Over the past few years, the demand for concert tickets has skyrocketed, as concerts have become the new must-have experience. Extravagant props, backup dances and flashing lights; it is safe to say that artists have used their resources to try and outdo their competitors and attract more people. Fans, and people who just want to go for the social aspect, are drawn to concerts now more than ever.
As artists grow, their following and fans increase, and it leads to high ticket demand. This turns to artists expanding their venues from arena to stadiums. Frequent concert attender Wyatt Roberts ’29 has noticed these patterns and the way they affect the attendees.
“Concerts used to be a thing that you could just go do over a weekend for a cheap price, but now it feels like a royalty to go to concerts,” Roberts said.
On Jan. 22, 2026, pop star Harry Styles announced a world tour after being off the grid for three years. With that, he put out a ticket presale date, and 11.5 million people signed up for the New York City leg of the tour presale, which lasts 30 nights between August to October 2026. Only a small fraction of that 11.5 million can attend the shows. Nicole McEnroe ’28 was able to snag tickets in the presale line for Harry Styles concert in New York City, but it was far from easy for her.
“I had to sit in the queue to get tickets for about an hour, and the website kept crashing due to the amount of people trying to get tickets at the same time,” McEnroe said.
The ticket buying industry has also shifted over the years. Tickets are now solely for sale on online platforms, like Ticketmaster and SeatGeek. Fans have found these websites to be especially finicky and unreliable. According to the United States Department of Justice (DOJ) Archives, Ticket Master was sued for taking advantage of their buyers and upcharging them in 2024 by the DOJ. Eva Wieczorek ’26 has had multiple run-ins with Ticket Masters website, and recently attempted to buy Harry Styles tickets and failed due to the Ticket Master website crashing from the amount of people trying to buy tickets.
“A lot of companies like TicketMaster, is a crazy monopoly that is very power hungry and wants more money from people, which is terrible,” Wieczorek said.
Despite the influence from other artists to raise prices, Noah Khan, a country artist, announced a tour and has made his tickets to only be bought at face value. This creates a fair, monitored price for fans who don’t have hundreds of dollars to spend on tickets.
“Concerts have become so focused on making money versus being a fun space for friends to enjoy their favorite artists,” McEnroe said. “It becomes selfish on the artist’s side because, obviously, a ton of fans want to see them. So having super expensive tickets makes it far less accessible.”
