pointing the
Live Nation Entertainment says high
prices reflect demand. [music]
And ultimately, it's artists who set the
base price for tickets, not them.
And while the band we spoke to agrees
that artists [music] set these base
prices, they point the finger right back
at Live Nation for high ticket fees and
controlling [music] the industry.
In January 2023, following the Taylor
Swift lawsuit, musician Clyde Lawrence
of the band Lawrence appeared at the US
Capital to testify in a Senate hearing.
Clyde shared that Live Nation often
assumes the roles of promoter, ticketer,
and venue operator simultaneously, a
claim echoed in the DOJ antitrust case. If
If
>> they want to charge us $250 for a stack
of 10 clean towels, they can and [music] have
have
In their song, False Alarms, Lawrence
even included the lyric, "Fames
overrated, Live Nations a monopoly."
Beyond [snorts] the lyrics, band members
were a bit more cautious when we caught
up with them in their studio, saying
that Live Nation isn't solely to blame.
>> There is a lot of consolidation, and
part of working with Live Nation does
mean that you are going to [music] work
with Ticket Master, and part of working
with AEG means that you are going to
work with AXS or Access. When we're
ragging on Live Nation,
in a lot of ways, it's because they are
the biggest company, and so they have
the power to [music] set industry
standards, and that's a really powerful
position to be in.
>> While Lawrence says companies like Live
Nation Entertainment carry a lot of the
blame, the band joins Live Nation
[music] in calling out another key
player, the resale market. I think one
piece of ticketing that artists don't
have any say in [music]
is the secondhand ticketing market. Right.
Right.
>> In 2024, more [music] than 250
musicians, including Billy Isish, Lord,
and Fallout [music] Boy, signed a letter
urging lawmakers to help reform the
broken system of predatory resellers and
And there's data to back them up.
This chart made by the Government
Accountability Office in 2018 lists
three studies that found that resale
prices could range from about 15 to 112%
more than the face value price. And a
2023 Neato study of 65 concerts found
that resale tickets averaged nearly
double the original ticket price. We
talked to StubHub, the first online
resale ticketing site. In 2024,
on average, 80% of our tickets were
under $100. So, I know that like these
[music] Taylor Swifts, they get a lot of
headlines, but they're actually not
illustrative of the real experience on
the platform. Those numbers are based on
StubHub's internal data, which they did
not share with us. And like Live Nation,
StubHub says they're not responsible for
setting the ticket price. [music]
>> We make suggestions to them. Hey, your
tickets not selling, you might consider
lowering them. So, it's really up to the
seller. they have no role in in setting
those prices. So, it's really where the
market is.
>> But that doesn't address the issues of
fees, which are where StubHub makes its
money. The same 2018 study from the
Government Accountability Office found
that resale platforms often charge
higher fees, about 31% of the ticket
price on average, compared to 27% on
primary sales. So the secondary
marketplace, the resale marketplace is
[music] enormously responsible for the
inaccessibility that exists with live
entertainment in this country.
>> That's Senator James Scufus. He's been
working on live event ticketing reforms
and regulations in New York. And unlike
primary ticketers, resellers like
StubHub charge fees for both the buyer
and the seller, allowing them to profit
more from a ticket than the artists themselves.
themselves.
So why do you think StubHub deserves
more profit share than say people that
are directly involved in the event itself?
itself?
>> I don't I I don't think that StubHub
deserves more profit than the artists
and the teams who are creating you know
the show and the event. We want to work
directly with artists and teams. StubHub
and resale sites have also been sued in
2024. The DC Attorney General accused
StubHub of deceptive drip pricing and
junk fees, which are fees that are
hidden until the end of the checkout
process. The DC case is still pending.
Meanwhile, the FTC finalized its junk
fees rule for live event tickets
effective May 12th, 2025.
StubHub told Business Insider that the
company is in compliance with the 2025
rule. Ultimately, StubHub brings the
blame back to Live Nation.
>> They're under investigation. They have
to [music] point the finger at something
else. When they talk about pointing the
finger at resale, do they mention that
they're also [music] in the business?
>> Alex points out that Live Nation
Entertainment also participates in the
resale market, something singer Olivia
Dean took issue with in November 2025.
The criticism led Ticket Master and
[music] Access to agree to refund anyone
who paid more than face value as well as
cap future resale ticket prices.
And in the UK, the government announced
in November 2025 that it would ban the
reselling of tickets at a price above
their original cost.
In [music] public statements, Live
Nation Entertainment distanced itself
from other resellers. Speaking of
Ticketm's resale program, in 2025, the
FTC sued Live Nation Entertainment for
allegedly allowing bots to [music]
bypass security measures while profiting
from the additional fees and inflated
markups. Live Nation denies the FTC's
claims, but say it's rolling out changes
Even with those changes, artists take
issue with the secondary market because
they don't profit from inflated resale prices.
prices.
To combat this, Ticket Master introduced
dynamic pricing back in 2011.
Essentially, artists can increase ticket
prices in real time when the demand is
high [music] and reap the benefits.
Dynamic pricing has made headlines for
pushing up the price of tickets,
angering some artists, while others
faced criticism from fans for using it.
>> How does it make you feel that people
are paying like up to $500 for this show?
show?
>> Angry, upset. We're not about that to be honest.
honest.
>> I'm not about dynamic pricing.
>> Hell no.
>> That's my That's what I got to say. They
need to stop with this dynamic pricing
that normal people can't afford and only
the Nepo babies and the bots can buy cuz
how who's buying a $500 ticket? Like I
got to eat. I got groceries.
>> Stop scamming us. Please.
>> After all the frustration and
fingerpointing, there was one thing
everyone we spoke to had in common. They
still remember their favorite concert.
Mother's Day weekend [music] 1994.
Uh, I had grown up in New England, so I
had seen the band Fish.
That's a tough one. I was fortunate to
[music] go to one of the YouTube
concerts at the Sphere
>> in college. I [music] a bunch of friends
and I saw gym class Heroes.
>> My favorite concert ever was Bruce
Springsteen in Spain.
Last year [music] we were able to go to
Paul McCartney's underplay at the Bowie Ballroom.
Ballroom.
>> My daughter has been a Swifty since
about the age of [music] three. By doing
that together that we were less mom and
daughter and parent [music] and child,
but we were more fellow females in the
world that we live [music] in today.
>> It reminds us why live music matters. It
was a night where essentially for the
first time ever in the band's career,
band is music I I care for. Uh they
played essentially an entire improvised
second set.
>> People were jumping and [music]
screaming to these songs that we've all
kind of
>> and he even said from stage he's like,
"Oh, [music] this reminds me of, you know,
know,
>> back in the day
>> in the early 60s before we were playing
big." It was crazy. But if the way the
industry operates doesn't change, more
and [music] more fans could get priced
out of these concert experiences that
mean so much. The current system is
rigged [music] against the large
majority of fans. And the system every
single year becomes more [music] and
more rigged as the the industry
stakeholders become more and [music]
more comfortable with jacking up prices.
There are only 50,000 seats in that
arena. 60,000 seats in that arena. It's
a question of how many of those 50
60,000 [music]
seats are filled by normal fans versus
rich fans. I want more normal fans in
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