It’s probably really cool to be Jennifer Lopez. Among my mental list of people whose lives seem absolutely awesome, she easily ranks in the top 10. But just because she leads a charmed life doesn’t mean things go well all the time, and, lately, Things have been a little less than ideal for the Bronx actor/singer/dancer. Her relationship with Ben Affleck is said to be fragile and, beyond her personal problems, she also has professional problems. Namely, JLo is apparently having trouble selling tickets.
Lopez announced a tour in support of her new album (and the truly wild accompanying film), “This Is Me…Now,” earlier this year, but she ended up canceling a bunch of dates due to low sales. She later rebranded the tour as a hit show, but fans still weren’t tripping over to see her. In late May, JLo decided to cancel her tour, saying she was “sick” but needed to spend time with family and friends.
In JLo’s defense, she’s not the only one having trouble filling theaters. Rock duo The Black Keys have scrapped a planned arena tour and are expected to announce a series of “revised” dates at smaller venues. On social media, fans have noticed that some concerts by pop artists Troye Sivan and Charli XCX as well as the band Wallows seem undersold. Latin trap artist Bad Bunny recently pulled out of a show in Minneapolis, reportedly due to low sales. Coachella fell behind schedule this year, and there was discussion of a variety of acts who failed to achieve circuit sales, including Cardi B, Justin Timberlake and Pink.
That’s not to say the entire concert industry is in disarray. Taylor Swift is unstoppable. Just like Beyoncé every time she’s on the road. Artists like Luke Combs, Zach Bryan and Olivia Rodrigo sell tons of them. Dead & Company, the successor band to the Grateful Dead, is adding dates to the Las Vegas Sphere. Live Nation, which owns Ticketmaster and reigns supreme in live events, had a huge 2023, estimating that 145 million fans attended more than 50,000 events, a 20% increase in attendance. fans compared to the previous year. However, not everything goes well for everyone. For some artists, conditions are not so favorable and they struggle to attract the crowds they expected, at least from the start.
“Promoting a concert is a gambling business. You don’t always win. And sometimes you can get humiliated,” said Jarred Arfa, head of global music at Independent Artist Group, whose client list includes Billy Joel, 50 Cent and Metallica. .
Ticket prices are simply astronomical right now.
A combination of factors is weighing on some artists’ ticket sales. For one thing, a lot artists are on tour at the moment. In the wake of the pandemic, artists are eager to get back out there and recoup lost time and money. While it hasn’t been a smooth comeback, virtually everyone who can tour can, which means the space is crowded and oversaturated.
“You never had a moment in time where all the horses lined up at the starting gate and all came out onto the road at the same time,” said Gary Witt, CEO and co-owner of Pabst Theater Group. in Milwaukee.
The world truly is your oyster right now when it comes to attending a show. But that also means people have a ton of options and only a short amount of time to go through them. Maybe you’ve already seen your favorite artist when they first hit the road after the worst of COVID, and you’re not feeling particularly inspired to go see them again. Or you really like the band or singer in question, but not enough to go through all the hassle of seeing them live. Either way, the once-feverish demand for this ticket has likely calmed.
Price is also a factor. Anyone who has looked for concert tickets recently has probably been stunned by the price. Many consumers have spent despite inflation, even begrudgingly, but no one’s budget is unlimited, especially since prices for virtually everything, including tickets to live events, remain high. Pollstar calculated that the average ticket price for the top 100 tours in the first quarter of this year was $123.25, a record. Its data indicates that the average ticket price for Bad Bunny is $290, for Justin Timberlake is $216, and for Nicki Minaj is $149.
“Ticket prices are just astronomical right now,” said David “5-1” Norman, an industry veteran who has toured with Prince, Green Day and Alicia Keys. “And if you bring a child with you, and then you have to stay overnight, get gas, a hotel, and then food, all of that adds up.”
Just having a great song doesn’t necessarily translate into ticket sales.
Going on tour is always a gamble based on many factors, including ticket history, streaming performance, playlist size and online attention. But there’s no guarantee that any of this will translate into tough ticket sales. There are artists who may have a huge following online but whose fans are only on the surface and don’t really care to appear at a show. The way artists manifest themselves on social media today makes it even more difficult to determine whether this could be the case. Having a few hits on Spotify or TikTok doesn’t mean someone can sell out a stadium.
This is why, in some cases, there seems to be a certain overrun. Artists (and their agents, managers and promoters) try to sell out bigger venues than they can. A more conservative approach would be to book a handful of large venues and see how that goes before committing to more, but that’s not the approach taken by everyone.
“We have hard rock artists you’ve never heard of and they sell out everywhere, but they have a loyal fan base,” Arfa said. “Just having a great song doesn’t necessarily translate into ticket sales.” For every five or six bands that tour well, one is a little clunky, he added. “We are having a few conversations where we think it might be better to move forward to the first quarter of next year due to the high level of traffic on the road at the moment.”
Every artist and every situation is unique. Bad Bunny may not have been able to sell tickets that expensive in Minneapolis, but he sold out a ton of other places. JLo seems to have a lot more going on than trying to tour right now, and the Black Keys will probably do well in smaller venues. A representative for Live Nation, which produces the Troye Sivan/Charli misconceptions about online sales. (They said Wallows was selling “well” without providing official details and pointed to public statements from the Black Keys and Lopez, all of whose tours Live Nation produced.) The hiccup isn’t just about ticket sales. Kid Cudi canceled his tour this year because he broke his foot jumping off stage during Coachella, and many artists don’t specifically say the problem is sales when they cancel.
There are strategies that bands undertake to try to freshen things up for fans and increase sales, like combining forces or bringing in special guests. Def Leppard is touring with Journey this year, and last year he toured with Mötley Crüe. There’s still good old marketing. Live Nation recently wrapped up its “concert week,” which offers a variety of $25 tickets — a good way to sell tickets that don’t move.
There is, of course, one major problem underlying the whole conversation: buying tickets is extremely boring. You have to really want to see a show to try to navigate the labyrinthine buying process. Live Nation-Ticketmaster dominates the market, which critics — including the Justice Department, which is suing the company for anticompetitive practices — stifle innovation, enable unfair markups and contribute to an overall negative experience for customers. fans. The fees on tickets are incredibly high and seem endless. Armies of robots scoop up tickets as soon as they go on sale and flip them on secondary markets at exorbitant prices. (The positive here is that this year’s drop in demand has led to lower ticket resale prices. SeatGeek says the average resale price of a ticket to attend a summer concert this year is $214; last year it was $257, although much of that was due to Taylor Swift and Beyoncé.)
“The time when the customer experience is not good is usually when there is a monopoly,” said Witt, of Pabst Theater Group.
JLo, of course, will be fine – she is very rich, famous and beautiful after all. Her fans will survive and will probably have the chance to see her on stage again. But next time she hits the road, they’d better grab her tickets quickly so “This Is Me… Whenever In the Future” doesn’t get deleted, either.
Emilie Stewart is a senior correspondent at Business Insider, writing about business and economics.