TJ Chambers
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The ILMC (https://ilmc.com/) is the leading international gathering of agents, promoters, venue operators, and ticketing professionals involved in the global touring, festival and live entertainment industries, and I was delighted to recently be asked to chair the panel ‘Pricing the Ticket: Balancing Expectations’ which featured Phil Bowdery (Live Nation), Jules De Lattre (United Talent Agency), Kelly Stelbasky (AEG Presents) and Marcia Tilley (Eventim Scandinavia) to discuss what the conference organisers described as ‘one of the hottest issues in live music’.
The session discussed several topics relating to the pricing of (live music) ticketing, albeit as they are all seasoned professionals they were friendly and open, but typically on-message and didn’t volunteer any information or opinion that might embarrass their companies.
Nevertheless, several ticket pricing issues were debated in good humour with only one request for a ‘safe word’ to signal that the discussion had approached a confidentiality boundary – specifically when discussing what proportion of per ticket service fees were routinely retained by the event promoters.
However, the panel did broadly agree on a series of ticket pricing definitions and practises.
Ticket Face Value
That the Ticket Face Value is fundamentally determined by the Artist with their Management and Live Agent in negotiation with the Promoter and is designed to recoup the various event costs such as artist fee (including guarantee and/or percentage), show production costs, venue rentals, marketing plans, etc. and to (hopefully) provide a profit margin whilst utilising market-comparison data of the ticket price range of similar artists and/or analysis of previous tour sales by price-break.
Per Ticket Service Fees
That the (per) Ticket Service Fees (to cover off, incremental ticket retail, event marketing, and distribution) are typically determined by the Promoter in conjunction with the Ticketing service provider, albeit the panellists suggested that the level of fees are subject to competitive pricing between the various retail ticket agencies.
It was also confirmed that any ticket Pre-Sales, whether for artist fan clubs, promoter or event sponsor channel etc., or (mass market) On-Sales potentially led to allocations to incremental ticket retailers, as well as those event partners offering official Bundles (ticket + download / membership / livestreaming etc.) or Packaging (ticket + accommodation and/or travel), as well as VIP and Hospitality suppliers.
It was also acknowledged that the Ticket platforms may pay a proportion of Per Ticket Service Fees to inventory providers (whether artist, promoter, venue or another event Rights Owner), and although this is not an industry secret, no-one unsurprisingly wanted to discuss the frequency or level of rebates or commissions available.
Nevertheless, if there was no ticket service fee rebate to be paid, it was accepted that potentially a lower charge could then be passed onto the consumer.
Per Transaction Processing Fees
Next the panel considered what determined the level of Per Transaction Processing Fees, arguably designed to cover off the technology and service costs of Hard-Ticket Delivery (Postal, Courier etc.), Print@Home, or Mobile / Digital and the validation and verification of those differing formats at event point-of-entry.
This topic triggered a spirited defence of the need for ticketing companies to continually combat ticket bots and scalpers with ever-more demanding technology budgets, and so the query whether this set of fees also included any level of rebate or commission. And if so, paid to whom remained unanswered.
Venue Facility / Restoration Fees
Unsurprisingly as the panel which did not include a venue representative, when it discussed the question of who determines and/or collects any Venue Facility Fee or Venue Restoration Fee, they all indicated that was a matter for other parties to explain, but indicated that it was the venues alone who received these funds – presumably net after payment processing costs incurred by the ticketing services partner.
All-In’ Ticket Pricing
The panel felt that whilst All-In Ticket Pricing was ‘a good thing’ as it offered increased transparency of the end-price for consumers they didn’t believe that it would necessarily impact any of the previously discussed pricing relationships.
When offered the illustrative example that an Artist on a 90/10 split of a $100 (illustrative example) Ticket Face Value, they would actually only receive 90/130 of the Gross Transaction Value i.e., ($100) Ticket + ($10) Per Ticket Service Fee +($10) Per Transaction Processing Fee + ($10) Venue Facility Fee, so the Artist moves from 90% of the Ticket to 70% of the GTV, there was a collective shrug from the panel in response to the query would an ‘All-In’ pricing structure lead to increased demand from Artists for a greater overall share.
Dynamic Pricing
Similarly, when the topic of Dynamic Pricing was raised, the panel all suggested that the deployment of yield management tools and/or ‘surge pricing’ was a matter primarily determined by the Artist, in conjunction with the Promoter. But if any higher ticket prices fed back to the event, then that was again a good thing, and certainly preferable to the speculative actions of the unauthorised secondary market.
The question as to whether the consumer cares who was responsible for the dynamically priced ticket, a scalper or the artist, as they were being gouged either way, was dismissed as a provocation.
Further, the historical trend for ever-higher ticket prices as charged by tier #1 international touring artists and major festivals and the potential impact on the wider live music ecosystem i.e. attracting an ever-larger level of expenditure on a more limited or select number of events whilst squeezing consumer expenditure away from both the mid-market as well as grassroots and emerging stages, was also dismissed.
Event cancellations or festival and venue closures elsewhere were seemingly unrelated to the multiple nights at national stadia – ‘I’ve got 18 sold-out nights at Wembley; the business is strong’. Others may disagree.
The panel ended with a great point raised from the floor about the impact of government taxes on ticket pricing e.g. VAT in the UK is charged at 20% and perhaps the panel should therefore have also included the Chancellor of the Exchequer Rachel Reeves MP as that direct impact on the price of tickets hadn’t been discussed.
As usual the hour+ allocated for the session had all too quickly passed, and so after thanking the panellists for their contribution it was time to leave the stage.
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Review of the panel:
ILMC 37: Ticket prices under the microscope, Gordon Masson (27th February 2025) – https://www.iq-mag.net/2025/02/ilmc-37-ticket-prices-under-the-microscope/
Review of #ILMC37, including the panel:
Pricing, Parent Parking & Promised Lands: ILMC 2025 Highlights, Gideon Gottfried (3rd March 2025) – https://news.pollstar.com/2025/03/03/pricing-parent-parking-promised-lands-ilmc-2025-highlights/
Other reading:
Funflation: Concert ticket prices have soared, but music fans don’t seem to care, Jessica Dickler (31st January 2025) – https://www.cnbc.com/2025/01/31/funflation-concert-ticket-prices-soar-but-music-fans-dont-care.html
Concert Ticket Prices Are Soaring, and Busting Gen Z’s Budgets, Melissa Rohman (5th March 2025) – https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/05/business/gen-z-concert-tickets-taylor-swift-beyonce.html (The article quotes a survey by Merge marketing agency – https://mergeworld.com/verticals/retail/genz-survey)
2025 Concert Trends: Expensive #Tickets And The Growing Demand For Live Events | Global Brands – https://www.globalbrandsmagazine.com/2025-concert-trends/
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Lastly, whilst it’s not a publication I care to support, York Membery in the Telegraph (2nd March 2025) interviewed John Giddings, described as ‘one of the UK’s leading music agents and promoters’ who dismissed concerns about struggling music venues (whilst boasting of his own property portfolio), accused young people of not drinking alcohol and thus ‘killing music’ and rejected the proposed Music Venue Trust ticket levy to support grassroots venues and emerging artists – https://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/jobs/john-giddings-young-people-not-drinking-is-killing-music/.
Again, others may have a different opinion.
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Until next time.
TJ_Chambers 