Back in the Nineties, Pearl Jam famously sued Ticketmaster in an unsuccessful effort to rein in the runaway costs of attending a concert. These days, many are raising the same concerns — like Doc McGhee, Kiss’ longtime manager. In the late 1970s, when he was a young man on the rock scene, top concert tickets cost $10 to $11 (or about $50 to $55 in today’s dollars). Last year, according to Pollstar, the industry trade that monitors touring, the average ticket price had soared to around $132. That’s an increase of 38 percent just since 2019, when they cost a comparatively affordable $96.17. “It’s up to us,” McGhee says. “Until people say, ‘We’re not going,’ the prices are going up.”
This summer, that appears to be true. Entry to one of Harry Styles’ 30 dates at Madison Square Garden could cost you as much as $1,000; Alan Jackson’s sold-out touring finale at a Nashville stadium is prompting scalper prices of more than $5,000.
Industry veterans say that sky-high ticket prices are due to three key factors: supply and demand, as reflected in the controversial practice of dynamic pricing; rampant scalping; and one dominant company, Live Nation, controlling every source of revenue, including beer, food, parking, and Ticketmaster service fees, at its 61 amphitheaters and more than 200 other venues in North America. Many hoped the U.S. Department of Justice’s 2024 antitrust lawsuit would break up the world’s biggest promoter, but a March 9 settlement suggests that is unlikely to happen.
(In court, Live Nation disputed nearly every criticism made by sources in this story. “There is no evidence in the record that Live Nation or Ticketmaster drives higher ticket prices or that breaking up the company would lower them,” Dan Wall, the company’s executive vice president of corporate and regulatory affairs, says in a statement to RS. “If the DOJ or states had credible evidence, they would have presented it. They haven’t. After years of investigation and access to extensive data, there is still nothing tying our structure to higher prices.”)
The Justice Department settlement, which requires Live Nation to divest from 13 amphitheaters with which it has exclusive booking agreements, among other things, “isn’t even significant enough to call it a slap on the wrist,” says Stephen Parker, executive director of the National Independent Venue Association. Because the settlement is “virtually nothing” and “has no teeth,” adds a top promoter, prices and fees are almost certain to keep rising.
Even the biggest stars are often powerless to change this system, as Taylor Swift discovered on the Eras Tour. What’s more, Live Nation ticketing employees seemed dismissive of customers when they joked in internal messages about fans who are “so stupid” that the company was “robbing them blind baby,” in reference to high parking and VIP-package costs. (In court, Live Nation CEO Michael Rapino called those messages “disgusting” and “not the way we operate.”)
John Scher, a New York promoter who has competed with the company for decades, claims that Live Nation strategically raises offers to artists for playing its own summer amphitheaters, rather than arenas where competing promoters can book shows. “If they play indoors, they have a choice of [second-biggest promoter] AEG, or an independent like me,” Scher says. “But Live Nation will say to acts, ‘If you wait and start the tour in April, we’ll pay you $350,000’ — and many of them say, ‘Fine.’”
‘Legalized exploitation of fans’
In a separate lawsuit, filed by the Federal Trade Commission against Live Nation and Ticketmaster last September, a central issue was “illegal ticket-resale tactics,” in which Live Nation reportedly invited scalpers to use bots to crowd fans out of on-sale queues.
“The price will not change until we stop this legalized exploitation of fans,” says Randy Nichols, a board member for the National Independent Talent Organization (NITO), which represents agents and managers for more than 5,000 acts. “Fans will pay less money when bots stop buying all the tickets and marking up the price.”
Bills currently pending in New York, California, and other states could cap resale prices, potentially allowing artists to set their own face-value prices and ensuring fans don’t have to pay much more than that — something that hasn’t been true since StubHub revolutionized the scalping business in the early 2000s. (For years, Ticketmaster itself has also resold tickets to its own shows online.) “New York has been at this for a long time, and California just introduced a price cap,” says Nathaniel Marro, NITO’s executive director. “There’s really hope here.”
Fielding Logan, head of touring for management company Q Prime South, which represents artists like Eric Church, Ashley McBryde, and the Brothers Osborne, disagrees with the prediction of higher fees due to Live Nation’s corporate dominance. “I can unequivocally say that is not going to make a whit of difference to ticket prices,” he says. “What makes a difference to ticket prices is there are more people who want to attend said show than there are tickets available at those prices.”
But John Kwoka, a Northeastern University economics professor who specializes in antitrust, thinks that supply and demand aren’t enough to explain what’s happening. “I’m one of the economists who’ve argued you need to break up some companies,” he says. “[Live Nation] is one of the companies that proves that.”
