Bruce Springsteen Opens Up About Ticketmaster’s Dynamic Pricing: ‘Ticket Buying Has Gotten Very Confusing’
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Following the ticket chaos of Taylor Swift’s The Eras tour this week, the conversation has shifted to Ticketmaster’s monopoly in the business and their out-of-control “dynamic pricing” model.
It’s hardly the first time that an artist’s tour tickets have been blown into wildly expensive territory on Ticketmaster. When Bruce Springsteen and The E Street Band’s 2023 tour tickets went on sale a few months back, some ended up costing thousands of dollars.
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In a recent interview with Rolling Stone, Springsteen gave his two cents on the struggle between balancing affordable tickets and making enough money for his band. “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.’ That’s generally the directions,” he shared. “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 added, “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.”
The Boss followed up by nothing that “ticket buying has gotten very confusing, not just for the fans, but for the artists also,” and that “most of our tickets are totally affordable.” He then concluded by noting, “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?’ It created an opportunity for that to occur. And so at that point, we went for it. I know it was unpopular with some fans. But if there’s any complaints on the way out, you can have your money back.”
