Key Points
- Scalper bot software is able to perform multiple tasks, including creating multiple fake accounts for a targeted website, navigating captchas, purchasing tickets and more.
- Springsteen and Ticketmaster butted heads over the onsale of the Working on a Dream tour when fans purchasing $95 tickets were directed to Ticketmaster’s secondary market site for as much as $380.
- The inclusion of AI into the ticket bots is making it even more difficult to detect the activity.
Editor’s note: This story has been updated to correct information on the percentage of the total ticket cost Ticketmaster receives.
A big concert means a big ticket price these days.
Last year, the average cost for a concert was $135.92, according to Pollstar. In 2019 it was $91.86. And in 1996 the average ticket price would set you back $25.81 (about $51 in today’s dollars).
If it’s a hot show, prices can go through the roof. Verified resale tickets for the Friday, Aug. 8, Billy Joel and Stevie Nicks show at MetLife Stadium on Ticketmaster were as high as $3,700 on May 19.
So, as the summer of 2025 concert season kicks in, who gets the money? And why are prices for some shows so high?
It’s a complex system that drives ticket prices, experts say. And while artists themselves set the original price, bots and the accompanying software, ticket scalpers and a dizzying array of murky fees play a staggeringly large role in what the concertgoer ends up paying.
And there is no cap on how much tickets can be resold for once it leaves the primary market, nor is there a limit on how much in fees can be added.
Case in point. Tickets for Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour in 2023 were priced between $49 and $449, with VIP tickets ranging from $199 to $899. After the initial sale, the average price of tickets on the secondary market went north of $1,000 as the tickets were resold.
Fans paid an average $2,130 to see Swift’s three shows in May 2023 at MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford, according to Victory Live – and fees were more than 20 percent of the cost for the tour. For a $109 ticket to Swift’s April 29, 2023, show in Atlanta sold by Ticketmaster, the fees were $23 for service, $5 for processing and $5 for a facility charge, according to www.ngpf.org.
The artist and their management set the base price in an imperfect estimation of the artist’s earning potential, according to industry experts.
“When it comes to standard tickets: artists, promoters, sports leagues or teams decide how they want to sell their tickets on Ticketmaster’s marketplace,” states Ticketmaster on Ticketmaster.com. “That includes setting the face value prices, determining how many tickets to sell, and when to put them on sale.”
The moving target of ticket prices
It varies, but artists get about 65 percent of the base price of the ticket after production costs, which range from 10 percent to 20 percent of the ticket. So if a ticket is $100 on the primary market, the artist about gets about $65 and the rest of the ticket prices go toward production costs, venue fees, ticketing agent fees and more.
“I would think by now people would realize that high ticket prices have very little to do with Ticketmaster – that’s the artists,” said Tony Pallagrosi, as Asbury Park-based promoter, manager and former member of Southside Johnny and the Asbury Jukes.
But the artists don’t control what happens to prices after the tickets get gobbled up by bots or scalpers, nor do they recoup money from the proceeds of that secondary market.
It’s essentially a gamble on the artist’s drawing power. If the artist’s popularity is waning, or hasn’t peaked yet, venues will not be sold out, and tour expenses will not be recouped.
If an artist is at the pinnacle of their popularity, tickets will be in demand and the prices can soar both on the primary and secondary resale markets.
The prices of tickets for Live Nation events are not readily available unless one has begun the process of purchasing them. Prices are not listed on the Live Nation venue web page, nor are they on the “More Info” page of each event. Fans have to actively click on the “Buy Tickets” tab so see the prices.
Doing so does not commit the fan to purchasing the tickets. The prices are also not listed in show announcements sent to media.
Ticket prices for seats in the entire venue on the day of the sale are even harder to get. Despite multiple requests, Live Nation did not respond when asked about original prices for the Billy Joel and Stevie Nicks concert on Friday, Aug. 8, at MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford.
