Last weekend, I had the honor to see one of my favorite bands of all time in Columbus. The concert itself was fantastic, as expected, but I couldn’t help but feel like I had been robbed, and Deftones were not the perpetrator.
Aside from a mild snoozefest of an opener, the show itself was a euphoric experience that I am still reminiscing on as I am force-fed videos of lead singer Chino Moreno screaming his heart out on my TikTok algorithm. Unfortunately, this is not a concert review as I am more frustrated with the current climate of live events than I am excited to see my favorite artists.
Given the recent announcement of the upcoming Zach Bryan performance at the Joan C. Edwards Stadium here on campus, many of my friends and family members who do not attend live events frequently were nothing less than perplexed by the outrageous prices.
This was a shock to me as over the last few years I have been attending live shows, I have known nothing but fees upon fees and scraping by to afford tickets. This led me to wonder what exactly went wrong as my generation has had no option but to sell a kidney to afford a ticket.
With that being said, this concert was on the cheaper end of live events I have attended, yet this was also the worst set of seats I have had out of the dozen shows I have been to. Nosebleed tickets should not be upwards of $100, yet here we are in 2025, submitting to the monopoly that Ticketmaster has created and their peculiar little scheme they call “dynamic pricing.”
Introduced in 2011, dynamic ticket pricing was implemented as a way to stop scalpers from buying cheaper tickets and reselling them for inflated prices. The problem with this system is since the prices are manually determined and are constantly fluctuating, the higher the demand, the higher the price.
So, instead of curbing scalpers, consumers are being punished for the resell market taking advantage of this system, and scalpers are still a massive roadblock for those who wish to attend these events.
See, touring as an artist used to be intended to promote album cycles and boost the sales of recently released projects. In the streaming era, artists are paid less and less for album sales as each stream they earn is only equal to a fraction of a fraction of a cent.
Given the low payout for artists, it’s no wonder so many performers rely on touring and merchandise sales (merchandise prices are a different story; $60 T-shirts are unacceptable).
In 2000, the average price of a concert ticket was around $40; in 2019, the average price doubled. Fast forward to the current concert climate, the top 10 highest-grossing tours of 2023 had an average ticket price of $150.
That $150 price tag is not for the best seats either; that is the average mid-tier seating with just an okay view of the stage.
This influx has made touring the biggest revenue stream for artists. It has created a divide between those who wish to see their favorite artists live and are not willing to tap into their rent money to do so and those who are casual fans who have the financial stability to dish out hundreds of dollars on tickets.
Many factors are to blame for the influx, and Ticketmaster’s monopoly on live events is at the forefront of the issue, but these artists we spend hundreds of dollars to see are also not innocent. I understand that musicians have bills to pay, yet those who line their pockets deserve a bit more respect as we are paying their bills and have no other purchasing options as Ticketmaster owns the market.
The Justice Department needs to speed up the Ticketmaster lawsuit, so we fans can enjoy these experiences once again because from the looks of it, prices are only rising, and I believe I can speak for many of us when I say that enough is enough.
If this keeps up, playing Guitar Hero will be the only time I will be able to afford to attend a live show.
Caden Adkins can be contacted at [email protected]
