Jordan Higa was waiting for her flight when she stopped to ask her travel
companion how much they would spend on tickets to see BTS perform live. Higa spent $180 on her current ticket, but wanted to trade up for better seats. “Is $500 ridiculous?” she asked. Maybe not if they were really good seats.
Higa, who lives in Honolulu, has spent a couple thousand dollars over the last few months just to see BTS. She flew to Los Angeles for a show in December, which exceeded her expectations – “some would say it was life-changing.” She traveled to Las Vegas this weekend for the final night of BTS’ four-night run in Sin City. She spent $600 on the flight alone.
Higa has never spent this kind of money to see a musical act before, but this was the first chance she’s had to see her new favorite group. She fell in love with the band during the pandemic after watching them perform on National Public Radio’s Tiny Desk series (with a little help from Korean dramas, her gateway drug to Korean pop.)
The reopening of society has created unprecedented demand for (and supply of) in-person experiences, boosting businesses across the economy. Delta Air Lines said a rise in travel bookings would help it overcome the rising cost of gas, while banks have reported surges in travel and dining expenditures.
Few industries are in a better position to benefit than live music. While there are alternatives to movie theaters, arcades and even restaurants, the at-home concert experience has no substitute. Live Nation Entertainment, the world’s largest concert promoter, has said this will be its biggest year on-record.
Some parts of the world remain relatively closed – led by markets in Asia – but business in the Americas is back to normal. This weekend marks the unofficial start of the summer festival season, the industry’s busiest period. Coachella, the largest music festival in North America, returned for the first time in three years while BTS, perhaps the biggest act in the world, played the final two nights of their stint in Las Vegas.
Fans like Higa are spending more money to see shows than ever before. The average ticket price in the U.S. has jumped 10% from 2019, according to Pollstar. People are paying almost $80 per show. That was just $26 in 1995 (and for the top 100 shows, not everything).
Customers are also splurging on merchandise and VIP experiences for parking, food and beverage. Fan spending on-site for food, drinks, merchandise and parking at Live Nation events is up more than 10%. (BTS charged $85 for a hoodie, and $59 for their signature light sticks.)
Everyone from the U.S. Congress to comedian John Oliver have questioned why ticket prices are so high. Covid deserves some of the blame. The pandemic has inflated the cost of insurance while supply chain shortages have boosted the price of gasoline. The sheer number of tours on the road right now has also created scarcity in the market for truck drivers and all sorts of people who work behind the scenes.
But prices were spiking well before the pandemic.
Executives in the live music industry argue high ticket prices are actually a sign of progress. Customers have always been willing to pay to see live music, and ticket scalpers and brokers take advantage of this demand by reselling tickets well above the original price. Acts have raised the upfront price so they capture more of the money – instead of letting it flow to a third party.
“If you are looking at sports, Broadway and other experiences, I don’t think ticket prices are that high,” said Live Nation’s Omar Al-Joulani. The biggest rise in prices is at the top of the market, wealthy people and super fans willing to spend even more to be close to the stage, or for some kind of exclusive experience.
The glut of shows isn’t good news for everyone. While demand has never been higher, the same could be said about supply. There are musicians on the road right now who have been waiting to tour since having to cancel tours in late 2019 and early 2020. There are musicians on tour who released music in 2020 — and then released even more music in 2021. And there is everyone else who just wants to play.
Several acts are struggling to sell tickets and compete with peers that are in greater demand. Latin mega-star J Balvin postponed his upcoming tour, while certain festivals are struggling to sell out. This isn’t just a problem in live music, but Broadway as well.
“The middle market is being squeezed,” said Tim Chambers, a consultant who has spent the last three decades working in ticketing and live entertainment. Chambers cautioned against trusting the numbers being touted by major promoters. Companies reported high demand for shows based on ticket sales. But the first couple months of the year were plagued by no shows — people who bought tickets and didn’t show up. And that initial enthusiasm for live has started to wane.
The biggest winners of this moment are top-line acts like Bad Bunny and BTS. Bad Bunny grossed more than $3 million a night on his most recent tour, a figure that will jump when he starts touring stadiums later this year. BTS average more than $8 million a night during a Los Angeles swing late last year, selling about $33 million worth of tickets during just four nights. That’s more than all but 10 tours made during the entirety of 2021.