Ken Casey stuck around after the show in San Diego, California, talking to members of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers.John Francis Peters for Rolling Stone
Some of the challenge-coin haul.
The band started as a bet. “My band has a show in three weeks,” Casey’s coworker told him in 1996. “I dare you to open for us.”John Francis Peters for Rolling Stone
Dropkick Murphys (from left): Casey, DaRosa, Webster, Kelly, Rheault, Brennan, and Lynch John Francis Peters for Rolling Stone
Casey is largely the voice of the band, but the other members back him up. “We’re so lucky he’s the mouthpiece,” says Brennan, left. John Francis Peters for Rolling Stone
“Only the Irish can take a song about death and destruction, famine, alcoholism, and raise a glass like it’s an anthem,” says Casey. John Francis Peters for Rolling Stone
“Anytime it feels like things are about to plateau for us, something gives us a little bump,” says guitarist Lynch. “It feels exciting. It feels dangerous. It feels like doing something.” John Francis Peters for Rolling Stone
Jay-Z performing at the Stade de France in Saint-Denis in Paris.
Jay-Z Deserves the Super Bowl Halftime Gig
Where’s the love? Jay-Z asked that question 25 years ago, in the chorus of one of many songs in his catalog that still move audiences today. If he performs “Heart of the City” as part of his Super Bowl halftime show next February, those indignant bars are sure to be a highlight: “First the Fat Boys break up, now every day I wake up, somebody got a problem with Hov…” It would be an appropriate choice, too — because then as now, any time Jay-Z notches a new achievement, people find a way to complain.
The jokes and nonsense started almost as soon as the first rumors trickled out that Jay, whose company Roc Nation has executive-produced the Super Bowl halftime show since 2019, might be choosing himself to headline next year’s show. “Jay-Z just Dick Cheney’d himself for the Super Bowl,” Puck‘s Matthew Belloni quipped on X last week, alluding to the time that the late prince of darkness, who’d been asked to run the vice-presidential search committee for George W. Bush’s 2000 campaign, put himself on the ticket. (Super hip and current reference, and not at all apples-and-oranges.) Others pointed to TMZ reports that pop stars like Harry Styles and Justin Bieber had been asked first. “How are they the frontrunners, and he end up in the front?” Cam’Ron, who’s delighted in trolling Jay for many years, wondered aloud on his podcast. “Out of all the people on the roster, they couldn’t pick nobody else?” asked Cam’Ron‘s co-host, Ma$e.
These critiques miss the point, which is that Jay-Z is one of the best choices for a high-profile gig like this. He’s a superstar with a comparable level of name recognition to any other A-lister in music. He has a deep stack of classic songs going back decades. And he’s a highly skillful live performer who knows his way around a stadium stage, as he’s spent this year reminding people on his Jay-Z 30 tour. He tore down Yankee Stadium three nights in a row this summer; just last week, he rocked SoFi Stadium, which happens to be the same place where the 2027 Super Bowl is being held. He held the crowd’s attention with ease at all of those shows, and though there were plenty of glittery guests — that’s a given at a Jay show, and it will surely be true at the Super Bowl, too — he did it mostly through the force of his own magnetic energy. Let’s state the obvious here: Jay-Z is really, really good at rapping. We’re talking about one of the slickest, sharpest talkers in the history of words, someone who made it to the top through a sustained act of myth-making, then kept going. Are we seriously asking whether he can handle a 15-minute televised performance?
And yeah, there’s a touch of self-congratulation in the way he appointed himself. So what? Praising his own gifts is arguably Jay-Z’s greatest talent of all. He made a fine art out of self-applause. He told his story again and again, retracing the steps from Marcy Projects to the corner suite, and he made us believe. It would almost be insulting to the audience if he didn’t give himself the gig at some point.
Pop culture observers in recent years surely remember the backlash to Super Bowl headliners like Kendrick Lamar and Bad Bunny — all of it at least culturally conservative, and much of it frankly just racist. The blowback to Jay’s announcement is mostly coming from other quarters, at least for now (let’s just wait to see what the right-wing swamps make of this one). But it’s disappointing in a different way. Jay-Z has spent his career expounding hip-hop as a mainstream commercial force. He’s not a businessman, he’s a business, man. But he’s also an artist. He’s made huge amounts of money, and gotten himself into the rarefied rooms where he even has the ability to give himself a gig like this, by spinning his experiences into compelling narrative art, one verse at a time. Let’s not lose sight of how impressive his life’s work really is. Jay-Z is not some random C-suite bro, and he’s definitely not Dick Cheney. He’s one of the greatest rappers of all time, by any measure. He’s earned that Super Bowl spot.