With the news that Tom DeLonge officially rejoined Blink-182 after a lengthy hiatus, the band’s plans for the next year or two are pretty well known. New album, new song, tours around the world with bands like Turnstile and Rise Against, etc. Obviously, tickets for said tours are in extremely high demand, and in the USA in particular, tickets are selling ridiculously fast. You can probably guess where this is going, given the headline.
As Dying Scene notes, though, said tickets are going for HUGE prices thanks to Ticketmaster’s “dynamic pricing” model, which is about as terrible as it sounds. In short, the high demand for the tickets enable Ticketmaster to raise the prices to fit said demand. Yikes on bikes, as the kids say.
@Ticketmaster are criminals. Dynamic pricing is bullshit. $2000 for 2 Blink-182 tickets in Toronto in the 100s level. Absolutely Criminal. Thank you for taking advantage of people. Much appreciated.
— Kristine with a ‘K’ (@HRH_KRS) October 12, 2022
What makes this particularly troubling is that this high demand (and Ticketmaster, in particular) essentially prices out many who don’t have many hundreds of dollars to shell out for a single ticket. We’ve been down this road before, as well. Remember when Pearl Jam tried to take on Ticketmaster in the mid-’90s after their meteoric rise to fame? It essentially curbed their ability to tour for a few years during their biggest success, but at least Pearl Jam tried to make their shows affordable for everyone.
Blink-182 (and other bands) apparently can opt out of this pricing, and of course there will be more opportunities to see the band at certain festivals, etc. It’s obviously not the first time this has happened with the “dynamic pricing” model – it happened at high-profile tours with Taylor Swift and even My Chemical Romance in the last few years. But this pricing model does nothing to quell the annoyed (and often angry) fans that are outraged by this. Surely Live Nation Entertainment don’t seem to care, though – they’re laughing all the way to the bank.
