by Dawn Chmielewski, Danielle Broadway and Sachin Ravikumar

LOS ANGELES/GLASTONBURY, ENGLAND (Reuters) – If the rise in prices is slowing for some consumer goods, this is not the case for concert ticket prices which have soared, to the point of alerting economists.

Fans spend fortunes to see the most famous artists on stage, like Beyoncé or Taylor Swift and Bruce Springsteen who haven’t toured in years.

“People are ready to splurge because they know they’ll get great content, and who knows when or if she’ll do another tour after this one,” said Mario Ihieme, a Beyoncé fan based in London.

Last month, Live Nation Entertainment executive Michael Rapino reported that concert ticket sales soared 41% in the first quarter, with prices growing by double digits.

In the United Kingdom, around 150,000 music fans paid 340 pounds (395 euros) for their ticket to the Glastonbury festival where Elton John performed among others.

The rise is such that its effect on headline inflation is now in question.

In the UK, prices for leisure and culture rose 6.8% in May year on year, the strongest rise in 30 years, with the largest effect coming from cultural services “particularly admission fees to live music events”.

In the United States, the Department of Labor does not specifically measure changes in concert prices, but the inflation rate for live shows is currently 2.6 percentage points higher than overall inflation.

The idea that concert prices have a noticeable effect on headline inflation is not unanimous, however.

It’s a “ridiculous claim,” said Andy Gensler, editor of Pollstar, a publication that tracks the global concert industry. Ticket prices have certainly increased but little since May 2022, when inflation in the United States stood at 8.6%, he argues.

The effect of concert prices is also difficult to quantify. In UK inflation data, event prices are based on when shows take place, not when tickets are purchased. But as different artists perform each month it is difficult to compare them to each other, said a spokesman for the Office for National Statistics (ONS).

“The (subjective) quality of musical artists highlights how difficult it is to calculate a ‘clean’ price increase,” said Paul Donovan, chief economist at UBS Global Wealth Management.

“For inflation in the UK, the pressures could persist,” he said, however, noting a series of concerts by singer Harry Styles in the country in June.

(Reporting Dawn Chmielewski and Danielle Broadway in Los Angeles and Sachin Ravikumar in Glastonbury; with contributions from David Milliken and Sharon Kimathi in London; Rozanna Latiff in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia; Radhika Anilkumar and Nivedita Bhattacharjee in Bangalore; Nathan Vifflin and Blandine Hénault, edited by Kate Entringer)

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