Whether it’s Harry Styles selling out multiple dates at Wembley, fans shelling out hundreds for Beyoncé or even forgoing summer vacations to afford Taylor Swift tickets, the demand for live music has never seemed so high.
Despite the cost of living crisis, consumer spending on the entertainment sector rose last month by a remarkable 15.8% year-on-year, according to recent data from Barclaycard, with the surge in demand for gigs bolstered by pre-sales for Swift’s Eras Tour concerts, as well as the upcoming Foo Fighters stadium tour.
In-person experiences have remained a priority for the British public. One in 10 people told the credit card company they had cut back on other expenses to be able to afford tickets to concerts or movies, while 10% said they bought a ticket in July that they “couldn’t really afford”.
You only have to check social media when a major international artist announces a new tour to see how much of a fervour there is to secure access to one of the dates. However, with the cost of a gig ticket on the rise and shows selling out minutes after going on sale, fans are having to go to ever greater lengths to see these set-piece events.
“We’re seeing a greater volume this year than ever before in terms of resale, which is interesting because I wasn’t quite sure what this year had in store due to the cost of living crisis,” says Richard Davies, founder of the fan-to-fan ticket exchange Twickets. He says the website has seen a 60% increase in ticket resales this year compared with 2022.
“There’s still Fomo [fear of missing out], people are still wanting to get out more after Covid, and there’s still a backlog of tours, with some acts coming back a second time, like Coldplay playing again this year,” he adds.
“I certainly don’t think pricing has put people off, that’s for sure. We’ve seen an average ticket price go up from upwards of £50 to more than £70. There’s lots of demand out there and people are happy to pay the money.”
However, despite the enduring popularity of Glastonbury, Davies says resales to summer festivals have “plateaued” and failed to increase in line with the growing gigs market. “I think maybe the rise in ticket prices there has had an impact because it’s just getting so expensive now,” he says.
“There’s a lot more choice on the festival circuit these days, be it weekend ones or day events, and there’s not a lot to differentiate between them either. A lot of the same acts are playing the same festivals now, so there’s no real need to get out to a specific festival as you might catch them somewhere else.”
One reason for the decline in popularity of traditional weekend festivals, such as Reading and Leeds or Isle of Wight, may be the growth in one-day events with multiple acts, such as the British Summer Time concerts held at London’s Hyde Park. This year, all 10 days – including ones headlined by Lana Del Rey, Pink and Bruce Springsteen – sold out.
Jim King, chief executive of European festivals at AEG Presents, which runs BST, says this year’s series sold 550,000 tickets – up from 535,000 last year. For this summer’s Take That-led event, ticket prices varied from £101.15 for general admission to VIP hospitality packages costing nearly £500.
“I think we are priced really well,” says King. “These are for the world’s biggest artists, who are sometimes playing their last ever show or sometimes touring London once every three, four, five years.”
While demand for huge outdoor gigs and arena tours skyrockets, the picture for smaller, local venues is very different. The Boileroom, in Guildford, has always been one of the more prominent stop-offs for touring artists over the years, helping to launch the careers of Ed Sheeran, The 1975 and Tom Odell, among others.
But Dom Frazer, the venue’s director, says the surge in demand at the highest echelons of the industry simply isn’t filtering down to venues such as hers. “I’ve always tried to be positive but specifically if we look at the number of artists touring regional towns like Guildford, there has been a huge decline of about 50% in terms of numbers,” she says.
“Labels and agents and managers are looking much more to centralised touring routes than booking smaller, regional places. That’s what we hear a lot of the time, artists doing the London and Brighton shows, whereas before they would have come out to Guildford and seen us as really key in building the fanbase.”
She adds: “Maybe people are taking less risks because of the cost of living to see music they haven’t heard of or seen before. I think people are maybe risk averse. If you haven’t got much income, are you going to use it on something you know you love or spend some of it on something new?”
Even big acts have come unstuck overestimating the demand from fans. Last month images of Mötley Crüe performing to a half-empty Wembley Stadium at a joint headline event with Def Leppard were shared widely on social media, while Primal Scream and Sister Sledge gigs were being offered to fans for a £10 admin fee.
Anyone ever seen a crowd as sparse as this before? Taken at the Def Leppard/Motley Crue show at Wembley Stadium. Surely a promotor should know better, or change the venue when sales are low? Move the gig somewhere more suitable like my local?? pic.twitter.com/zUpCSfud3n
— Jonathan Dean (@JonathanDean_) July 5, 2023
And while other forms of live entertainment such as West End theatre have been able to boast stars like Sheridan Smith breaking box office records in Shirley Valentine, other shows, such as Ain’t Too Proud and Aspects of Love, have had to announce early closures of runs because of poor ticket sales.
Yet fans remain willing to go the distance to see their favourites, literally. Last year, the number of music tourists – people travelling outside their local area or region for live music – reached 14.4 million, of whom 1.1 million were foreign tourists, according to UK Music.
Jamie Njoku-Goodwin, chief executive of the industry body, says: “One of the questions people have had over the past two years is how much of this is a post-Covid thing or is this a new norm where there’s these huge level of demand for live events going through the roof?”
He has seen this dedication first-hand, with a close friend giving up her annual vacation to Greece to be able to buy tickets to see Swift play in Paris. “I think the pandemic probably has had a big impact on it in terms of making people realise how much they missed it. I think people realised how much they liked it when they weren’t able to do it.”
Njoku-Goodwin says rising prices are understandable. “I don’t think it’s the case that there are greedy promoters charging whatever they want, there are added costs. When VAT was brought down during the pandemic and brought back up again, we warned this will mean ticket prices would get more expensive. It’s not just VAT of course, there’s energy costs and in a cost of living crisis there’s also an impact on businesses and suppliers’ costs.”
And while major artists such as Beyoncé and Swift generate billions for the entertainment economy, it seems unlikely that the clamour to see stars perform live is going to subside any time soon.
