Another Bruce Springsteen tour on-sale; another bout of elation among those who procured tickets. Along with, of course, another round of debate over how easy it was or wasn’t to get those tickets… and another spate of hysteria about top ticket prices. So how much did they cost when they went on sale Saturday?
There was a bit of sticker shock for some when they logged into Ticketmaster over the weekend and were put into queues that sometimes backed up to over 100,000 wanna-be ticket buyers at a time, with a message to study on the app while they waited: “Tickets for this event have been priced in advance by the tour from $84.55 – $3,007.20, including service fees.”
That is some welcome transparency, and it gets out of the way early the horror some fans might feel if they went directly to the front rows after making their way through the line and saw that $3,007.20 pop-up window. The $84.55 bottom also sets up an impression for fans that at least some of the tickets will be set at working man’s prices. (The “priced by the tour” clause also counts as Ticketmaster signaling that it wishes to wash its hands a bit of where prices finally land.)
Of course, in the end, a very tiny percentage of tickets were set at either those top or bottom price points, which makes it a challenge to wade through enough sections to get even a clue about what an average price might be. But over the course of a couple of hours of looking through the ticket offerings for Springsteen’s two L.A. Forum shows, and a side glance at some other cities, Variety was able to form some impressions.
Springsteen tours have tended to attract more attention for their cost than most in recent years, partly because some fans believe that he has a “man of the people” image that should mandate keeping costs for fans low, while others think it’s just fine if he charges something closer to a going rate, given how scalpers will make the lion’s share off outrageous prices if he leaves money on the table for the sake of optics. And, of course, many in Springsteen’s core demographic rarely buy tickets anymore and still complain about anything above 1985 prices… although no one can be blamed for having their eyes widen upon first exposure to the higher tiers here. (It’s not just boomers who balk, anyway; the onsale for Harry Styles’ upcoming residencies had some millennials at least as much in shock as any Bruce fan.)
Generally speaking, if you wanted a “good” seat — which we’ll define as on the floor or in the loge sections facing the stage — you should have expected to shell out in the $400-$1200 per-ticket range, at initial face value.
However, there were some seats in the upper levels that many fans would consider perfectly acceptable for a high-demand show that went for around $130 (disappearing very quickly at that level) or $180. This was the sweet spot for fans on a budget who wanted to get in the building, be facing the stage and rely to a large extent on the big screens.
One thing to note: “dynamic” pricing did not seem to be in effect for the on-sale, contrary to what many fans were contending, at least in the initial hours. Prices for different rows seemed to be the same time when we visited them over time. Most of the best seats were identified as “platinum” tickets, which in the past has sometimes been identified as seats whose prices are subject to change, based on demand. But we didn’t see any immediate sign of prices going up or down, whether it was for platinum or “standard” seats. (That doesn’t count resale tickets, which of course began fluctuating immediately.)
The very first tickets to sell out were those in the GA section right in front of the stage, which takes up a relatively small part of the overall floor. Ticketmaster even warned those waiting in the queue that those were gone. Although Variety never got a chance to even look at those prices, fans reported the standing-room tickets were about $500, on par with what Springsteen has charged for that privileged area for years.
The only $87.55 tickets we spotted were in the last few rows of the area behind the stage… an awfully good price point if you have binoculars and want the same view the cover photographer for “Born in the USA” had (give or take a processional lap to a ramp at the rear of the stage that is likely to happen in any Springsteen show). Anything closer-up in the rear than those last few rows was more likely to run you anywhere from $130.35 to $306.60, the latter being the cost for a front-row seat in a rear-view section.
The sections that sold out most quickly — apart from the instant-sellout GA spots — were the front-facing loge sections, just off the floor. In the Kia Forum’s section 105, which is somewhat toward the rear of the arena but still offering a good, relatively head-on view, a ticket in row 1 cost $961.30 (labeled as a platinum ticket), while a seat in row 9 ran $423.96 (labeled a standard seat).
On the floor, a ticket in the very front rows cost $3007.20, as advertised. If you went back to the sixth row, they dropped to $2707.20. A seat in the front row of Section F, the second seated section back from GA, went for $1,147.20. Move back to row 5 of that section and it was $961.20. Go back on row 10, in the area of the mixing board, and seats dropped to $721.30. Seats in the very last rows of the floor, meanwhile, went for $423.95.
In the upper level, a.k.a. the 200s at the Forum, a typical seat was going for $308.80, including the row the very furthest distance from the stage (section 236, row 10). However, the back rows over in section 205 could be had for $187.95.
Some seats in the front-facing 200s, a.k.a. the “nosebleeds,” did go for $128 — a bargain, by most modern standards. Those were all sold out by the time we got through the queue for the Forum shows, though. We were able to go look at other cities — Cleveland, for example (where SeatGeek was handling all the sales, including initial purchase, not Ticketmaster) — and see some $128 seats still on sale there as of Saturday afternoon.
Are these fair prices? Springsteen fans will continue to debate that, as they have with other recent tours of his. One answer is that any of these prices will seem reasonable compared to what resellers will be asking for them, probably even at the uppermost level. Some industry observers have made the point that tickets for top-tier acts are underpriced, by the standard of actual supply and demand, if resellers can get more and that money doesn’t go into the pocket of the artist. But others argue that optics matter, which is why most superstar acts have recently been setting their top tickets closer to the $1200 level than $3000. Taylor Swift actually capped non-VIP-package tickets for the Eras Tour at $499, leaving rates above that to the scalpers — though you could argue she made it up in volume, in a way that a short tour like Springsteen’s never could. (And also that she has a lot more years ahead of her to make beaucoup concert bucks than the E Street Band, who are revving their engines to retirement age and beyond.)
Clearly, many fans look at high ticket prices and walk away. At one point in the Forum on-sale, the wait to get through the queue showed more than 100,000 potential buyers ahead in the line, but by the time we got past that massive line, there were still hundreds of tickets to be had, indicating most looked at what were available and walked away. (Or many were bots… take your pick.)
But in the end, Springsteen has one thing in his favor that the Eras Tour also did, even after scalpers tripled and quadrupled prices: Virtually no one who has attended one of his shows in recent years ever went online to complain after the fact that it wasn’t worth it, whatever “it” turned out to be. Especially, in the case of either of these three-hour-plus experiences, if you’re calculating value by the minute as well as sublimity.