The prices, given to the Asbury Park Press by a concert industry insider – who the newspaper is not naming to protect his identity – ranged from $195 to $1,061 the day they went on sale, higher than most tours this season.
As of May 19, a floor seat in the third row on Ticketmaster’s secondary market was selling for $3,821.18. A seat in the lower level (section 128) was $1,347.94. A seat in section 211 was $907.50. On Gametime, a mobile app and marketplace for purchasing tickets, a similar floor seat was $2,643 on May 19; a seat in section 128 was $947; and a seat in section 211 was $898. On SeatGeek, a similar floor seat was $3,284; a seat in section 128 was $1,191; and a seat in section 211 was $984.
Ticket prices have dipped for the Beyoncé Cowboy Carter shows in some markets. Fans paid as low as $57.50 for a ticket to the tour’s April 28 opening night at SoFi Stadium in Los Angeles, according to NBC News. The tickets were originally priced at $84 to $809 before service fees for the five shows.
No such price breaks for the MetLife show so far. On May 19, the cheapest tickets were going for $121 in the 300 level for the opening show on Thursday, May 22. Limited view seats were selling for $100.
From $30 to $3,000 (or more)
Live Nation is offering $30 tickets to multiple shows at the venues it promoters, including at the PNC Bank Arts Center in Holmdel, the Stone Pony Summer Stage in Asbury Park, the Northwell at Jones Beach Theater on Long Island, the Freedom Mortgage Pavilion in Camden and elsewhere as part of a new “$30 Ticket to Summer” promotion.
The $30 shows at the PNC Bank Arts Center include lawn tickets for Halsey on Friday, June 6; Counting Crows and the Gaslight Anthem on Saturday, June 28; the Goo Goo Dolls on Friday, Aug. 1; and the Willie Nelson and Bob Dylan show on Saturday, Sept. 13.
Exacerbating the market’s turbulence, a growing trend in the concert ticket industry is dynamic pricing, where the price of the tickets fluctuates based on demand.
“I think there’s a common misconception of what dynamic is – fans think dynamic is like surge pricing, like you see with Uber and we 100 percent do not have that technology,” said Elizabeth Lutz, vice president communications at Ticketmaster.
Ticketmaster ticket prices are altered after the initial on-sale, based on demand, by the artist. They could be either raised or lowered, Lutz said.
Variation in pricing within seating sections have led fans to assume there’s real-time price fluctuation, Lutz said.
“Most people don’t realize that Ticketmaster doesn’t impose (dynamic pricing) on you, the artists request it,” said Pallagrosi. “Ticketmaster just developed the software to do those things probably because artists and managers have been seeing for years what the scalpers can get for tickets. They asked why are they getting it and why isn’t my artist getting it?”
Ticket scalping and rise of the bots
Ticket scalping continues to be a problem. Ticketmaster blocks approximately 200 million bots each day, Lutz said.
“It’s not just the professionals anymore – right now, anybody can buy a ticket to an event on the other side of the world,” said Dean Budnick, co-author of “Ticket Masters: The Rose of the Concert Industry and How the Public Got Scalped.”
“It’s not just brokers. It’s people who need a little extra money, college students, people who are under employed, grandparents who just want to make a little bit of money on the side because it is legal and legitimate. The people who are hurt are the fans of the band because it’s so much harder now to get tickets because it is legal and legitimate.”
Experts agree it’s the bots and their accompanying software that contribute to some of the biggest spikes in ticket prices.
Scalper bot software is able to perform multiple tasks, including creating multiple fake accounts for a targeted website, navigating captchas, purchasing tickets and more.
The Better Online Ticket Sales Act, or BOTS Act, bans the use of bots software to purchase tickets, and bans the sale of those tickets. Yet it’s been used only once, in 2021, against three ticket brokers based in New York who used “automated software to illegally buy up tens of thousands of tickets for popular concerts and sporting events,” said the Federal Trade Commission in a release.
The result is they can make millions of dollars reselling tickets at higher prices.
