Ticketing guru Tim Chambers oversaw a session exploring the process of pricing tour tickets, and touched upon a number of sensitive topics with his panellist guests, who emphasised the rude health of the live music sector in 2025.

Getting back to basics, agent Jules de Lattre from UTA noted that the ticket pricing method varies from artist to artist.

“We will look at historic pricing as a benchmark of where going to price the face value tickets,” he said. “We’ll look at factors including how much heat there is around the artist; the various venue capacities; and also the conversations we have with promoters on demand in their territories.”

He added, “It’s important not to arbitrarily set prices across tours – we don’t just look at the face value, but we also look at final consumer price, and that is increasingly entering into a lot of conversations we are having.”

As Chambers detailed the various service fees, venue restoration fees and other add-ons that inflate ticket pricing, Live Nation promoter Phil Bowdery noted that everyone in the value chain has to make a profit. And he countered that the ticketing service fees are necessary given their ongoing battle to prevent bots from vacuuming up ticket allocations.

“The ticketing platform is constantly updating and fighting [the bots] and there is a lot of research and development going on and they are spending hundreds of millions,” stated Bowdery. “We have to realise that they are fighting a war.”

“The artist is saying, ‘That’s my value.’ And if they are selling out, good on them, the price was right”

On the thorny subject of secondary ticketing, Bowdery told delegates that during a meeting with UK culture minister Chris Bryant earlier in the day, he had hinted that the government will announce legislation to place a cap on ticket resale.

“We have been advocating for a maximum of 10%,” said Bowdery, “the minister was very receptive and suggested that there might be an announcement in the King’s Speech later this year.”

Eventim Norway executive Marcia Titley noted that in her territory such issues are not a consideration. “I’m privileged to live in a market where we do not have same challenges of uncapped resale,” she said.

However, when talking about such controversial elements as dynamic pricing, she noted, “Pricing is subjective – as a fan you might think the cost is too high, while the artist and manager think it’s too low because of all the costs they are facing to go on tour.”

Bowdery also rejected the characterisation that ticket prices have risen beyond the rate of inflation, year-on-year.

“Costs are going up, therefore so are the ticket prices,” he said, but pointed out that the industry is currently in rude health with even the highest priced tours selling out. “The artist is saying, ‘That’s my value.’ And if they are selling out, good on them, the price was right,” added Bowdery.

And answering a question from Chambers on whether onsales such as Beyoncé were taking consumer spend out of the market, he responded: “Sure, you have to be aware, but at the moment we are in a very buoyant place – people want to go to concerts.”

“You are not selling same experience to every person. Some want to sit in the VIP section, some just want to be in the building”

AEG Presents exec Kelly Stelbasky revealed that dynamic pricing is a more accepted practice in the United States, where she uses the system often. She told delegates, “For fans, you are not selling same experience to every person. Some want to sit in the VIP section, some just want to be in the building no matter where they sit, and we need to consider all those needs to make our best guess on ticket prices.”

Nonetheless, De Lattre suggested that the industry does have a degree of responsibility toward the paying public.

“One complex point is trying to protect fans against their willingness to buy a ticket at any cost,” he said. “We need to look at the experience of that fan and was it worth the £375 ticket? There needs to be some protection there.”

Indeed, Stelbasky agreed, noting that Californian laws require all-in ticket pricing, which is proving an effective way to protect consumers.

“As we try to take better care of fans, sell more tickets and have less pressure on ourselves from social media feedback, then all-in pricing has been a good way to achieve that,” she added.

The session ended with one delegate pleading for the UK industry to work together to put pressure on the government to reconsider taxation on tickets.

“[The government] in the UK is the biggest earner from a concert ticket – they get 20% in VAT,” said the delegate. “I would ask that we all work together, with a collective voice, to argue for a better VAT rate.”

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ILMC’s annual state-of-the-nation opening session delved into the stadium boom, ticket pricing and the industry’s evolution following a huge year for live music.

Chaired by CAA’s Maria May, The Open Forum: Setting the Course brought together DF Concerts’ Geoff Ellis, Samantha Kirby Yoh of UTA, FKP Scorpio’s Folkert Koopmans and Ashish Hemrajani of India’s BookMyShow.

In her introduction, May noted it had been a “great year for some” but a “hard year for others”, and questioned whether the business needed to refresh its ideas.

