Does the WWE Show Us the Future of Concert Tickets?

Similar statements by Live Nation and TKO COOs give us reason to worry they’re ready to price fans out of concerts.

In a recent interview, Live Nation CEO Mark Rapino said of ticket prices, “We have a lot of runway left…. So when you read about ticket prices going up, the average concert price is still $72. Try going to a Laker game for that, and there’s 80 of them. The concert is underpriced and has been for a long time.”

The idea that basketball tickets are the yardstick by which prices are measured seems random at best, and for anyone who has bought tickets from Ticketmaster, which merged with Live Nation in 2010, that average likely seems low.

The heart-stopping prices people experienced for Taylor Swift, Beyoncé and Bruce Springsteen anecdotally challenge Rapino’s assertion, but mathematically, he might be right. If Live Nation calculated that average using all the prices from worst to best at all their shows across North America at all their venues, from stadiums to clubs, and that might be true on paper. That number may also be pulled down by reduced prices for discounted tickets to shows that underperformed. Focus on popular shows and it’s almost certainly too low.

What might an increased ticket price look like? Look to the WWE for one possible future.

Recently, Mark Shapiro, COO of TKO Group Holdings said something similar to Rapino. TKO owns WWE, and Shapiro assessed their ticket pricing strategy for stockholders, saying “We know we have a lot of room there because (former (WWE CEO) Vince McMahon was primarily pricing tickets for families and wasn't totally focused on maxing the opportunity there. We see what we can do with the UFC (also owned by TKO), and we're replicating that in terms of ticket yield and advance sales when it comes to On Location (premium tickets) on the WWE side.”

The next UFC card—UFC 320—will take place in Las Vegas’ T-Mobile Arena in October, and seats in the upper level go for $313 to $1,500 on the floor. UFC 322 will take place in November in Madison Square Garden, and there the cheapest seats are $496 and range up to ringsides at $8,032.

What lesson did UFC pricing teach the WWE? Go higher. Wrestlemania 42 will take place in Las Vegas’ Allegiant Stadium, which was also the home of Wrestlemania 41. Same city, same venue one year later, but this week it announced the ticket prices and they’re very different. Floor tickets that cost $3,000 and $5,000 this year will cost $3,868 and $8,998 next year, an increase of approximately 44 percent for the most expensive tickets. At most price points, tickets will go up in the range of $400, so the nosebleed tickets will go from an already pricey $450 to $854, and one level better will go from $650 to $1,174—increases in the fortysomething percent range in both cases.

When tickets go on sale, those tickets may not be available at those prices. Ticketmaster has used “dynamic pricing” to raise the price on in-demand tickets and drop it on shows that are cold. Whatever the prices are, fans won’t pay that amount even without dynamic pricing because there are fees and service charges on top of that. Nothing in any of the press coverage says that the prices are all in—fees and charges included.

In the case of Wrestlemania, this price hike is particularly bloodless because it’s a two-night event, so fans who want to go will have to pay those prices twice.

Does Live Nation think its tickets are 40 percent below what the market will bear? I hope not, but one sad truth we’ve seen again and again is how hard it is to price people out of shows they really want to see. Sabrina Carpenter is finishing her “Short and Sweet Tour” with dates in Pittsburgh, New York, Nashville, Toronto and Los Angeles, and all of the shows have sold out. On the secondary market, tickets in the upper deck of Pittsburgh’s PPG Paints Arena cost $377, and in Madison Square Gardens, it will cost $458 to be as far from the stage as possible and still be in the building. Nashville is a little less punishing, and you can say you were there for $200, but collectively numbers like tell Live Nation more or less what the market will bear.

Still, people are being chased out of the market as it has become clear that Live Nation wants to treat live music as a luxury item and price its shows accordingly. It’s equally clear that Live Nation and TKO they see their customers in predatory terms. We’re there to be soaked and preyed upon, and our fandom is there to be weaponized against us.

… oh yeah, then there’s this.