Beyoncé fans are ready for ticket rush – and expensive prices
Beyoncé fans have taken time off work and prepared their credit cards as tickets for her new tour go on sale. The Cowboy Carter Tour will have six UK dates in June at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium in London, marking her first shows since the record-breaking Renaissance Tour in 2023. Ticket prices range from £71 to £950, according to Ticketmaster.
The general sale starts at 12:00 GMT on Friday after several days of pre-sales. Alongside Beyoncé’s tour, tickets for Ozzy Osbourne’s final concert with Black Sabbath and performances by Kendrick Lamar & SZA, Patti Smith, Beck, Morrissey, Mumford & Sons, Razorlight, and Smashing Pumpkins will also be available.
One fan told the BBC they would pay up to £2,000 to attend Black Sabbath’s charity concert in Birmingham, which will feature Metallica, Pantera, Anthrax, Gojira, and members of Guns N’ Roses. “This really is Ozzy’s final show with Sabbath,” said Alex Woodford. “I’d pay whatever it takes because it’s a once-in-a-lifetime event.”
Ben Archer, a British Beyoncé fan who has attended all of her concerts since 2014, says: “She is the one artist I’m determined to see every time she tours.” However, ticket prices have risen over the years. Ben paid £60 for a standing ticket back in 2014, but now he paid nearly four times that amount. “If tickets had always been this expensive, I wouldn’t have been able to see her as often,” he says. “I wonder if the high prices are limiting access to only die-hard fans like me and excluding new or casual fans who might attend if tickets were cheaper.”
Before the pandemic, concert ticket prices were rising by 3% to 4% a year, but that increased to nearly 10% annually after touring resumed. When Beyoncé last performed in London, the cheapest ticket was £56.25, while VIP packages went for as much as £2,400. This year, standing tickets are priced at £224.85, with some closer to the stage costing £858.10. Ticketmaster uses dynamic pricing, meaning ticket prices fluctuate based on demand, so fans don’t always know what they’ll pay.
Fredrica Fekkai, a Beyoncé fan from Washington, DC, has been gathering data on ticket prices for the Cowboy Carter tour. She noticed that some fans who accessed the US pre-sale ended up paying hundreds of dollars more than others. Most UK tickets, however, stayed within the advertised price range. Fekkai took it upon herself to collect price data after struggling to find a good deal while buying her own tickets. She asked fellow fans on Reddit and TikTok for input, receiving over 1,000 responses. She then created a graph to show the price differences, aiming to help others navigate the pricing confusion.