“We’re seeing the massive disparity between the top end of the business and the lower end of the business needing much more support,” she said. “We’re seeing lots of ideas coming out with the levy on venues, and I feel like there’s a real need for innovation.”

However, UTA partner and co-head of global music Kirby Yoh reported positive results from the last 12 months.

“Ticket sales are doing good,” said Kirby Yoh. “I think that the headline shows are doing great. The number one thing for me is understanding the artist’s audience and then, in partnership with the local venues… understanding what is happening in each of the local markets and how we tap into the local media partners.”

“The business is as strong as it’s ever been and the appetite is there at all levels”

Kirby Yoh observed a shift in the tastes of the younger demographic.

“The audience is moving away from wanting the festival experience, and they want to actually go more to have the full two-hour-plus experience, seeing their favourite artists for £100, versus going to the festival for £500,” she said.

Glasgow-based DF chief Ellis said the business is “as strong as it’s ever been”, with the appetite for live music evident “at all levels”, and stressed the need for government support for grassroots venues.

“We have more shows this year than we did last year,” he said. “It’s not easier, because the costs are higher so the margins are tighter, but we’ve seen an appetite for ticket sales as strong as it’s ever been and lots of sold out shows, even in January with just local bands. So that appetite is there for grassroots artists, but also for the big artists as well.

“We’re seeing great sales for outdoor shows like Kendrick & SZA, which was a very high ticket price. The average ticket price isn’t huge. It’s significant, but it’s not huge. It can be £150 to buy a ticket on the floor but there’ll be tickets in the seats for £45/£55, so you’re getting that spread across the levels.”

“We’ve got to get better – and we are getting better – at pricing the house”

In response, May asked whether the industry is becoming “smarter” at pricing tickets.

“Artists want their tickets to be affordable for the mass market and that’s understandable,” said Ellis. “So we’ve got to get better – and we are getting better – at pricing the house. You’ve got an entry level ticket and a premium price ticket, so you might be paying £150 for the best seats but those people would go onto the secondary market otherwise – if you price the whole house at £75, you’re underpricing them and the artist should be getting that money.

“This secondary market shouldn’t exist, but it exists because we don’t always price it properly. You don’t price everybody out because you want the working class people to still go to live music – that’s where most of the audiences come from – but charge a premium for the small section of the house and that helps fund the cheaper tickets.”

FKP CEO Koopmans suggested that although ticket prices on headline shows were “reaching a ceiling”, there were still “enough people to pay those high ticket prices”, but raised concerns over the festival market.

“I think on festivals, there is a big problem,” he warned. “People don’t want to spend €250-300 for a festival ticket anymore. I think it’s also got to do with the change in the community, that during the pandemic… we kind of lost the generation.”

Koopmans said the situation facing grassroots venues in Germany was similar to that in the UK.

“It’s the same story,” he said. “There is hardly any subsidy from the government. You can’t make a penny playing a grassroots venue, and the venues itself are suffering. There are countries like Holland where the grassroots venues get [subsidies]. Therefore, you have a lot of shows and bands get a decent fee to play there. So from my point of view, that’s the way to go.”

“The Indian market’s going to go 10x in the next five years”

Moving onto emerging markets, Hemrajani, who is founder and CEO of Big Tree Entertainment Private Limited, which operates India’s leading online entertainment platform BookMyShow, referenced its recent successes including Coldplay’s record-breaking Ahmedabad concerts and Ed Sheeran’s six-city Indian tour.

“Ed Sheeran was unique, because as a top tier artist, we went really deep into the country,” explained Hemrajani. “It was heartening to see that we could do an end stage format produced by us. It wasn’t easy, but it was historic. The average ticket price was about $100.”

Hemrajani predicted the Indian market would balloon “10x in the next five years”, despite acknowledging shortcomings with its current infrastructure. And said its first fully-fledged arena was in the works for Mumbai.

“Arenas is very loose word in India because we have… mostly festival grounds,” he said. “‘We don’t have arenas in India. And we have a six-month window where we can do outdoor events, because our weather permits us to do events between October to April, or at best May.

“The need of the hour is actually to have indoor venues with real air conditioning and 18-20,000 capacities. We’re building an arena in Mumbai, which will be the first hard arena.

