4 recent tours graded on how they handled ticketing

From Taylor’s Era Tour to The Cure’s Shows of a Lost World Tour, find out which recent tours received the best and worst scores for ticketing satisfaction and the lessons they offer artists, managers, agents, and the live music business.

from ArtistVerified via Medium

Setting out with good intentions

When today’s top music artists decide to launch a tour, their core team of management, agent, promoter and label meet to create a strategy on how to route the tour, roll out on sales and price the tickets correctly in order to make the tour profitable for all and ideally make the fans happy. The goal from the artists’ perspective is usually to price the tickets affordably for fans while getting the fans first access and selling out every show to end up significantly in the black. They ultimately want to make their fans happy, because their careers depend on it. Unfortunately, this is not always the outcome.

There are a number of reasons why fans don’t end up being happy, but by far, the most impactful one is the secondary resale market for concert tickets. If tickets are sold for less than what is believed to be an achievable market value, then tickets will tend to end up in the hands of re-sellers who then drive up the prices ultimately paid by the fans, which can lead to fan disenfranchisement. The artist almost never receives any benefit from this mark up, but in some cases the ticketing companies do.

Before we get into why this remains the status quo of the concert industry and where there is hope for change, let’s look at a few recent examples of tour ticketing strategy and the results.

Taylor Swift — The Eras Tour

In 2023, no artist in popular music is more revered by their fanbase than Taylor Swift. She gives her fans a feeling of connection and purpose like no other. It’s not a surprise that she would want her tickets priced reasonably so that her core fanbase would not be priced out of seeing her. Her strategy for pricing was “fan-friendly” and unfortunately technology-dependent. A decision was apparently made at the onset of the tour to put multiple shows in multiple markets on sale simultaneously and the sales had to be paused multiple times as a result of the inability of the ticketing platform to process the massive response. The demand for tickets was far greater than the supply and the pricing was well below what fans were willing to pay. Most fans were unable to get tickets in the “verified fan” primary on sales throughout the tour and brokers had an absolute bonanza of a summer at the financial expense of fans, parents of fans whose bank accounts had a very Cruel Summer. Luckily, the show was brilliant and most have shaken it off.

Winners: Ticket Re-sellers & Secondary Market Ticketing Platforms

Losers: Fans & Parents of Fans

Grade: D+

Bruce Springsteen & The E-Street Band — Summer of 2023 World Tour

At the age of 73, Bruce Springsteen shows no signs of slowing down as a live performer and has the box office receipts to show for it. Throughout most of his career, Bruce was the artist that refused to price out his working-class fans. If the legislation existed to prevent resale of tickets everywhere, Bruce’s front-row tickets would still be $125. Sadly, that’s not the case and the front row tickets are closer to averaging $1000. The reality is that this is what they’re actually worth. Bruce’s strategy for pricing was “if you can’t beat ‘em” meets pseudo-dynamic pricing based on secondary market activity. While brokers certainly weren’t shut out from making their lift, it was nowhere near the cash avalanche that they saw from the Eras Tour. Bruce made out well, but it’s certainly not the Glory Days.

Winners: Bruce, The Promoter, Venues, Ticketing Platform

Losers: Working-class fans

Grade: B

The Cure — Shows of a Lost World Tour 2023

Iconic Goth-Rock band The Cure launched their 2023 tour with a pledge from frontman Robert Smith to price the tickets affordably for most fans. Smith was extremely vocal about the transparency of fees on the ticketing platforms and the band went to great lengths to prevent brokers from controlling the market. Their strategy was simply “Do the best we can for our fans with what we can control”. A Lovesong to their fans, if you will. While some states like New York and Illinois have laws protecting re-seller rights and restrictions couldn’t be enforced, the overall result was lower ticket prices overall for fans and even the t-shirts were priced under 30 bucks. Happy fans makes happy bands. Not quite a perfect strategy but the closest of the summer.

Winners: The Cure, The Fans

Losers: Ticket Resellers, Secondary Market Platforms

Grade: A-

The “Farewell” or is it “Fare Well” Tours

We must mention the slew of rock icons bidding farewell to the stage (or not). KISS, Aerosmith, The Eagles, Foreigner to name a few of the lot supposedly ending their touring careers. Almost all follow the same strategy of “squeezing every last dollar” out of their core fan base as a last windfall. Prices are averaging double what they were on the previous tour and even triple for the final few dates. What is happening in some cases however is that the fans are feeling like they’ve seen it before and “Won’t Be Fooled Again”. Ticket prices for some Aerosmith “Peace Out” dates appear to have been lowered already. In general, if fans are able to get tickets to the shows on the primary ticketing release and not being gouged by brokers, the strategy isn’t a complete failure, although it can result in some empty seats and broke fans.

Winners: The band members’ kids and grandkids

Losers: Everyone else

Grade: C-

So, what can artists do?

Until laws are changed either making tickets non-transferable or limiting resale parameters, the only way a significant improvement can happen is by getting tickets directly to authenticated real fans, not just buyers deemed as “verified not bot or broker”. Technologies now exist making this more than possible, it is a question of intent, rather than capability. The recent FIFA Women’s World Cup in Australia and New Zealand (admittedly a sporting rather than music event) showed that ticket prices could be kept extremely accessible while allowing resale within limited parameters, and be a massive success.

Earlier this year, a consortium of music management companies and agencies teamed up with LiveNation leading the charge to establish a webpage called fairticketing.com which launched in late February 2023 and advocated for reforms nationally on many ticketing issues. The most recent news post is from March, which hopefully isn’t indicative of the progress being made. Regardless, it’s the artists themselves who need to advocate for change because only they are ultimately responsible to their fans.

ArtistVerified is a two-sided platform designed to authenticate artist and fan digital identity and connect them directly and permanently, for the benefit of both parties. ArtistVerified will launch it’s FanApp and Artist Platform in early 2024.