What’s the real thing to be outraged over Bruce Springsteen’s ticket prices, and what can he — and you — do about it?

There’s a lot of broohaha around Bruce Springsteen these days with ticket prices for his new tour being called extreme. The workingman’s hero seems to be cashing in big.

These statements by managers in response to fans and the flurry of press are delicately phrased without mentioning two salient points:

It’s not just the musicians.

First, artists only have so much control over ticket prices.

Livenation, owner of Ticketmaster, took half a billion from a Saudi prince and fund as the pandemic set in for 5.7% of stock to keep it from going under. Then, there was no appreciable revenue for the company or the venues for two years.

The arenas cost millions to operate on top of billions in capital expense to write down over time. LiveNation owns a number of medium and large sized venues and has contracts to provide ticketing services for many, many more.

All ticket prices are up everywhere. For lots of reasons. While revenue dropped by $1 billion in 2020, LiveNation’s revenue is rebounding $1.8 billion in the last quarter as people go back out.

It’s Scalping.

Second, these kinds of prices, and even higher, have existed in the secondary resale ticket market — scalpers — for a very long time.

Scalpers have gouged fans and taken skim from the venues and artists forever and put live music itself in jeopardy.

Just how heavy is the secondary ticket sale market? StubHub was acquired for $4 billion in cash in 2020.

To be fair, Ticketmaster’s dynamic pricing and auction format supports the venues and artists more equitably and supplies the necessary revenue to cover the operating expenses for touring and putting on shows.

The real losers are scalpers.

What’s the deal?

Running a venue of any kind is very hard business with low margins and massive operating expenses. It takes 70% of the house to be sold to cover opex generally. For an indie or small/medium venue, the bar has to turn over 2–3 times in a night to make the margin on liquor sales. That only happens a few nights a month. Even when the bartenders are paid a couple of bucks an hour, it’s more cost effective for most venues to stay dark and eat the rent — that’s how lean it is.

In the before times, just about half of the adult population went to see any live entertainment. The average spend was $247 in 2018. During the pandemic, we saw venues shut down nation wide and even storied venues who own their own property barely hang on.

Tickets and covers are a supply and demand equation where the fire marshal sets the occupancy. It’s necessary for big draws to be monetized and cost average over concerts that sell less at lower prices while the operating costs are the same. All venues do this to survive.

In short, don’t place the blame solely on the artist for the prices. They make a percentage like anyone else, and only have so much say in it. Pipers pay to play.

What can be done? Innovate and compete.

Prices in the market being what prices are, that’s your buyer’s choice in ethical consumerism. If you don’t like it, or the reality that the profits going to a literal tyrant in a foreign country where human and civil rights violations are well known, boycott LiveNation and Ticketmaster completely and don’t buy the tickets; or, if you’re a performer, don’t play their venues. You can support local and independent venues. Don’t go see live sports or theater. Everyone everywhere gets hurt.

Or — build a competitive business with a better operating model and grab market share from LiveNation by offering a better margin to venues for ticket sales with lower prices — if you can make the math work. It may not be a good business if you’re just in it to make a high percentage ROI. But there is a return in cash, and a bigger one in social justice.

And that’s where there could be legitimate criticism of Bruce and other musical artists in the 1% of the 1% who actually make it to the multimillionaire level. Particularly those who are socially conscious and talk about human rights, but are now dancing for a devil while playing “Dancing in the Dark” in those venues. Artists who played benefits for Amnesty International back in the day, now line the pockets of tyrants flagged by Amnesty who control where they can play.

If you did build a competitive business onshore, you may not make a huge margin, but you’d make a Saudi prince lose half a billion dollars. Ticket prices may not come down, but artists like Springsteen could invest in a ticketing business and take a serious bite out of LiveNation’s pie. Springteen himself just pulled $500 million for selling his catalog to Sony, where could that be invested?

Let’s recall that United Artists was started by Charlie Chaplin, Douglas Fairbanks and other stars to fight the studio system (which then owned and operated theaters), get better control over their work, and have more creative freedom. They used their star power to get distribution and traction.

Musical artists have a history of starting labels and services from A&M Records to TIDAL today. The Grateful Dead managed their own ticket sales for a long time, and Pearl Jam boycotted Ticketmaster back in the day. SoundCloud is now working new royalty models that are more direct and equitable.

Art and music go through these issues throughout time, and innovation keeps happening. Artists and musicians who make it big can make a difference.

While LiveNation owns and operates a large number of music venues and amphitheaters, the real challenge for that kind of business is outside music: Ticketmaster’s long contracts with major league sports for those big NBA arenas and NFL stadiums. Sports tickets are $12.4 billion out of a $24.2 billion total pie of events ticket sales in the US. That’s where they’re dug in.

But, live music ticket sales are projected to hit $24 billion globally in just a few years. There’s a market here, and there’s more in it than just money that makes it worth pursuing.

Because just one song can change the whole world. There is nothing more powerful than music. It is our oldest language, every thing that exists emits a frequency, and when we sing and dance together, we produce oxytocin and literally come into harmony.