“Infrastructure continues to be a challenge, and we’re trying to solve that as you build more routing around Middle East and Southeast Asia, because the timing works. It’s the same time of the year, from October to March, April, when you can tour in the Middle East and Southeast Asia. I think anchoring around those markets is a good segue to actually building volume into that market.”

“Electronic music isn’t dead, but nightclubs have to adapt their model”

May brought up statistics showing decreasing alcohol consumption among young adults in the EU and US, plus a reduction in binge drinking in the UK, and queried whether venues in the UK needed to change their business models as a result.

“Clearly everybody needs to innovate and adapt. We’re always needing to do that as business,” offered Ellis. “You’ve just got to adapt constantly, because the market doesn’t stand still.

“The rise of country music is phenomenal, particularly in the UK. It’s always been big in Glasgow, but it’s exploded now. If any promoters out there are going, ‘I’m not going to do country music,’ they’re going to miss out big time, so we always have to evolve and adapt.

“Electronic music isn’t dead, but nightclubs have to adapt their model because, as we said, people aren’t coming in and drinking. Not everybody wants to be out until 3am anymore.”

Kirby Yoh pointed out that LCD Soundsystem had added a successful afterparty element to their New York residency.

“It is the continual that actually gets a whole new crowd that comes in later,” she said. “Secondly, they have also taken one of the bars at the back and made it an organic wine bar, bringing in local vendors. I know that’s harder, but it’s another way that has encouraged people to come back.”

On the subject of diversification, Koopmans said he was most excited by FKP’s expansion in the exhibitions world under its FKP Scorpio Entertainment (FKPE) umbrella.

“We invested quite a lot in that,” he said. We are building a [new exhibition] venue in Oberhausen. There’s a lot to be done in that area.”

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Dutch promoter Friendly Fire is offering tickets for shows at three price points for concerts as part of a pilot scheme in collaboration with Utrecht’s EKKO venue.

In an effort to keep events accessible for gig-goers on a modest income while making sustainable careers possible for artists, the FKP Scorpio-backed company is set to trial price segmentation for its shows at EKKO, De Nijverheid, ACU and De Kromme Haring in 2025.

Options include the regular ticket price, a ‘less to spend’ price (€5 cheaper), and a ‘more to spend’ price (€5 higher). A limited number of tickets, which can be adjusted where required, will be made available for the minus and plus rate per concert.

“We have a lot of conversations about ticket prices. Are they too high and do we exclude people, or are they too low, causing artists to not make ends meet or even skip the Netherlands on their tour?” explains Pien Feith, head of Dutch bookings at Friendly Fire. “To gain clarity, it is important to experiment with price segmentation. In the theatre world, there are ranks that make this possible, but in most pop venues there is only one ticket price.

“There are undoubtedly people for whom it is no problem to pay €5 more than the regular price and support an artist’s sustainable career”

“In a prosperous country like the Netherlands, there are undoubtedly people for whom it is no problem to pay €5 more than the regular price and support an artist’s sustainable career. In this way, we hope to make shows by interesting artists possible that would otherwise not take place and to make them accessible to people with a modest income.”

Friendly Fire and EKKO will conduct surveys throughout the year around the issue, and plan to share the results with the wider live sector in early 2026.

“Many of our conversations about ticket prices are currently based on assumptions,” adds EKKO programmer Dirk Baart. “We have the feeling that a part of our audience would be willing to pay a bit more for concerts, but that those same concerts are becoming less and less accessible for another part of our audience.

“With this pilot, we want to conduct a year-long study into those assumptions, so that we can gain a better insight into what the development of ticket prices actually means for artists, visitors and venues.”

Read IQ‘s article on the first 15 years of Friendly Fire here.

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Ticket price increases for European festivals are cooling off ahead of next summer, according to analysis by IQ.

Prices for full festival tickets increased by an average of 5% between 2024 and 2025, compared to almost 7% from 2023 to 2024, according to analysis of a cross-section of 20 European festivals.

The increase in festival ticket prices between 2023 and 2024 is perhaps best explained by the ballooning rise in costs caused by issues including post-Covid inflation and the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

“The cost of infrastructure has increased so much with the combination of Covid and the cost of Brexit”

German promoter DreamHaus (Rock am Ring/Rock im Park) said production costs increased in the region of 25-30% for the 2023 festival season.

On top of this, organisers had to make up the shortfall from a 2022 edition priced in 2019, as well as two cancelled editions due to the pandemic.

