<\/p>\n
I<\/span>n October 2024, Heat magazine\u2019s list of the UK\u2019s 30 richest celebrities under 30<\/a> ranked Harry Styles at the very top, with an estimated wealth of \u00a3200m. (He\u2019d doubtless have fared well in last year\u2019s survey, too, but he\u2019s 31 now.)<\/p>\n Whatever your views on the fabulous wealth accrued by a small elite of megastars, and regardless of your opinion of Styles\u2019 musical merits, that figure doesn\u2019t sit well next to the headlines he is now making.<\/p>\n Styles announced<\/a> a record-breaking 12-date residency at Wembley stadium this week, with ticket prices for seats ranging<\/a> from \u00a344.10 in the faraway stands right up to \u00a3466.24, while bog standard general standing tickets will set you back \u00a3144.65 \u2013 and a berth in the fancy Circle, Disco, Square and Kiss standing enclosures up to \u00a3279.45. Furthermore, access to the presale was restricted to American Express cardholders<\/a> and anyone who pre-ordered Styles\u2019 new album, Kiss All the Time. Disco, Occasionally<\/a>, which will be released on 6 March. The pricing has sparked an enormous backlash among Styles\u2019 fans for making the shows inaccessible to vast swathes of his audience, a significant proportion of whom are very young.<\/p>\n But Styles is no outlier. The attitude towards ticket pricing in the entertainment industry seems to be, overwhelmingly, simply to charge as much as you can get away with charging. In recent years, Adele<\/a>, Taylor Swift<\/a> and Oasis<\/a> have, like Styles, received intense criticism for their steep ticket prices. The last of those three came under particular scrutiny when it became apparent that dynamic pricing was at play, meaning that the original stated face value of tickets for Oasis gigs was essentially meaningless.<\/p>\n In November 2025, the government made it illegal to resell tickets for above face value, preventing ripoffs by ticket touts, while the Competition and Markets Authority is making sellers like Ticketmaster<\/a> be more clear about pricing \u2013 all heartening measures. But there is a broader problem, one the government will find it much harder to intervene in: the rising cost of those face-value tickets in the first place.<\/p>\n The age of streaming has had an extraordinary impact on how money is made in the music industry. Everyone understands this, and nobody begrudges musicians jacking up their prices by a modest amount. Rising prices since the pandemic have also made it significantly more expensive to go on tour, due to huge rises in costs for fuel, visas, transportation, labour and more. However, a small elite of megastars have gone cash-crazy on their concert tours.<\/p>\n The knock-on effect on the rest of the industry is immense. In these cash-strapped times, people\u2019s pockets aren\u2019t bottomless when it comes to leisure activities such as gigs. VIP types may be able to spend, spend, spend \u2013 but many other people make choices. If they pay for one very expensive ticket, will they be less likely to buy others?<\/p>\n The average touring band is struggling. At a recent gig, Shirley Manson of Garbage put it well<\/a>: \u201cYou see all these big pop stars, and they\u2019re making billions and billions and billions of dollars and they\u2019re rich and they\u2019re glamorous and they\u2019re amazing. But the problem is that most of the music industry is not made of these big pop stars. They\u2019re made of working musicians.\u201d<\/p>\n As well as musicians, smaller venues are also having a torrid time due, at least in part, to the trickle-up economics of the megaconcert industry. During 2023, one in six small venues closed according to the Music Venue Trust (MVT)<\/a>, and its 2025 report found that more than half of the surviving venues failed to make a profit. And it\u2019s also due in part to the era of the supertour. \u201cIf you\u2019re paying \u00a3150 or \u00a3200 for a stadium ticket,\u201d MVT chief executive Mark Davyd has said<\/a>, \u201cthat inevitably eats into the budget you have to see new or emerging artists.\u201d The end result is that up-and-coming artists have fewer and fewer places to hone their craft on the way to becoming the next Wembley headliner.<\/p>\n Even if they do make it through, will the next generation of fans be waiting? What the practice of gouging gig prices fails to take into account is the emotional effect it has on the purchaser. Yes, they\u2019ll pay, but reluctantly and begrudgingly. It leaves a sour taste and can put people off going to gigs entirely, of whatever size. \u201cOK, this is good \u2026 but is it \u00a3200 good?\u201d<\/p>\n Because it\u2019s not even as if the premium-priced experience feels especially luxurious. In my years as rock and pop critic for the Independent on Sunday, my job involved countless trips to the O2, that soulless enormodome where you\u2019re charged captive-audience prices for your drinks and chain-franchise snacks on top of the extortionate ticket, all for the privilege of watching a band so far away that they might as well be on TV. It has all the charm of a night out in terminal five.<\/p>\n I\u2019m done with those shows now. I honestly don\u2019t think there\u2019s an artist alive who could drag me to a megaconcert. The most I\u2019ve personally paid for a ticket was \u00a375, for Stevie Nicks in Hyde Park<\/a> in 2024 \u2013 and though she was great, I\u2019m not even sure I was in the same postcode. And while the shows I saw Prince play at the O2 in 2007<\/a> were among the best I\u2019ve seen, it was despite, not because of, the surroundings.<\/p>\n In fairness to Styles, he\u2019s donating \u00a31 for every ticket he sells<\/a> at his own UK megaconcerts to the Live Trust<\/a>, which works to protect small venues. This shows that deep down he knows something\u2019s wrong. It could be, as some have claimed, that his fanbase is non transferable to other kinds of music and other kinds of venue. But still, I think the greatest gift he could give would be to slash his prices, and leave enough money in the pockets of those of his fans who might actually visit one of those threatened venues.<\/p>\n It can be done. And it\u2019s often the older generation that leads the way. The 21 shows Prince did at the O2 were priced at \u00a331.21<\/a>. More recently, Paul Heaton capped his arena tour tickets at \u00a335<\/a>. And in 2023, Robert Smith went to battle with Ticketmaster<\/a> over excessive booking fees on the Cure\u2019s US tour, insisting that tickets should cost no more than $35, arguing: \u201cYou don\u2019t want to charge as much as the market will bear, and squeeze everyone. It doesn\u2019t sit well with me at all.\u201d<\/p>\n Of course different shows cost different amounts to stage, but still the point remains. The likes of Lady Gaga, Britney Spears, Christina Aguilera, Kylie Minogue and Justin Timberlake have at various points staged hi-tech extravaganzas without charging fans the earth. Artists have a duty of care to fans.<\/p>\n So, Harry, don\u2019t go poor: but be more Robert Smith, be more Paul Heaton. Leave the money for someone else who needs it more.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.theguardian.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" In October 2024, Heat magazine\u2019s list of the UK\u2019s 30 richest celebrities under 30 ranked Harry Styles at the very top, with an estimated wealth of \u00a3200m. (He\u2019d doubtless have fared well in last year\u2019s survey, too, but he\u2019s 31 now.) Whatever your views on the fabulous wealth accrued by a small elite of megastars, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2261470,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25173],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2261469","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-artists"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/What-could-bring-down-extortionate-ticket-prices-Perhaps-stars-like.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2261469","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2261469"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2261469\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2261471,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2261469\/revisions\/2261471"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2261470"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2261469"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2261469"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2261469"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}