Going to a concert used to be easy. You’d grab tickets, maybe camp out at the venue all day if you were feeling ambitious, and have a night you’d talk about for years. Now, it’s an Olympic sport. There’s the presale panic, the Ticketmaster queues, the random waitlist heartbreaks. And if you blink? Resale prices skyrocket, and you’re suddenly deciding whether to drop a rent check’s worth on nosebleed seats. Live music was once a universal thrill but has now become a financial commitment.
It’s not just fans who are frustrated. Ticketmaster is the industry’s favorite scapegoat and with good reason—between the monopoly, the fees, and the questionable “face value” pricing, they’ve certainly earned the villain edit. Some artists are experimenting with dynamic pricing, sometimes to disastrous results (see: The Great Bruce Springsteen Ticket Fiasco of 2022). Lawmakers have launched investigations, but if history tells us anything it’s that government intervention in the live music industry is about as effective as trying to stop a stadium wave mid-loop.
But one thing keeps getting overlooked beneath all the finger-pointing: the resale market itself. Secondary sellers are free to jack up prices without limits, fueling a cycle where inflated ticket costs become the new normal. D.C.-based independent concert promoter Seth Hurwitz has spent decades watching this unfold and makes the case that capping resale prices is the only real way to fix the system. Otherwise, we’ll keep playing this same game—only with higher stakes and worse odds.
Why Fans Are Paying More and Attending Less
The numbers don’t lie: concert ticket prices have jumped at a rate that makes inflation look like child’s play. In 2019, the average ticket for a top 100 tour was $91.86. By 2023 that number had shot up to $122.84, and in 2024 it climbed to $135.92—a nearly 50% increase in just five years. Red Rocks was once a haven for reasonably priced shows, but has seen a 60% price surge since 2018, including a 23% hike from 2023 to 2024 alone—far beyond the local inflation rate of 1.4%.
A decade ago, seeing a concert was something you did on a whim. You’d hear a song on the radio, text a friend, and by that evening you were in a crowd, yelling the lyrics to a band you barely knew. Back then, your biggest dilemma was deciding between a GA ticket and a cheap beer. Now? You pick one show, carefully selecting which artist is “worth it,” then you sit in the back and pray someone live-streams the others. Seth Hurwitz says this shift isn’t just sad—it’s dangerous. When fans get priced out of mid-size and club shows because they’ve already dropped $500 on a stadium tour, the whole system starts cracking. The second concerts become an occasional luxury instead of a regular event, everything—venues, artists, fan culture—starts to suffer.
Of course, the industry insists that this is just how markets work. Some point to supply and demand—tickets are expensive because people are willing to pay—while others highlight the rise of tiered pricing models, VIP packages, and platinum seats which are all designed to extract the most money from die-hard fans while offering more “affordable” options for those willing to sit in the rafters. But Hurwitz isn’t buying it. To him, the problem isn’t what artists charge—it’s what happens after tickets are sold.
Resale Platforms Keep the System Broken
Resale platforms—StubHub, Vivid Seats, and even Ticketmaster’s own resale service—have turned ticket flipping into a billion-dollar industry. And yet, none of that extra money makes its way back into live music. When a scalper buys a ticket for $150 and resells it for $600, that extra $450 doesn’t go to the artist, the crew, or the venue trying to keep the lights on. It goes straight into the pockets of middlemen who don’t book the tour, don’t run the soundboard, and don’t spend months on the road actually putting on a show.
Lawmakers have tried to rein this in, but corporate lobbying has repeatedly shut down any real progress. Maryland attempted to pass a law to cap resale markups, but industry pushback killed it before it could take effect. “There’s only one way it will ever stop, and that’s to put a limit on the resale value,” Hurwitz said.
Other proposed solutions? Dynamic pricing? Artists have tried it, only for fans to revolt when ticket prices started fluctuating like the stock market. Stricter ticketing rules in the UK and Australia? Scalpers found workarounds almost immediately. Every attempt to fix ticketing without actually capping resale prices has failed. As long as resellers can dictate the market, they will. It’s not about fair pricing—it’s about who controls the supply in the first place.
Stopping the Ticketing Spiral
If the goal is to make live music accessible again, the answer isn’t complicated—it’s capping resale prices. Not shutting down resale entirely, not another round of government inquiries, not more artist-led pre-sales that require three verification steps and a prayer to the Ticketmaster gods. Just a simple percentage-based limit on how much tickets can be resold for.
This kind of cap would allow genuine fans to resell their tickets without the wild, exploitative markups that have turned the secondary market into a free-for-all. If you can’t make it to a show, you should be able to sell your ticket without price gouging becoming part of the transaction. More importantly, a cap keeps original pricing intact, so artists and venues—not third-party resellers—retain control over how much it costs to see a show. Without one? “It’s whack-a-mole,” as Hurwitz puts it. “You will never prevent other people from making money on the show you booked and worked on.” And as long as they can do that, ticket prices will continue to spiral.
So why hasn’t this happened yet? Because the people who could fix it are the same ones making money off the problem. Ticketmaster, StubHub, and other resale platforms have no incentive to change the system, because inflated resale prices pad their bottom line. As long as resale remains unchecked, fans will keep overpaying, artists will keep losing control, and the platforms facilitating it all will keep cashing in.
And while some argue for bigger, sweeping reforms, a resale cap is the most direct and enforceable solution. Artists can keep experimenting with pricing models, and lawmakers can keep holding hearings, but until resale inflation is addressed, none of it will matter. The reality is simple: as long as resellers can name their own price, fans will continue to pay it.