“The fact that we didn’t make any money with a sold-out Hurricane in 2022, but actually lost it, was also due to the fact that we had basically sold the tickets three years earlier,” FKP Scorpio CEO Stephan Thanscheidt said at the time.

“Keeping ticket prices under control while maintaining profit margins at the same time is proving extremely difficult right now,” he added.

But costs are still an ongoing concern for the sector in 2024 – as evidenced by the slate of festival cancellations referencing “financial challenges” and steadily increasing ticket prices.

“I still think festivals are incredible value for money when you compare them to other forms of entertainment”

“The cost of infrastructure has increased so much with the combination of Covid and the cost of Brexit,” John Giddings, Isle of Wight boss, tells IQ. “Plus the cost of artists is more because their productions are bigger.”

Tamás Kádár, CEO of Sziget, adds: “It is indeed a general trend that ticket prices for European festivals are rising to some extent. Unfortunately, we see rising supplier costs and the effects of global (and especially local) inflation. It is something we have to deal with when calculating ticket prices.”

However, raising the ticket price is no small decision for organisers, who are concerned about pricing out swathes of their audiences.

Primavera Sound’s Marta Pallarès recently told IFF delegates: “Thirty percent of our crowd is from Spain. If we [significantly increase our ticket price] we will lose that national crowd, which is important to our identity as a festival.

“Plus, after 24 years, our crowd is younger and they can’t afford a ticket that’s more than €250 so we are keeping the prices for them, to be honest.”

“It’s a constant struggle to keep tickets affordable”

Though organisers are wary of reaching a “red line” with ticket prices, many are keen to point out that festivals are generally good value for money.

“As far as I can see, at a West End theatre the average ticket price is £75-80 for a two-hour show and we’re £300 for a four-day show,” says Giddings. “Or you go to a Formula 1 race and the price is phenomenal. I still think festivals are incredible value for money when you compare them to other forms of entertainment.”

Lowlands director Eric van Eerdenburg testifies: “I think we have one of the highest ticket prices in Holland but if you compare it to a weekend in London, Paris or Berlin, it’s cheap.”

The Dutch festival raised its ticket price to €325 for 2024, up from €300 in 2023 and €255 in 2022.

“It’s a constant struggle to keep tickets affordable,” he says. “But attendees are offered so much entertainment for just €115 per day. People tell me every year that they’ve had the best weekend of their lives.”

With the price of energy, production and acts rapidly increasing, a hike in the ticket price was necessary to “make a reasonable margin” adds Eerdenburg.

“I think the [cooling off] on ticket price increases means that [the sector] is trying to provide value for money”

Sziget’s Kádár echoes these thoughts, adding that the Hungarian festival “is one of the best value-for-money festivals in Europe”. “We have structured the price of our six-day pass so that when divided by day, it becomes even more attractive,” he continues. Elsewhere, Primavera Sound’s €250 ticket price boils down to just €1 per band, according to Pallares.

Giddings adds: “I think the [cooling off] on ticket price increases means that [the sector] is trying to provide value for money.”

At the same time, festivals are doing what they can to keep festival prices down and ensure that events remain accessible to people from all walks of life.

“We offer tiered pricing throughout the year, rewarding our most loyal fans with (Super) Early Bird tickets at nearly last year’s prices,” says Kádár. “We also offer various products, as well as travel and accommodation packages to provide favourable deals for visitors. Additionally, we provide special Under 21 ticket pricing to ensure the festival remains accessible for younger attendees.

“In terms of catering, we have also introduced “budget-friendly” food options for the second consecutive year. Overall, while the economic impacts on festivals are not favourable, we believe that Sziget still can be a festival for everyone.”

Giddings concludes: “It’s not a cheap hobby to put on a festival – it’s a huge financial gamble – but we want to keep it within the realms of possibility for people to afford a four-day camping event.”

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The UK’s Greenbelt festival is set to keep its ‘pay-what-you-can’ pricing structure after drawing its biggest crowds in almost a decade to its 50th edition.

The independent event returned to Boughton House, Northamptonshire, from 24-27 August with acts including Laura Mvula, Ezra Furman, Indigo Girls, Lowkey and Bruce Cockburn. Speakers included former PM Gordon Brown and musician and campaigner Brian Eno.

