A scan of current ticket prices for artists who are at the superstar level that Perry was in 2011, when she’d had a string of No 1 hits and had released her most successful album Teenage Dream a year earlier, confirms Scott’s experience. Standing tickets for Billie Eilish’s 2022 tour are around £75 for UK arena dates, for example, while Robson recently paid £89 for a standing ticket to see Harry Styles at Emirates Old Trafford.
On top of the decade-long incremental rise, there is evidence of further price increases since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic. Weekend adult tickets for Green Man festival are up to £210 this year from £189 in 2019, while Latitude festival is charging £227, up from £202 in 2019. The world’s largest live music promoter, Live Nation, said in its latest quarterly financial results that strong demand enabled “improved pricing”, and that the average amphitheatre or major festival ticket price had seen double-digit growth from the last pre-pandemic year.
Green Man festival owner Fiona Stewart says her costs have risen 34.5% since 2016 against a 20% rise in ticket prices. This year, “we’ve started to see
