LONDON: Last weekend, tickets for Beyoncé’s Cowboy Carter Tour went on sale, and everyone prepared themselves for the ticket- securing bloodbath. After the popularity and success of the Renaissance Tour — which grossed half a billion dollars according to Forbes — and her recent Grammy wins for her country album, who wouldn’t fight to get their hands on the tickets for Beyoncé’s second act: Cowboy Carter? Well...
Despite the fact that Bey is set to do a six-show run in London’s Tottenham Hotspur Stadium, one more extra than she did for Renaissance, sales have been... slow. So what is going on? Why is it that Beyoncé, who was so popular in London only two summers ago, still has “plenty tickets available,” according to Digital Music News?
Well, the issue is the prices of said tickets. Looking at Ticketmaster, you’ll see that the cheapest seat at the very back of the stadium costs £121.70, which is around 153.46 dollars, and the Brits simply aren’t having it. Many fans took to Twitter to express their displeasure at the prices.
User @Eshe_Sings wrote: “£700 for section 105 tickets?! What the hell is this??”
While user @heysweettss questioned whether price increase might be Ticketmaster’s doing: “These London prices are insane. Anything above £180 is actually insane and I paid £156 last time [for Renaissance]. I actually love this album more than Renaissance but these pre-sale prices... is this the price they were set at or is this Ticketmaster raising the prices?
And while Ticketmaster has come under the wrath of many fandoms for dynamic pricing before (dynamic pricing is when prices rise due to demand) it doesn’t seem like that is the issue. In England, where there is a “Cost of Living Crisis.” That means many fans are having to sacrifice shows such as Cowboy Carter to afford basic items such as groceries or pay their rent. As stated by user @theashrb.
London is also set to have a hot summer with Beyoncé, Kendrick Lamar, SZA, and Lady Gaga all set to go on tour. So perhaps people are having to make a choice over which artist they are willing to spend their hard-earned money on, and maybe artists are starting to price out their main fanbase without even realizing it.