Cancellations, overcrowded market and costly tickets: Are big music tours really in trouble?

NEW YORK – For the concert business, 2023 was a champagne-popping year. The worst of the pandemic comfortably in the rearview, shows big and small were selling out, with mega tours by singers Taylor Swift, Beyonce, Drake and Bruce Springsteen pushing the industry to record ticket sales.

In 2024, as with much of the economy, success on the road seems more fragile. A string of high-profile cancellations and slow sales for some major events have raised questions about an overcrowded market and whether ticket prices have simply become too expensive.

Most conspicuously, American artistes Jennifer Lopez and The Black Keys have cancelled entire arena tours. In the case of The Black Keys – a standby of rock radio and a popular touring draw for nearly two decades – the fallout has been severe enough that the band have parted ways with its two managers: industry giants Irving Azoff and Steve Moir.

At Coachella, usually so buzzy that it sells out well before any performers are announced, tickets for the second of the California music festival’s two weekends were still available by the time it opened in April.

Those issues have stoked headlines about a concert business that may be in trouble. But the reality, many insiders say, is more complex, with no simple explanation for problems on a range of tours, and a business that may be levelling out after a couple of extraordinary years when fans rushed to shows after Covid-19 shutdowns.

“I think it’s normalised back to the pre-Covid era,” said Mr Rich Schaefer, president of global touring at AEG, the company behind tours by Swift and The Rolling Stones. “Hot acts are going to sell tickets. Middle acts are going to sell, but take longer. And acts that don’t have a lot of heat on them are going to struggle.”

In a statement, Live Nation said that so far in 2024, sales are up from the same point in 2023, with more than 100 million tickets sold. “Every year,” the company said, “some events naturally fall off for various reasons, and in 2024, across all venue types, we’ve seen a 4 per cent cancellation rate – which is flat to last year.”

In addition to Swift’s The Eras Tour, which continues to be a phenomenon in Europe, hot events in 2024 include tours by Olivia Rodrigo, Coldplay, Morgan Wallen and Zach Bryan. Other festivals, such as Lollapalooza in Chicago, have had notably strong sales.

Still, prominent cancellations of high-priced shows is another possible public relations headache for Live Nation, owner of Ticketmaster, which last month was sued by the Justice Department over accusations that it operates an illegal monopoly that stifles competition and results in high prices and fees.

Live Nation has denied those allegations.

The key worry throughout the business is that ticket prices, which have been rising steadily for years, may now be so high that they are deterring fans from all but their once-in-a-lifetime, bucket-list shows.

Tickets, even for many major tours, no longer vanish instantly.

When Billie Eilish put her latest arena tour on sale in April, for example, upper-deck seats at some venues were going for more than US$200 (S$270), and took weeks to sell.

A joint tour by rapper Future and producer Metro Boomin, who shared a pair of No. 1 albums and a chart-topping hit single in 2024, has also lagged. Even with tickets as low as US$44.50, the opening-night concert in Kansas City, Missouri, in July still has thousands of seats for sale at all levels.

To the chagrin of underperforming acts, the strength or weakness of sales is now evident in real time on Ticketmaster, which displays blue dots for every unsold seat (and pink dots for ones being offered for resale).

In 2023, the average ticket price for one of the top 100 tours around the world was US$131, up 23 per cent from the year before, according to Pollstar, a trade publication that tracks concert tickets.

Mr Steve Martin of Paladin Artists, a booking agent for classic rock acts such as David Gilmour of Pink Floyd, said that below the level of pop superstars such as Swift, artistes have become acutely aware of the economic pressures facing their fans.

No single explanation can cover the range of problems in the live market in 2024. Some tours, such as The Black Keys’, may simply be a matter of the band overestimating demand.

In 2021, The Black Keys left their long-time manager for a new partnership with Azoff and Moir, who also work with John Mayer and the Grateful Dead spin-off Dead & Company, and the band later praised Azoff’s “focus on touring and selling our tickets”.

But even after a new album – the band’s 12th – was released in April, concert sales lagged, leading to the cancellations and a housecleaning behind the scenes.

In a social media post after the tour was abandoned, the group said they would “make some changes” to their touring plan to offer a more “intimate experience”.

Nostalgia alone may not be enough to easily pack venues across the country.

Lopez, though still a movie star and a tabloid feature, has not had a hit song in a decade. Tickets to see the ongoing arena tour from Justin Timberlake have been available on both the primary and secondary markets, with prices on StubHub sometimes falling well below face value.

The perception among some music fans is that large-scale concerts are more of a luxury than they once were.

Mr Cliff Russell, 39, said his two teenage daughters were interested in seeing blockbuster tours in 2024 from acts such as Rodrigo, Drake, Eilish and Swift.

But after the family, living outside Toronto, spent big for tickets to see Swift’s The Eras Tour in November – with costs totalling near US$3,000 for four tickets, “not counting transportation, parking, souvenirs” – spending another US$300 a ticket for upper-deck seats to see another pop star was just not in the cards.

“What was once a holy grail ticket price is now the average,” he said. “You’ve got to be really picky and choosy.” NYTIMES