Bruce Springsteen defends rising ticket prices
Bruce Springsteen is the latest major music artist to respond to the backlash surrounding rising ticket prices. Tickets for Springsteen’s first tour with the E-street band since 2017 went on sale a few months ago, sparking much criticism, with some claiming that tickets were priced at $5,000 (£4,152) due to Ticketmaster’s controversial new pricing model.
The “dynamic pricing” system allows Ticketmaster to charge more for tickets when they first go on sale, with the price increasing or decreasing depending on demand. This method sees ticket prices sit in line with what a “scalper”, someone who re-sells tickets for profit, would charge. The idea is that this will enable the artist and their time to earn more money from shows.
This is bad news for fans, many of whom are already struggling with their finances. Rolling Stone asked Springsteen for his thoughts on the controversy during an interview about his upcoming covers album Only The Strong Survive. While Springsteen tends to charge less than his peers, he’s said he’ll be charging the same as everybody else this time around.
“What I do is a very simple thing. I tell my guys, ‘Go out and see what everybody else is doing. Let’s charge a little less,'” he explained. “That’s generally the directions. They go out and set it up. For the past 49 years or however long we’ve been playing, we’ve pretty much been out there under market value. I’ve enjoyed that. It’s been great for the fans.”
He went on to note: “This time I told them, ‘Hey, we’re 73 years old. The guys are there. I want to do what everybody else is doing, my peers.’ So that’s what happened. That’s what they did.”
Springsteen has acknowledged that ticketing has grown increasingly “confusing” for fans and artists alike. “The bottom line is that most of our tickets are totally affordable,” he continued. “They’re in that affordable range. We have those tickets that are going to go for that [higher] price somewhere anyway. The ticket broker or someone is going to be taking that money. I’m going, ‘Hey, why shouldn’t that money go to the guys that are going to be up there sweating three hours a night for it?’”
Jon Landau, Springsteen’s manager, has also defended the price of The Boss’s concert tickets. In a statement shared via The New York Times, Landau said: “Regardless of the commentary about a modest number of tickets costing $1,000 (£828) or more, our true average ticket price has been in the mid-$200 (£165) range. I believe that in today’s environment, that is a fair price to see someone universally regarded as among the very greatest artists of his generation.”
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