Andrew Hozier-Byrne (professionally known as Hozier) is a musician mostly known for his debut single and mass hit, “Take Me To Church” from 2013. Now, a decade and two albums later, he released a new album during the summer of 2023, Unreal Unearth. He has also started touring.
Fans located in Virginia were ecstatic when tour dates were released and he announced he would be coming to the Virginia Beach Amphitheater. But there was a problem: tickets.
The cheapest tickets available were about $120 with the most expensive being over $1,500. These prices have been a problem lately.
“[The ticket prices] are absolutely unreasonable. Especially floor tickets because if you’re not in the front row you can’t see the show, and yet they still go for thousands of dollars,” said junior Kendall Warlick.
In fact, according to a survey done by Insuranks, the average concert-goer in 2023 pays $113 on a single ticket, as opposed to ten years ago, when the average ticket price was $79.
Some of the price increases can be attributed to inflation, but what else has caused ticket prices to go up? Despite other factors, there is one major thing to blame: scalpers.
Scalpers are people who buy up stock and sell the item at a profit. It is a widespread problem. It is what caused a PlayStation 5 to be up to $800 shortly after its release in 2020.
While there are measures in place to try and prevent scalping, they are often not enough. Mattel exemplifies this with nearly every new collector doll they release being sold out in seconds due to scalpers and the bots that they use to purchase large quantities. While most measures are some sort of Captcha to keep bots from purchasing, some sites also limit the amount of product that can be bought with a single credit card, but scalpers have found ways around these.
When tickets are this expensive from both resellers and official venues, it discourages people from going and prevents fans who don’t have immense amounts of disposable income from being able to go to and enjoy the concerts.
“I think the tickets [for a recent concert I attended] were about $60 per person,” said junior Marlee Thimons. “I don’t think I would have paid for them if they were $120 for each ticket.”
Rocketing ticket prices alienate fans. Scalpers alienate them more. Concerts are supposed to be fun, but these factors taking hold of ticket sales are starting to drain that.
If you want to see Hozier, be ready to fork out a good chunk of change for the tickets.
