A guide to upcoming concerts – and top ticket prices
Maybe you’ve heard … the price of concert tickets has gone up, just a bit.
TicketMaster and LiveNation, which hold the monopoly on big-venue, top-act ticket sales in America, weathered the recent storm over their exorbitant prices for the 2023 Bruce Springsteen tour.
The Feb. 1 show at Tampa’s Amalie Arena was one of the first to go on sale, and fans were quickly in an uproar when the prices for floor seats rose – within the first hour – to $2,000 and more.
TicketMaster defended its “Dynamic Pricing” structure, which automatically raises the price of remaining seats, as demand increases.
Springsteen, uncharacteristically, did not make a public comment about the controversy.
“In pricing tickets for this tour, we looked carefully at what our peers have been doing. We chose prices that are lower than some and on par with others,” his manager Jon Landau told The New York Times. “Regardless of the commentary about a modest number of tickets costing $1,000 or more, our true average ticket price has been in the mid-$200 range. I believe that in today’s environment, that is a fair price to see someone universally regarded as among the very greatest artists of his generation.”
Of course, this leaves the ardent fan of meager means out in the cold if he or she wants to get within adoring distance of the artist in question.
With that in mind, we looked at a dozen or so upcoming Tampa Bay concerts, at Amalie Arena and the Mid-Florida Credit Union Amphitheatre, and comparison-priced the tickets closest to the stage.
According to links provided by the venues, these are the highest prices for tickets as of Tuesday, Aug. 9, 2022.
Amalie Arena (via amaliearena.com, which links to TicketMaster)
Lizzo, Sept. 24. A front row seat, behind the standing-room-only pit: $860.
Smashing Pumpkin/Janes Addiction, Oct. 7. Second row center: $1,669.
Greta Van Fleet, Oct. 26. General admission floor seating: $65.75
Iron Maiden, Oct. 27. General admission floor seating: $553.
Marc Anthony, Nov. 4. Two second-row center seats remain: $2,850 each.
Reba MacEntire, Nov. 11. Fifth row center: $681.
Bruce Springsteen, Feb. 1. Section 2, behind SRO pit: $2,450.
Carrie Underwood, Feb. 4. In the VIP Standing Room Only Pit $722.
Mid-Florida (via midflorida.com, which links to ticketsqueeze.com and livenation.com)
Chris Brown & Lil Baby, Aug. 13. Section 1 near stage: $1,327.
Jack Johnson, Aug. 19. Section 5, behind SRO pit: $1,349.
Dierks Bentley, Aug. 20. Sections 5 and 6, behind SRO pit: $269.
Black Keys, Band of Horses, Aug. 25. Section 1 near stage: $247.
Nas & Wu-Tang Clan, Sept. 21. Section 1, close to stage: $374.
Alice in Chains & Breaking Benjamin, Sept. 30. Section 1 in front of stage: $736.
Zac Brown Band, Oct. 8. Section 4, behind SRO pit: $349.
Chris Stapleton, Oct. 14. Section 7 near stage (behind SRO pit): $1,319
Stevie Nicks, Oct. 25. Section 1 in front of stage: $824.
Jon Kile
August 9, 2022at4:56 pm
It’s unfortunate, but if some ticket reseller is going to use their technology to gobble up tickets and resell them for $2,000, why shouldn’t the artist sell the ticket for what it’s worth? Springsteen is obviously very wealthy but a lot of those artists probably can afford to bring a bigger band, better support for a better show, rather than letting a middle man make money just because they can.