More Australians are going to concerts than ever before, maybe that’s why it’s so hard to buy concert tickets

Australian music fans’ hunger to see live music is driving a record-breaking boom for the local live performance industry in the face of rising ticket costs.

New data from industry peak body Live Performance Australia (LPA) shows more than 12 million Australians flocked to concerts in 2023, generating $1.5 billion in revenue for the industry.

The LPA 2023 Ticket Attendance and Revenue report shows these record-high figures accounted for 47.4 per cent of the industry’s total revenue ($3.1 billion) and 39.9 per cent of total attendance (30.1 million attendees).

The rise in revenue may be in large part due to the rising costs of concert tickets: the average price for a concert ticket rose from $87.01 in 2022 to $128.21 in 2023. LPA found concert tickets experienced the highest year-on-year growth in the average ticket price of any event category.

LPA chief executive Evelyn Richardson said despite the rising costs, Aussie music fans were clearly still prepared to “invest in memorable live music experiences” with their favourite artists.

“Australia was part of a global trend which saw a resurgence in international touring activity during 2023, and a shift towards bigger stadium-level concerts by some headline artists,” Ms Richardson said.

But, she added, the rising ticket costs have not been accepted as favourably in other areas of the industry, such as festivals, a number of which have announced “paused” events or outright cancellations in the face of dwindling interest.

“Governments need to look closely at how they can reduce some of these impacts, particularly regulatory, licensing and venue costs, in the interests of a strong live music industry,” Ms Richardson added.

“They also need to focus their support in areas that will make a real difference to enabling audiences to discover more of our homegrown talent.”

The continued growth in 2023 followed record-breaking year-on-year rises in concert revenue and attendance in 2022.

The last LPA report found concert revenue saw the highest year-on-year increase of all event types in 2022 — increasing 387.1 per cent from $144.9m in 2021 to $706m in 2022.

Concert attendance rose the second-highest (by 218 per cent ) in 2022 — up from 2.7 million in 2021 to 8.7 million in 2022.

In 2022, the average ticket price increased from $56.81 in 2021 to $87.01.

The numbers reflect the industry returning to post-Covid ‘normal’ after years of disruption, cancellations, and restrictions enforced by the pandemic.

It also reflected a broader global trend toward international touring activity and a shift toward larger stadium tours by international headline artists like Ed Sheeran, Harry Styles, and Paul McCartney.

That means these figures do not account for the ticket-buying and concert-going frenzy generated by Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour.

But the figures do go some way to explaining the nightmare that purchasing concert tickets has become.

Thousands of Oasis fans queued on Ticketmaster on Monday afternoon for presale tickets, and thousands — likely, millions more — are expected to wait online for when tickets go on public sale on Tuesday afternoon.