Why are concert tickets so expensive and hard to get?
Update: 2025-03-24
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Getting concert tickets is harder than it used to be – and it means many Canadians have been shut out or forced to pay much higher prices with a reseller.
Is this ever going to change? What needs to happen?
Host Kris McCusker took those questions to Dan Wall of Live Nation Inc., which merged with Ticketmaster in 2010.
It is Wall’s first an in-depth feature interview on the subject since he joined the company in 2023.
He describes a complicated landscape – but says there are some options – while a court case in the U.S is scheduled to proceed.
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After US congressional hearings which held Ticketmaster's feet to the fire, they haven't been able to be as brazen with their scams as the One Direction days, but I remember Prince's "sold out in minutes" concert in Calgary, which, about a week before the performance "released" more tickets. The concert hall was a third empty when it finally kicked off. This Big Story was a bit of a dud and not very well researched in my estimation.
Years ago, my adolescent daughter, wanting to see One Direction's concert in Vancouver showed me the curious phenomenon of tickets flying off the StubHub website at 4x face value, before the official release date. We sat around like chumps hovering over Ticketmaster official release site, to watch the countdown go from 2,1,0 "sold out".
https://youtu.be/N-HCqL38WdY?si=53cT6W91Lwo5ZlmD.