Live Nation’s CEO thinks concert tickets are “underpriced”

Some people think CEOs are too tall

Of course he does, it's Capitalism, which will always incentivize firms to get as many people as possible, to pay as much as possible, for as little as possible.

I'm so glad I feel no need to actually go to concerts.

I've been to 2 since 2017 or 2018. Rammstein for the show they put on (was a lot of fun and this was before the allegations; wouldn't go see them now) and then there's an Estonian hip hop band that got back together for a reunion tour, a decade after they were last active. So I went to see them, as their shit was actually good.
Now that I got those done, I doubt I'll be going to another concert or festival anytime soon. There's only a few artists I'd want to go see live and the biggest one is notorious for NOT doing world tours and another one already did my country this summer when I couldn't attend.
Key part is I only want to see artists live whose shows are special, or childhood favorites that are still active.
Me too. I haven't been to a show in 10-ish years. Don't miss it at all.

Ffs man, the prices are out of control for concerts. Live Nation needs to have their monopoly broken up.

This for sure. Once they consolidated everything, they raised the ticket fees and the venue fees for artists. They charge more and most artists makes less. Live Nation is a textbook example of a monopoly fucking over the consumer.

Too many concerts are not about the music anymore, too many events are becoming overinflated. And thus overpriced.

I watched parts of a Katy Perry show on TV lately: with every song came different costumes, lights, fire and explosion effects, acrobats, lasers, smoke, vehicles, waterfalls, bubbles, confetti, inflatables, whatnot onto the stage... It was a total mess and utterly exaggerated.

Are people really all so numb that they need these extreme overstimulations to feel something?

Meanwhile the local band is performing for 50 bucks and a couple of free drinks
With pop music, maybe. They arent written to be appealing in and of themselves. Pop music is a pretty strict style and structure with the same bass line and same few chords. Then they are played on the radio ad nauseum, so that when it's first released you become familiar with the song enough to like it. As a batch of pop songs start to become old, another batch is released with similar style and structure. There's hardly anything new.
In order to keep people excited about a pop song that went through that life cycle 10+ years ago, there needs to be more. Don't forget that there are quite a few pop performers who rely on auto tune because they can't sing in tune, so they are just lip-syncing on stage. I'm sure some of the spectacle is also to keep the performers going and energetic during performances of the same pop crap they've toured with for more than a decade.
- This uh, is untrue.
  There are pop acts that have very complicated music, and there are ones that don't.
  Just like with rock music or even rap music.
- Auto tune is not a magical bullet that fixes being unable to sing. It can only correct tune.
- Every music genre today has representatives who are subject to the maximization of capitalist exploitation. Not just pop music, even if this may be the pinnacle. Even so-called subversive music styles like punk or black metal are not left out in this development.
  Of course you can still always find concerts in small venues and subcultures. My point is: when executives in the music industry claim that many events are far too cheap, it just means that their offers are already far too inflated and they still can't get enough.
Depends on the band. Popular trendy groups are going to have a lot of gee-whiz effects. I’ve probably been to a dozen shows over the last few years and seen zero fireworks, and the only costume change was a singer taking off a jacket after getting too hot on stage.

I mean from an economics standpoint if people are willing to pay higher prices on tickets being resold then they are underpriced. The price people are willing to pay is the "true" value of the thing. Personally I think concerts are too expensive even at list prices but artists are consistently selling out venues at these prices and even higher because people are paying more for tickets on secondary markets. Obviously there are people for whom seeing Taylor Swift is actually worth over a thousand dollars, and to be honest, if that's how much it is worth to them there's not much you can do to stop them from going, and I'm not sure I even want to. I might go see Taylor Swift for $40 a ticket just for the experience but is that really worth denying it to some super fan willing to pay 10x that? I won't get nearly as much from the experience as they will, and it's obviously not worth it to me.

Your economics argument assumes competition where there is none. Alas, it is unsound.
- I am not assuming competition. The fact of the matter is that people are paying these prices for tickets regardless of who is selling them. Nobody needs to go see Taylor Swift to live (in spite of how some people feel) and yet they are still shelling out for these absurd markups on resale tickets. That's what I am saying here. People are willing to pay what these tickets are being sold for, so that is their value.

It's 2025 and people can't boycott a company that over sells tickets, saying "I can't miss Taylor Swift".

Aren’t Live Nation the Astroworld guys? Yeaaahh not gonna give those guys any credence whatsoever

Not just Astroworld, they do most concerts in the US and a bunch outside of it.
Live Nation has been linked to at least 200 deaths and 750 injuries at its events in seven countries since 2006. From 2016 to 2019, they had also been cited for at least ten OSHA violations, fined for several more serious incidents, and sued civilly at least once for a concert incident.

Well I think he's stealing too much of our oxygen & should be stopped.

When they stop making bread and games available, the jig is almost up.

From a purely economics standpoint, when scalpers are able to sell at a higher price, yes they are underpriced.

But doing so limits access to cultural events to only those that can afford them.

Not true. Economic models typically assume competition exists. This is a monopoly, so the models don't actually work here.
"Cultural" like the bacterial culture between my toes, maybe.

I agree.

Charge concertgoers as much as they're willing to pay.

So, I think we, as a seaciety, need to start waluigiing ceos.
If to Luigi someone is to kill them, then to waluigi someone must mean that we create someone. As life is the opposite of death, so too is waluigi the opposite of Luigi.
Therefore, it is time we start impregnating the wives of CEOs.

Underpriced for who? 😑

Personally I rarely go to concerts any more, part of that is life circumstances part of it is I just can't justify the prices.
The thing is he's probably right, people are buying the tickets, people are scalping tickets and making a profit, therefore there are people willing to pay more than face for the tickets, on that basis he's right.
Doesn't make it fair, doesn't make it morally right, doesn't make it healthy for the industry.

This, of course, does not factor in the problem of scalpers and the hugely increased fees charged on the secondary market.

Well, if tickets for a given band are being scalped, then it's a good sign that they're probably initially selling below market rate.

No, it's a sign of an improperly regulated market.
- People won't scalp what won't sell.
  You're right that scalping is an issue that could be addressed. But if people are going to pay the high prices, then most bands/venues will charge those prices.
- If the tickets were auctioned, they would basically be sold at market value. You submit the highest price you are willing to pay for the section you want, and the system eliminates the lowest bids until you get to the set of people that bid higher that match the number of seats. Those people get the seats at $1 higher than the highest bid eliminated.
- tbh how do you regulate the ticket market to demotivate scalpers?
I think that would depend on how you define both the words market and rate.
Simply because some people are buying tickets that were scalped and sold at higher prices, doesn't mean that the scalp price is the true rate.
When you raise prices you actually change your market demographic. The more affluent you require your demographic to be, the less available customers you will have.
If tickets are bought even entirely by scalpers, then live nation is still selling every ticket they have and should therefore be able to profit. If they raise prices, there will still be scalpers but now they have more risk that there's less buyers.
Honestly though, everyone is probably better off saving money and watching local performances and giving money directly to the venue and bands.
The last time I went to a large event that was well priced, it was an insane amount of sweaty people rubbing against me for about 6 hours, most of that was spent waiting, and I got the flu afterwards. It really turned me off to large venues.
Always have been. We had a system where bands didn't make as much as they humanly could because it was generally accepted that the art of live music wasn't made just for the enjoyment of the highest bidders in society. And this is still largely true from most artists' perspective. But they aren't the one setting the prices anymore and profit maximizing, when playing in most medium-to-large venues in NA.

Well I think live nations CEO could use a bullet in a non non vital area to make him rethink his position