The band hasn’t released numbers for its Las Vegas shows yet, but it sold out all four nights at Allegiant Stadium. Floor seats for the Saturday BTS show in Las Vegas were listed for thousands of dollars on Ticketmaster the week of the show.
Higa passed on the chance to upgrade her seats, and skipped the long lines for merchandise. But there’s always next time. The band asked fans to stick around until the end of the show Saturday night to see a teaser for the band’s next album, due out later this year. The crowd erupted. The band’s fans — the BTS army — expect a show in the New York area in the near future. — Lucas Shaw
The best of Screentime (and other stuff)
Is CNN+ a success or a failure? It may not matter
CNN signed up more than 100,000 customers for its streaming service in its first week.
Is that a lot? Is that a little? It’s hard to say.
Major streaming services think in terms of tens of millions. Netflix has more than 220 million customers. Disney+ has more than 120 million. Even Peacock has about 10 million.
But CNN+ is a news service, not a mass market entertainment service. It is also in its first month of operation. It took the New York Times four years to sign up 1 million digital subscribers, and it now has close to 8 million.
The press has been quick to dismiss CNN+ as a failure, and there is reason to be skeptical. People can watch a lot of news video available on the internet for free, and would watch CNN+’s lifestyle programming if it were on HBO Max.
But if you were running the world’s best-known cable news network, you too would conceive a streaming service. The future of video is on the internet, and CNN isn’t going to fund its operations posting clips to YouTube. (Fox News, one of CNN’s top competitors, also has a paid streaming service.)
Whether or not you feel CNN+ should exist, Discovery thinks the service is too expensive, if not extraneous all together. WarnerMedia spent a reported $300 million to launch the service, and has plans to spend $1 billion over the next few years. It has signed expensive talent like actress Eva Longoria and journalist Chris Wallace to host shows.
Just look at the leaks dripping out of Warner Bros. Discovery. It’s interesting to see a company actively undermining its own product.
Remember that Discovery introduced its own streaming service in January 2021 and, like CNN+, talked up expensive lifestyle programming. Discovery chief David Zaslav didn’t get the return he wanted out of that investment, and cut back on the service’s budget. History tends to repeat itself.
Jack Dorsey’s next music investment
Stem raised $20 million from QED Investors and Block Inc. to build tools and services that will make the music industry more transparent.
Founded by former agent Milana Rabkin Lewis, Stem has now raised close to $40 million. Rabkin Lewis wouldn’t disclose the new valuation for her company, though she said this new round boosted the value six times over the last time it raised money.
Stem began as a distribution company for independent artists, offering an alternative to major record labels and publishers. It has since built tools and services that afford those artists greater transparency and efficiency in collecting their money. Now it wants to sell those tools to major music companies.
That pitch appealed to QED, a venture capital firm with a large financial technology practice, and Block, the company formerly known as Square. Block, led by Jack Dorsey, bought Jay-Z’s music service Tidal.
The year’s first indie darling
“Everything Everywhere All At Once,” an R-rated movie based on an original script, posted the highest per-screen average of the year. Read Kelly Gilblom on the indie darling bucking Hollywood’s conventional wisdom:
Both industry insiders and observers have been proclaiming people will only fill theaters again for superhero epics. Instead, a weird, small-budget film without any household names on the marquee took in an astonishing $50,130 per theater when it opened in 10 locations three weeks ago, the most of any picture this year. That’s also better than Walt Disney Co.’s “The Avengers,” which debuted in more than 4,300 cinemas in 2012.
Meanwhile, the third “Fantastic Beasts” movie is falling way short of its predecessors.
A Netflix stress test
Netflix will report financial results for the first quarter of the year on Tuesday. The company has already set the bar low, predicting its worst first quarter in at least a decade. That was before the company pulled out of Russia, sacrificing a few hundred thousand customers.
So what to expect? Demand for Netflix’s original programming continues to slip relative to its peers, per Parrot Analytics.
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