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Fans Hit Replay on Pricey Concert Splurges

Fans Hit Replay on Pricey Concert Splurges

These days, scoring tickets to the hottest concerts is both a logistical nightmare and major financial feat. Prices are through the roof, but that hasn’t stopped young fans from coughing up the cash, The New York Times reports.

Bankrate’s chief financial analyst Greg McBride has noticed a shift: for young concertgoers—born between about 1997 and 2012—live music feels less like a luxury and more like a necessity.

“Consumers don’t like the idea of dynamic pricing, but there is a renewed ‘YOLO’ [you only live once] attitude over the past few years since the pandemic and, increasingly, that drives a devil-may-care approach when it comes to spending on discretionary experiences,” McBride told NBC New York.

Dynamic pricing—where ticket prices spike based on demand—works similarly to how ride-hailing apps jack up fares during peak hours, explains Joe Bennett, a forensic musicologist at Berklee College of Music. While consumers have largely accepted surge pricing for Uber and Lyft, there was once an expectation that concert tickets would stay at a fixed rate.

That all changed when Ticketmaster introduced its version of dynamic pricing 14 years ago. Now, it’s the industry standard, and post-pandemic demand has only made things worse.

“You can see why it’s tempting,” Bennett said. “The live music industry is constantly leaving money on the table that fans would pay. Dynamic pricing is sort of a capitalist inevitability given the forces at play, but I don’t want to live in a world where it costs $1,000 for my daughter to see Taylor Swift.”

And yet, plenty of fans are willing to fork over four (or five!) figures for a front-row experience. A report from Bread Financial found that nearly two in five millennial and Gen Z Americans have spent up to $5,000 on concert tickets—some with zero hesitation about going into debt for it.

FOMO appears to be the culprit. A survey by marketing agency Merge found that 86 percent of Gen Z respondents admitted to overspending on concerts. And the obsession is not just about the music—it’s about the adventure. Passion tourism (i.e. traveling for concerts) is booming, with Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour proving just how far fans are willing to go, CNBC reports.

For young fans, concerts are not merely entertainment—they are an investment in the moment. And for now, at least, that moment is worth every penny.

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