Concert Tickets

[KarateKen]

You might have heard that Metallica is doing a residency at The Sphere in Las Vegas this fall.  The ticket prices are high, with some being over 4,000 dollars a ticket before taxes.  The cheapest are about 1k a ticket, but this can change, for better or worse, with the resale market.  With the cost of sports, music, and other live entertainment being so much now, what is the most you would pay for your dream live entertainment experience? What is the highest you ever paid for a ticket to an event?  

I once paid 500 dollars per ticket for the VIP experience and floor seats (not front row) to see Guns N Roses when they partly got back together in 2016.  The show was in San Diego, at the old Chargers stadium which has since been torn down. It was a lot at the time but seems like a bargain now compared to what some of the tickets are going for. 

[Patrick]

I think I'm in the same neighborhood as you - mid hundreds. This was probably helped by COVID and having a kid. If not, living in Los Angeles and having some venues walkable, I'd have gone to a bunch more shows by now. We have tickets for My Chemical Romance in October as my wife is a fan. That might be the most expensive, at least in present day dollars vs. inflation adjusted.  Those are a bit under $500.

We just saw the New York Rangers (vs. the Kings) earlier this year, and I bought the tickets a few hours before the game - they were under $99 (including taxes and feessuite tickets, where we had a suite and seats at the front of the suite. I think we'll try to do that more often to see the Rangers and Lakers and maybe the Yankees when they are in Anaheim. We went to a Yankees/Dodgers game, and it wasn't as fun as it could have been. But we went to a 3 game set in San Diego two years ago, and that was really fun. Going to see them in San Francisco this month for the opening series (not Opening Day, though). 

I'm also going to try to go to some of the 2028 Olympics in Los Angeles, but am curious to see how much that ends up being.

Edited March 6 by Patrick

[KarateKen]

The high cost of Metallica tickets in Vegas has not lowered the demand.  Ticket sales were so good that Metallica added more shows and most of their residency is already sold out, with the shows not even starting until October.  Metallica fans from all over the world were trying to get tickets to The Sphere to see the band.  That is why places like Las Vegas do so many residencies.  Makes sense to the venue and the artist, and the fans are happy to go, and why tickets are so expensive.  As long as enough people are going to pay for it, the prices will be what they are.  

[KarateKen]

On 3/5/2026 at 4:01 PM, Patrick said:

 

We just saw the New York Rangers (vs. the Kings) earlier this year, and I bought the tickets a few hours before the game - they were under $99 (including taxes and feessuite tickets, where we had a suite and seats at the front of the suite.

If an event has tickets that are not selling, you can often get big discounts the day of the event, as you have experienced.  A concert or game ticket that is going for 500 dollars at first, might be 50 dollars three hours before the show, if they are not selling.  Ticket prices are flexible depending on demand, and since they can't be restocked, meaning once the game is over the tickets are gone, you can sometimes get much lower prices if you are willing to wait.  Of course, the risk is that you miss the event all together, or the event sells out and the cost of tickets will be higher because the only thing available will be the resale market. 

[sensei8]

Imho,

Vegas excuse for gouging tickets is because Vegas is the entertainment capital of the USA. Hogwash!! 

Saw on the news her in Vegas not too long ago that Ticketmaster had a major glitch of some type that highly affected the Metallica ticket prices; tickets were in the thousands of dollars.

Don’t get me wrong, tickets in Vegas are very steep. Tickets to the Sphere are ridiculously high anyway; according to the Sphere, it loses millions of dollars a year.