The festival, which attracted more than 11,500 people scrapped its usual tiered ticketing deadlines and replaced them with three price points: £150 for adults in need of a subsidised ticket (Supported), £190 for a regular ticket (Standard) and £230 for a Supporter ticket.

Organisers hoped the move would contribute to a 3% rise in ticket sales, but exceeded expectations by hitting 4% to record its highest attendance since 2014.

“Our 50th festival has been our best ever,” says creative director Paul Northup. “Our biggest for 10 years, there’s been a wonderful spirit onsite. The programming has inspired, stretched and soothed us in equal measure. We’ve loved every minute.

“We’re leaving feeling energised and looking forward to taking the next steps towards what we hope will be our next 50 years; of making a space where artistry, activism and belief can thrive; of Greenbelt still being somewhere to believe in.”

The team behind the event have now put the first batch of 2024 tickets on sale at 2023 prices until the end of September. Festival-goers also have the option of signing up for a monthly instalment plan.

“As the price of everything continues to rocket, we’re not immune to rising costs – those rising prices meant that this year’s festival cost 15% more than in 2022 for us to make,” adds a statement. “So for 2024 we’re going to keep the three different types of pricing, but each of the three ticket types will step up in price at three deadlines across the year.”

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The Korean edition of the Woodstock Music and Art Fair has been postponed, following a raft of issues.

The event was due to take place later this month at the Multipurpose Square in Pocheon, Gyeonggi, and would’ve been the legendary festival’s first incarnation outside of the US.

“The Woodstock festival has been postponed to 7-9 October to ensure a safe event operation and to work on the event’s completion. The festival is being postponed, not cancelled,” reads a statement from organisers.

Currently, the lineup is mainly rock and pop acts from Asia, including Japanese hard rock veterans Loudness and a number of seasoned Korean artists.

In early July, the organisers also announced that several overseas artists, including Akon and New Hope Club, would be performing, but these artists did not update the new Woodstock festival changes on their respective home page schedules, prompting doubts about their participation in October.

“The Woodstock festival has been postponed to ensure a safe event operation and to work on the event’s completion”

The festival has already gone through multiple challenges since it was announced in January, including criticism over the choice of venue, a constantly shifting lineup and high ticket prices.

Following criticisms regarding the latter, organisers slashed the three-day ticket price from 400,000 won ($310) to 150,000 ($117).

The original Woodstock festival was held in 1969, with anniversary events taking place in 1994, 1999 and 2009. A 50th-anniversary event was slated for 2019 but was ultimately cancelled due to financial problems.

In 2010, there was an attempt to host a Woodstock festival in Korea, but it never took place because of “copyright and artist lineup issues,” according to the Korea Herald.

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Croatia’s live music business has been “exceptionally strong” in 2023 so far, thanks to the country’s adoption of the Euro and an increase in international fans.

“Switching to the Euro helped in raising ticket prices and the public seems ready to follow that. Now we can come pretty close to Western European ticket prices – something that was unheard of four to five years ago,” says Mario Grdosic, managing director of Croatian independent promoter LAA.

Based in the Croatian capital of Zagreb, LAA typically promotes 50-75 shows a year with previous clients including Foo Fighters, Iron Maiden, Duran Duran, Pet Shop Boys, The xx, The Prodigy, The Cult, Whitesnake, Lorde, Slayer and King Gizzard.

“If someone told me three years ago I would sell a ticket for close to €150, I definitely wouldn’t have believed it”

LAA has held around 30 shows so far this year with “only three to four concerts underperforming,” Grdosic tells IQ.

The company’s biggest offerings in H1 were Florence + The Machine in Pula Arena, and two nights with Robbie Williams in the same venue. Grdosic says those shows are the perfect example of how switching from the Croatian Kuna (KN) to the Euro has helped business.

“I had the Foo Fighters in June 2019 in Pula Arena and our prices then were KN370–460, which was €49–62, and there were some complaints on socials that we were charging way too high,” he explains.

“This year, four years later and with prices in Euro, we had Florence and Robbie in Pula with tickets between €75–139 and nobody said a word.

“When super-fans plan to travel to see their favourite artists, they’re increasingly choosing Croatia”

“If someone told me three years ago I would sell a ticket for close to €150, I definitely wouldn’t have believed it. It was unimaginable here for the biggest shows some five to six years ago…”

And it’s not just domestic fans that are putting their hands in their pockets; Grdosic notes an increasing trend of international fans attending shows in Croatia.

