Written by: Julia Pougnet-Green
When I joined the Ticketmaster presale queue in the hopes of snagging two tickets to Olivia Dean’s show in Toronto, I was distraught to see that there were almost 60,000 people in front of me, all waiting significant amounts of time to get a ticket, no matter the price. Unfortunately for me, I was not one of the lucky fans able to obtain one. Curious, I googled the capacity of Scotiabank Arena in Toronto, only to find that it was less than 20,000 – I never even had a chance. This kind of occurrence is not rare by any means. It even has a title – The Ticketmaster War.
We have seen this happen time and time again. An artist announces a tour, fans get excited and demand rises, but only a lucky few are able to get a ticket. A notable example of this was Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour – Forbes says that of the 14 million people who tried getting tickets, only about 2 million were able to (including bots), and some were being resold for over $28,000 (Dellatto, 2022). This presale, along with many others, happened through Ticketmaster’s Verified Fan program, in which people register to be a verified fan through the artist and a select few are given an access code for purchasing tickets. Swift’s tour continued into 2024, where fans could be found paying $2500+ just to get in the door (Brooks, 2024). So here is the puzzle: somehow, on these markets exist price ceilings, scarcity, and rationing all in one, which creates an insane amount of excess demand. So how could an equilibrium outcome exist, in which artists bring in enough revenue and fans aren’t paying thousands of dollars, with these constraints, and how would it work with platforms like Ticketmaster and AXS?
On the supply side, it is quite simple. Artists can only perform so many times, and venues can only fit a certain number of people, so only a finite number of tickets can be sold. Figuring out the details of a tour, especially one for an artist as established as Taylor Swift or even Olivia Dean, takes months and is usually done 8-24 months before a tour even starts (Pastukhov, 2019). It is a combination of work from artists, booking agents, local promoters and tour promoters, and the venues themselves. However, entertainment conglomerates like Live Nation, who coincidentally owns Ticketmaster, have recently taken on the jobs of all these people, internalizing the whole tour-scheduling process by owning or establishing partnerships with a massive network of venues (Pastukhov, 2019). Essentially, the process becomes just them and the artist – whether that’s an improvement, I’m not sure, but it could be worth more research into whether conglomerates like Live Nation are responsible for such limited supply. State and federal governments have also alleged that Live Nation is a monopoly, and have pursued legal action (U.S. Department of Justice, 2024), which is most likely a large contributor to such limited supply, as they have so much control over the market.
The demand side is much more abstract. If you have tried getting tickets to a highly sought after show, you have probably seen an artist add new dates to the tour immediately after a pre-sale is sold out. This is just one of the many marketing tactics that tour organizers use to manipulate demand. Here is an example: in 2023, I was lucky enough to see Adele perform at her residency in Las Vegas. It was at Caesar’s Colosseum, which is a beautiful, intimate, very small venue, with only about 4,100 seats. Now, if you know anything about Adele, you can infer that the tickets sold out within seconds. Her initial announcement was for just 36 shows, which ended up taking place from late 2022-early 2023. As an Adele superfan, I freaked out when she announced 34 more shows occurring later that year, and bought tickets during her Verified Fan presale for an insane price (yes, it was worth it, it is Adele after all). She ended up announcing a third leg of shows too, for a total of 102 shows. Now, you can imagine how crazy demand would’ve been when everyone thought she was only performing 36 shows – and then only 34 more, and then only 32. It makes it seem so much more finite than the 102 shows she actually did perform.
In recent decades, the live experience has taken precedence over anything else within the music industry. Artists use crazy visuals, huge stages, and new technology to create a show that fans want to experience more than anything. Furthermore, with the rise of streaming services, most fans are not buying CDs or vinyls, and artists make pennies on the dollar from Spotify and other platforms, so most of their income comes from putting on live ticketed performances. Demand for these performances is not likely to change. So how can we ensure that fans aren’t paying thousands of dollars for one ticket?
Let’s look at Europe as an example. Artists’ international tours routinely include destinations like London, Berlin, and Paris, who have similar levels of demand to the US, especially for artists like Adele and Taylor Swift. However, they never struggle with ticket prices rising out of control. Tickets to the Eras Tour were 87% cheaper for the Paris shows than the average ticket in the US (Brooks, 2024). Why is that?
First of all, Europe generally has an “aggressive regulatory environment”, where laws limit how high tickets can be marked up above face value. Countries like France and Germany limit reselling tickets to 20% above face value, whereas the UK restricts who is allowed to resell tickets (Brooks, 2024). The US struggles with deceptive marketing practices and a lack of regulation, which is most likely the bulk of the reason why prices get out of control. Adopting practices such as those in France or the UK would likely transform the concert industry in the US, dramatically reduce prices for consumers, and keep the bulk of tickets out of the hands of scalpers. However, it is not clear whether Americans would really vote for these hard restrictions, as they prove quite adverse to government restrictions, in spite of their outrage at current prices. Despite this, it is clear that something must be done to reduce prices, and I argue that we should look to Europe as a model for possible regulation and legislation.
References
Brooks, D. (2024, May 2). Why Are Taylor Swift Eras Tour Tickets So Much Cheaper in Europe? Billboard. https://www.billboard.com/business/touring/taylor-swift-eras-tour-tickets-cheaper-europe-1235671760/
Dellatto, M. (2022). 14 Million People Tried To Buy Taylor Swift Pre-Sale Tickets, Live Nation Chair Says. Forbes. Retrieved November 24, 2025, from https://www.forbes.com/sites/marisadellatto/2022/11/17/14-million-people-tried-to-buy-taylor-swift-pre-sale-tickets-live-nation-chair-says/
Olivia Dean – Sabrina Carpenter at BST Hyde Park – 20250706 – 112.jpg – Wikimedia Commons. (2025, July 6). Wikimedia.org. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Olivia_Dean_-_Sabrina_Carpenter_at_BST_Hyde_Park_-_20250706_-_112.jpg
Pastukhov, D. (2019).The Mechanics of Touring: How the Live Music Industry Works. Retrieved November 25, 2025, from https://soundcharts.com/blog/mechanics-of-touring
U.S. Department of Justice. (2024, May 23). Justice Department Sues Live Nation-Ticketmaster for Monopolizing Markets Across the Live Concert Industry. Justice.gov. https://www.justice.gov/archives/opa/pr/justice-department-sues-live-nation-ticketmaster-monopolizing-markets-across-live-concert