When Robson Scott, a live music fan from Newcastle, went to his first gig in 2011, he remembers paying around £30 for a standing ticket to see Katy Perry at Utilita arena. Ten years later, he says, “for arena gigs of that calibre you’d usually be paying over £65.” That’s a rise that far exceeds the UK’s rate of inflation during that time, which was 2.6% per year, on average, or the equivalent of £8.90.
A scan of current ticket prices for artists who are at the superstar level that Perry was in 2011, when she’d had a string of No 1 hits and had released her most successful album Teenage Dream a year earlier, confirms Scott’s experience. Standing tickets for Billie Eilish’s 2022 tour are around £75 for UK arena dates, for example, while Robson recently paid £89 for a standing ticket to see Harry Styles at Emirates Old Trafford.