“When super-fans plan to travel to see their favourite artists, they’re increasingly choosing Croatia. For the Robbie Williams shows, around 45% of ticketholders came from outside of Croatia,” he says.

“Even in Zagreb, which was never a particularly strong touristic destination, we now have club shows where 70% of tickets are from Croatia and 30% are from elsewhere. That was never the case some seven to eight years ago.”

“We’ll see if there is enough money in fans’ pockets to follow the trend into 2024/2025…”

While Grdosic is revelling in the market’s upswing, he does admit that 2023 may be an anomaly. “This is a bit of an unusual year, being the first year after Covid and the first with prices in Euros. When things do settle down a bit, I expect people to be more cautious with their money and for 2024 to be a bit less successful than this year.”

The market is also facing universal challenges such as inflation, staff shortages and over-saturation in the market. “But I’m definitely happy with how most things have sold this year,” he adds. “There’s so much stuff happening, so many choices for fans, and ticket prices are higher – it’s better than I expected it to be. We’ll see if there is enough money in fans’ pockets to follow the trend into 2024/2025…”

LAA’s upcoming shows include Tasha Sultana at Tvornica Kulture in Zagreb and two nights with Sigur Ros at Saint Michael’s Fortress in Šibenik.

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European festival promoters engaged in a heated debate about increasing ticket prices during a panel discussion at the recent ILMC.

Festival Forum: Mud Baths & Outdoor Pursuits saw Holger Jan Schmidt (Go Group/Yourope) moderate a discussion between Melvin Benn (Festival Republic, UK), Mikolaj Ziółkowski (Alter Art, PL), Nika Brunet Milunovic (MetalDays, SI) and Maiju Talvisto (Flow Festival, FI).

With all agreeing that the supply of artists, customers and infrastructure is stable for the 2023 festival season, the panel’s sticking point was how to keep tickets reasonably priced.

“There is almost always a moment in every economy when you feel you are being ripped off”

Apart from one Festival Republic event, the organisers on the panel said that they had increased prices for all of their festivals.

“We are reaching a red line,” warned Ziółkowski, who promotes Open’er, Orange Warsaw, Kraków Live in Poland. “There is almost always a moment in every economy when you feel you are being ripped off.”

“Generally, prices are higher and people are not earning more money. So probably in summer 2023, people won’t be able to buy two or three festival tickets, they’ll only be able to go to one. We have to be so clever to be more interesting and more flavorful than other cultural offerings,” he concluded.

Benn, who promotes Reading, Leeds, Latitude, Wireless and Download among other festivals, argued: “We don’t know where that red line is. We want to keep the ticket prices down but we have to compete and pay artists what they want. At a point, the public either says we’ll buy the ticket or we won’t buy it. That’s the risk; that’s the business we’re in.”

“The dilemma is: what is too expensive?… it’s relative”

Both Ziółkowski and Schmidt aired concerns high ticket prices may render festivals financially inaccessible for a large chunk of the audience.

“It’s important that we are trying to keep prices for festivals and headline shows reasonable because music should not be for rich people. Music should be for all people,” said Ziółkowski.

Schmidt echoed his point: “I would also argue that if we raise the ticket price [too much], we will exclude people who can’t afford the ticket so they will not be able to come to the festival.”

MetalDays’ Milunovic added: “The dilemma is: what is too expensive? It depends on what you get for the money that you pay for the ticket. It’s relative.”

“There’s no such thing as cuddly capitalism. Entertainment costs”

Benn commented that maintaining a top tier line up for festivals such as Reading and Leeds was crucial to their ongoing success, adding that prices would inevitably rise given the ongoing hikes in costs that all organisers are facing.  “We have to do what the market demands,” he said. “If ticket prices go up and people don’t come, we’ve lost out – so we have to try and balance it.”

Flow Festival’s Talvisto agreed that it’s a balancing act to keep costs down but pointed out that “there aren’t that many pieces in the puzzle where we can increase the revenue”.

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The Cure say tickets for their upcoming 30-date North American tour will be non transferable in an effort to clamp down on touting.

The legendary British band begin their first full-scale US and Canada run since 2016 at New Orleans’ Smoothie King Center on 10 May. The tour is due to wrap up at the Miami-Dade Arena in Miami on 1 July.