Why only one BOTS Acts case against ticket scalpers? The level of technology scalpers have access to exceeds the ability of legislators and law enforcement to keep up, said Frank Teruel, Chief Operating Officer of Arkose Labs, a California-based account security company.
“(The money) is a gravitational pull for the bad guys to use advance technologies to perpetuate advanced attacks, and that’s why legislation alone can’t solve the problem. It’s just too complicated,” Teruel said. “We’re dealing with an adversary who is chasing such a huge pool of money and doing so with such advanced technology that it’s hard for these guys to keep up.”
The inclusion of AI into the ticket bots is making it even more difficult to detect.
“Standard bots, or dumb bots, are not good at emulating human behavior. But with very limited technology like a regular captcha, you can trick the machine,” Teruel said. “But AI driven bots, they’re designed to emulate what a human would do … [and] understand not to do things so quickly, not to buy so many sessions at one time.”
The recent Trump executive order on concert and event tickets called for the rigorous enforcement of the BOTS Act and to promote its enforcement by state consumer protection authorities.
Bots aside, there are currently no federal laws on ticket scalping, although some states have laws restricting it. If you’re in New Jersey and you’re in the business of selling tickets in the secondary market, you must register as a ticket broker with the state’s Division of Consumer Affairs.
Markups in New Jersey for brokers cannot exceed 50 percent over the original ticket price.
Ticketmaster earns fees on both ends
Ticketmaster benefits from the secondary market by charging fees on both the primary and secondary sales, if they are made on the Ticketmaster site. In 2009, Bruce Springsteen and Ticketmaster butted heads over the on-sale of the Working on a Dream tour when fans purchasing $95 tickets were directed to Ticketmaster’s former secondary market site, TicketsNow, where the cost ballooned to as much as $380, even though the $95 tickets were still available.
Fans, politicians and Springsteen and his camp were outraged. Then Ticketmaster head Irving Azoff, now the manager of Bon Jovi, delivered a mea culpa.
“We recognize that we need to change our course,” said Azoff in a 2009 “open letter of apology” to Springsteen, his manager Jon Landau and the Springsteen tour team. “We also publicly state that we will never again link to TicketsNow in a manner that can possibly create any confusion during a high-demand on-sale.”
Ticketmaster has not been accused of conducting a similar scheme since.
The fees are shared by the ticketing agent (often Ticketmaster), the concert promoter (often Live Nation) and the venue. The fees are determined by all three entities, and there is no cap to how much is added.
While there is no cap, the the Federal Trade Commission did announce a requirement last year that fees can’t be hidden – and that rule went into effect on May 12. The fees often add up to 30 percent to the overall price of the tickets, and Ticketmaster collects 5 percent to 7 percent, Lutz said.
“That covers our technology, our staffing, our help marketing events, certainly bot defense and things of that nature,” Lutz said.
New York, Tennessee, Connecticut, California, Maryland, Minnesota, North Carolina, Colorado and Massachusetts have passed laws requiring all-in pricing, and it might go national.
The Transparency in Charges for Key Events Ticketing, or TICKET Act, first introduced by Rep. Gus Bilirakis, R-Florida, in 2023 and supported by Frank Pallone, who represents New Jersey’s 6th Congressional District, would eliminate hidden fees by mandating “all-in” ticket pricing. It would also ban speculative ticketing, the practice of selling tickets the seller does not possess.
The TICKET Act passed the full House of Representatives with a bipartisan 409-15 vote on April 29 and now awaits a Senate vote.
In the meantime, Live Nation partially adopted all-in pricing in 2023 at its operated venues, including the PNC Bank Arts Center in Holmdel. It increased sales 8 percent in the first six months of use, according to Live Nation.
“Showing the total cost to walk in the door upfront is better for fans and artists,” said Michael Rapino, CEO of Live Nation Entertainment, in a statement. “We’re proud to have led the industry in adapting this commonsense policy, and we encourage Congress to enact a nationwide law so every ticket buyer benefits from this transparency, no matter where they are buying their tickets.”
