ATLANTA — The holiday season is upon us. Perhaps your loved one’s wish list includes concert tickets for Metallica, Post Malone or other acts touring in Atlanta this upcoming year. And, aside from the inevitable fad gadget-of-the-moment, it’s likely the most expensive item on there.

It wasn’t always this way. In 1980, a nosebleed ticket to see Queen at the now-shuttered Omni Coliseum in downtown cost $9. That’s about $36.50 in today’s dollars. For a comparable seat at State Farm Arena to see Deftones this spring, a ticket will run from about $59 to $104, with the price increasing as the seat gets closer to the stage. And for Kendrick Lamar and SZA’s joint stop at Mercedes-Benz Stadium in April? Good luck paying anything under $135.

Concert ticket prices have been on the incline for the past five years. In 2019, the average cost of a ticket in one of the top 100 highest-grossing tours in North America was about $92, according to live music industry trade publication Pollstar. In 2023, the average was $116.41. And for the first half of 2024? $124.38.

The increase is driven by a number of factors, said Matthew Wilson, a partner with Arnall Golden Gregory LLP who chairs the firm’s entertainment and sports industry team.

Overall price inflation is partly to blame. The costs of labor, gas and food — all essential elements to running a tour — have all gone up, making it harder for artists to break even. Plus, artists aren’t selling as many physical albums as they were decades prior, and live events are viewed as a way to make up for some of that lost revenue.

Another critical component is the secondary market — think platforms like StubHub — which often inflates the price of tickets far above face value.

“There’s always been an unwritten code in the music industry that the artist doesn’t want to overcharge their fans for sincere reasons and optical reasons,” Wilson said. “You don’t want to appear to be gouging your fans, who buy your records and merchandise and adore you. But when you have a secondary market and an artist sees they’re selling tickets for more than 300% more, at some point, you’re like, ‘Well, we’re leaving a lot of money on the table.’”

There are a number of moving pieces that determine the final cost of the ticket. There’s the base price, which is typically the only number displayed on the ticketing website before proceeding to checkout. This is usually set by the artist and their teams, Wilson said, with some input from the company promoting that tour. Live Nation and AEG Presents are among some of the major tour promoters in the city.

More than a decade ago, concert giant Ticketmaster began rolling out a new model of pricing tickets in the U.S. that increases costs based on demand. It’s called dynamic pricing, and Ticketmaster says it’s a way to thwart scalpers from buying tickets and selling them on the secondary market, which inflates costs for consumers and strips revenue from artists. The artists and their teams decide on the pricing tiers.

Several large-scale acts selling tickets through Ticketmaster use this model, from Taylor Swift to Bruce Springsteen. But not all artists are fans. Robert Smith, the frontman of the Cure, is a critic of the model, calling it a “scam that would disappear if every artist said ‘I don’t want that!’” Earlier this year, English band Oasis, who are reuniting next year after a yearslong hiatus, issued a statement saying they would not use dynamic pricing for its forthcoming North American tour after the sale of its tickets in the United Kingdom doubled the original face value and attracted scrutiny from both consumers and Parliament.

Ticketmaster and Live Nation did not immediately respond to a formal request for comment. In a blog post published on its website, Live Nation wrote that “statements to the effect that Live Nation and Ticketmaster ‘keep ticket prices high’ are just flat wrong.”

Following the base price are the fees, which are also a point of contention among attendees of live events of all types in recent years, from concerts to sports. Last year, the Cure’s Smith asked Ticketmaster to refund some of its fees to fans buying tickets for the band’s U.S. tour, which the company obliged.

There are a number of fees that can be tacked onto a ticket. A facility fee goes to a venue to cover the expenses of holding the event, like paying staff and security. In some instances, a ticketing company will give a venue an advance payment to serve as its exclusive ticketing partner for a certain period of time. That venue can use the facility fee to recoup part of the advance.

And then there’s a service fee, or sometimes called a convenience fee, which helps other parties involved in the concert — usually the venue and the ticketing company — stay in business because they often do not receive revenues from the ticket’s face value. An order processing fee can cover a ticketing service’s operational costs, like credit card fees or providing customer service.

On that $135 Kendrick Lamar and SZA ticket, the facility fee is $8, the service fee is $29 and the order processing fee is $5.45. Without tax, the total is about $177, which means the fees account for about a quarter of the pretax cost.

The ratio is slightly higher for that $59 Deftones ticket. The facility fee is $3, the service fee is $14.55 and the order processing fee is $7.63. Without tax, the total is about $85. About 30% of that price accounts for fees.

Surcharges are now a political issue. Last year, the Biden administration announced its plans to crack down on “junk fees,” a catchall term that refers to any fee increasing the advertised cost of a service or purchase, saying Americans pay nearly $30 billion of them per year. Plus, the Federal Trade Commission proposed a rule that would ban businesses from charging hidden or misleading fees and require companies to show the full price up front.

The reality is, Wilson said, that everything is more expensive now.

“For whatever reason, concert tickets are something people expect to be cheap relative to other types of entertainment,” Wilson said. “If you want to go to a Falcons game, you’re not going to find a decent ticket for under $200.”

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