Do you dream of seeing Arctic Monkeys at the Bell Center on September 2? Start saving.
At the time of our research, the cheapest ticket retailed for $238. The most expensive were displayed at nearly $1,000.
For Peter Gabriel, who will perform about ten days later, we see tickets on resale at more than $2,000.
We’ve seen worse, you might say. It’s true. We still remember the $13,000 tickets to the Blink-182 old punks show last year. Something to make you want to sing Say it Ain’t So/I Will Not Go.
Not to mention that seeing artists like Taylor Swift or Madonna without being perched in the heights of the bleachers can cost the price of a trip – or the equivalent of a month’s rent, or even more.
It has become unhealthy.
Of course, the good old law of supply and demand is at work here. As long as people are willing to stretch greenbacks, others will be happy to pocket them.
We also know that we will never see the ticket prices of the 1990s again. At the time, musicians made their living by selling records and touring to promote them. Today, with music accessible for little or nothing on the web, it’s the tours that generate the money. It is therefore normal that the shows cost more.
Except that the excess that we are witnessing raises several questions.
One of the most intriguing is where the fan dollars end up.
The giant Ticketmaster now uses dynamic pricing to adjust prices according to demand, as is done for airline tickets.
Those who are familiar with the system take advantage of it to buy when prices are low and sell when they go up.
Thanks to sites like Stubhub or Billets.ca, reselling tickets is as easy as it is lucrative. Ticketmaster responded with its own resale site. Banknotes – and dollars – thus change hands like on the stock exchange.
How much of the winnings end up in the artists’ pockets? Which fails in those of Ticketmaster or resellers? “These data, we do not know them. It’s a problem,” says Johanne Brunet, cultural industry marketing expert at HEC Montréal.
However, we know that artists and ticket sellers do not always get along like thieves at the fair. From Pearl Jam in the 1990s to The Cure today, some have gone to the front lines against the mighty Ticketmaster.
On condition of anonymity, an actor in the entertainment industry also confided to our colleague Marissa Groguhé that artists, agents and producers are “enraged” to see tickets selling for double the price they have determined “without touching a cent of this capital gain1 “.
In 2018, the Toronto Star and CBC even revealed that Ticketmaster is recruiting resellers itself to drive price escalation.2 !
There are obviously profiteers in the boat. And it seems clear that a big cleaning is needed within the entertainment ticket industry.
The other problem with sky-high ticket prices is that the discretionary budget of music lovers is not infinite.
When you pay $600 for a Peter Gabriel show, there’s less money left in your wallet to see Gab Bouchard or Ariane Roy.
Stratospheric prices thus contribute to the concentration of income on a handful of international stars and harm the vigor of our cultural scene.
According to the Observatoire de la culture et des communications du Québec, the average price of an English song show is more than double ($72) than that of a French song show ($32.50). The gap is widening and that is worrying.
However, tools exist to fight against ticket inflation. In Quebec, the Consumer Protection Act stipulates that a merchant cannot sell a show ticket above the price authorized by the promoter.
The question is whether, during ticket resales, sites like Ticketmaster or Stubhub act as merchants or whether, as they claim, they only put sellers and buyers in contact.
The Consumer Protection Office refuses to tell us what interpretation it makes of the question, but ensures to look into it “with great attention”.
It’s time to get some answers from this provincial government agency that is supposed to be defending consumers. Because if the legal basis allows it, Quebec must have the courage to take action.
From food to your phone plan to gasoline, the price of many goods and services is subject to scrutiny, demands for transparency and public discussion. It’s time to include the show tickets in the lot.