Did you recently buy tickets for Harry Styles Love on Tour show and are you still reeling from the price?? Me too. I didn’t buy tickets and I’m balking at the extortionate price the tickets went for. Since when have concert tickets cost over €120? This is sheer madness and quite simply, unbelievable.
I remember fondly the days when concert tickets use to cost €30 and that was enough for them to cost. Now you would be lucky if you got a concert ticket for €50! Usually, you would be looking at between €70-€100 for tickets alone. Bear in mind, this is only the ticket price. This hasn’t factored in the cost of petrol/public transport, any hotel stays or food costs. And what about merch? There’s yet another hidden cost to concerts.
So why are concert ticket prices rising? The artist may be better in terms of vocal range or popularity, but does that really give them the permission to hike the prices of tickets sky-high? I am an avid concert-goer – let’s compare some ticket prices from shows I’ve been to & see if any were worth the price and deserved to charge the prices they did.
2014 – starting out strong here with One Direction. When the teenage boyband graces the stage of Croke Park I was lucky enough to attend. The tickets were priced between €60 and €100. At the time that seemed like a significant amount of money, but we all know that if One Direction were to announce a comeback tour (I’m praying they do!), ticket prices will be well into the hundreds. While you could argue that they need to pay for a million different things associated with running a tour, these boys have now made their millions and could easily afford to put on a show and not charge everyone an arm and a leg.
2017 & 2020 – The Script. These concerts are probably one of the more affordable yet still famous concerts in my collection. Both times we saw the Dublin band in the 3Arena, our tickets cost €50. While not sky high as some others, foR a Dublin band we thought it could have been somewhat cheaper.
2017 – The 1975. These tickets were cheap! The English band played Malahide Castle and while I was lucky to win a pair of tickets, we had to buy one for €40, which for a band so popular was extremely cheap.
2018 – Could I really make a comparison of concert ticket prices without including my Lord and Saviour, Taylor Swift?? No, glad we’ve established that. I wasn’t originally supposed to go to this concert, because at €300 a pop, we were NOT about to shell out almost €1000 on concert tickets alone. Thankfully we won a bunch, and it seems we weren’t the only ones upset about the price – approximately half the attendees had won tickets too.
2019 – Bon Jovi. Myself and my mum debated about going to this concert, because tickets were extremely steep, at €100 a pop. We ended up buying second hand tickets a week before, but that barely saved us €20. We obviously had no other choice but to pay if we wanted to attend but felt it worth it for such a popular band.
While a lot of the artists are bigger names, it still doesn’t explain why they feel justified in charging almost €100 for a single concert ticket. Particularly while the minimum wage is still so low in Ireland and costs for everything are increasing, concert tickets should not rise unless our income and ability to pay for them should rise too!