Fans had until today (13 March) to register with Ticketmaster’s Verified Fan scheme, with a “lottery-style process” to be used to determine which entrants will receive a unique access code or be put on the waitlist for the 15 March sale.

In addition, the band say that “apart from a few Hollywood Bowl charity seats, there will be no ‘platinum’ or ‘dynamically priced’ tickets” sold for the tour, with prices for certain dates reportedly starting as low as $21.25 (€20).

“We want the tour to be affordable for all fans and we have a very wide (and we think very fair) range of pricing at every show,” says a social media post by the group. “Our ticketing partners have agreed to help us stop scalpers from getting in the way. To help minimise resale and keep prices at face value, tickets for this tour will not be transferable.

“Despite our desire to protect our low ticket prices for fans, the states of NY, IL and CO make this very difficult – they actually have laws in place that protect scalpers!”

“If something comes up that prevents a fan from being able to use a ticket they have purchased, they will be able to resell it on a face value ticket exchange.”

The band advise, however, that laws in New York, Illinois and Colorado mean shows in those states will be exempt from the restrictions, but still encourage ticket-holders no longer able to attend to sell their tickets on face value resale sites.

“Unfortunately, despite our desire to protect our low ticket prices for fans, the states of NY, IL and CO make this very difficult – they actually have laws in place that protect scalpers,” adds the statement. “For shows in these states we urge fans to buy or sell tickets to one another on face value exchanges like Twickets.live or Cashortrade.org.

“Fans should avoid buying tickets that are being resold at inflated prices by scalpers, and the sites that host these scalpers should refrain from reselling tickets for our shows.”

Revisit IQ‘s in-depth feature on The Cure’s biggest-ever European tour here.

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Ever-changing best practice and technological innovation are impacting the live music industry like never before, while important issues such as diversity, equality, and sustainability are being embraced by every sector of the business. In the most recent issue of IQ, we talk to some of the architects who are helping to shape the industry of the future, to quiz them on their blueprints and predictions for how we may all be operating in a few years’ time. This excerpt from the feature sees Live Nation’s vice president of touring discuss the evolution of the touring landscape, keeping tickets affordable and developing the next generation of headliners.

IQ: How do you see the touring landscape changing globally in the next couple of years, now that we’re in a post-pandemic environment?
LO: We’ll continue to see artists doing more shows across the globe, and all signs point to the fan demand being there to account for that. Touring has always been a significant part of an artist’s career and a key way they connect with their fans at every level and across all genres of music.

With recession looming in many markets and inflation spiralling, a cost-of-living crisis seems like the latest challenge that live music will have to deal with. How can agents, promoters, and artists work together to try to keep tickets affordable for fans?
As the promoter, we work closely with artists and their teams to develop strategies that meet their touring goals from the vision of the show to the financials, which includes how the artist wants to ticket and price their shows. We also pride ourselves on the knowledge we have of markets across the globe and the research we do to make sure ticket prices are comparable and make sense for the fans and artists.

“The average global tour has continued to trend upwards in number of stops, and we anticipate that will only continue”

How do you predict the global touring business will develop in the coming decade, and what impact do you think technology will play in the way fans interact with artists?
We’re already seeing technology connect artists with more fans around the world than ever before through their social platforms and streaming, which gives them a bigger fan base to bring shows to. The average global tour has continued to trend upwards in number of stops, and we anticipate that will only continue over the coming decade. Another great example is how stage production is advancing with technology and becoming even more impressive. We’ll continue to see tech make all aspects of the fan experience more simple and convenient and on a global scale.

What more can be done to support the next generation of headliners, as well as those career acts who rely on their live work to make ends meet?
From my perspective, up-and-coming acts and younger artists are gaining momentum faster than ever before. Due to streaming platforms and social media channels like TikTok, artists have a much greater reach and better opportunity to grow their fanbase at a rapid pace. For other emerging artists, it is about hitting all of the steps from the beginning and connecting with fans.

Playing the clubs and smaller rooms for your day-one listeners, playing festivals to reach new fans and different audiences, and building those up to hit the bigger rooms like arenas. I’ve had the privilege of seeing it first-hand in artists like Billie Eilish who catapulted and Lizzo who dug in and worked the small rooms to the theatres and is now headlining arenas.

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