Anyone else stopped going to concerts due to ticket prices?

Ticket touting is a major problem here in the UK. If I want to see someone bad enough, I will always get tickets from secondary ticket sites, mainly because it is the only way to get seats close to the stage. Living on the farm down in Devon, it's a pretty big deal (and expense) to travel to London and see a show, so if I am prepared to make the effort, I want to make sure I am near the front.

But with the inflated prices of tickets on these sites I have to want to see someone pretty badly to justify the cost.

I have unless it is one of my favourite artists. Not only in New Zealand are concerts expensive, we have a stupid set of policies.
The first is the use of drip pricing, often shows will have tickets advertised at a certain price, but that is not what you pay. You usually pay a $5 - $10 service fee, $10 or so booking fee, $5 ticket pick up or printing fee (Even if you print the thing out by email!), one time a venue charged a $6.30 facility fee, and then you were charged 3.3% Card fee regardless of the card being credit or debit and cash or cheque was not accepted.
For example Prince, 2016
Ticket $389.00
Service Fee $8.90
Booking Fee $5.90
Facility Fee $3.25
Card fee $10.19 (Mastercard)

There is a campaign by our consumers institute to stop this drip pricing and make retailers show the whole price with all these silly fees included. They also use bait pricing on posters and say things like (* Terms and conditiona may apply, the promoter reserves rights to change prices with no notice), yet you will see Tickets at $XXX in bold letters.

Bait pricing is like promoting concert tickets at $99 each, and in reality 100 tickets are $99, the rest are $400 or more and this not mentioned. Also cheap tickets if any will be far up in the gallows and usually with a pillar or something in front.

We also have a problem with credit card companies and cororates sponsoring tours, so they get a 50% allocation of tickets and priority purchases before the general public. Scalpers have been known to buy up tickets too and the cheap tickets often go in this early part.

We also have a problme with scalpers who buy tickets in batches and on sell them at inflated prices, our local ebay - Trade Me banned this practice, but now scalpers have turned to the sites Viagogo and Ticketmaster resale. Both charge exorbitant fees on scalped tickets and often charge u in foreign currencies charging more and people have even received fake or double booked tickets. The Consumers are also trying to ban the Rothschild owned Viagogo here as it got banned in Australia.

The govt had some scalping laws banning it at "A" rate events which in rugby mad NZ is mostly for the World Cup Rugby matches and All Blacks games, Music concerts are usually "B" or "C" events and thus have no scalping laws. There have been several recent scandals with Bruno Mars and Celine Dion tickets selling out inseconds to scalpers and appearing on Viagogo at 10x the price on average and they did nothing about it. A system to name ticket buyers and limit tickets to 4 per buyer has not worked with scalpers using aliases and a recent case of Bruno Mars tickets sold on Viagogo saw ticket buyers left out.

While the Viagogo scandals continue I am not going to anyshows unless I can buy them from a box office, the business of ticket selling to concerts and events has got too corporate and too greedy and scamming people is legalised, with restricted allocations, drip and bait pricing prevailing. The Celine Dion tickets are to be realeased for a third show and it will appear to see if they also sell out and appear on Viagogo in seconds like the first two batches did.

That reminds me... when is the big 7-0 again, Tony?

Yeah that’s pretty much how I view it, Tony. Seeing Paul McCartney was one of the best nights ever, it’s a night I’ll never ever forget and money wasn’t an object to see him. Ticket fees suck balls but I mean, what can ya do about them sadly. I just see the face value ticket prices and add a bit more in my head to account for it.

I’ve never had an issue getting tickets (like i said above, pretty good at getting them first time around) so these secondary websites have never really been an issue for me, but I do agree those inflated prices are crap. I wish governments would step into reduce or get rid of scalping.

I go to as many as I can in a year, and usually they are worth it. If not, I make a note of it. To be honest, lot;s of things have increased in prices over the years, so I guess it's only expected that gigs would too. Artists make no money from albums these days.