How far would you go to score concert tickets? Fans offer answers

Sam Ketsa was determined to go watch one of her favourite musicians, Taylor Swift, perform at the Eras tour this year.

In November 2022, the Edmonton resident convinced her friends to try and score tickets for shows in the U.S. Her hard work paid off — she secured tickets to a concert in the United States that was scheduled to take place in July.

While Ketsa and her friends fulfilled their dream of watching Swift live last month, the journey to the concert was far from easy.

"The way that it worked is that you register for this like verified fan presale and then select the dates that you want to be essentially put into a lottery for," Ketsa said in an interview on Alberta at Noon.

"I had signed up for presale for Seattle, for Denver and for Nashville on a whim because that's super close."

She ended up being the only fan among her friends to be rewarded with a code to queue up and buy official tickets online.

When it was time to make the purchase, one of Ketsa's friends took on the responsibility of queuing up to purchase the coveted tickets.

"I ended up having to work that day and so I gave my login information to a friend of mine who sat on her computer for about 10 and a half hours, waiting and waiting and not refreshing the browser," Ketsa said.

Her friend finally got the opportunity to purchase the tickets in the evening, much to the delight of Ketsa and her friends.

A 20-hour journey

The Swifties embarked on a 20-hour road trip to see the musician live at the Mile High Stadium in Denver, Colorado last month. The singer didn't disappoint — she performed for over three hours and sang songs from all her 10 albums.

"Everything was more than I could have dreamed of," Ketsa said. "It was the safest like music venue I've ever been to in my life. It was the most welcoming."

Swift's music is special to her in more ways than one. Ketsa played one of her songs, "Marjorie," at her mom's funeral and directed a theatre show that was inspired by Swift.

"There's something about Taylor Swift discography that appeals like across generations," Ketsa said.

"Her reach is so ubiquitous that I think the desire to connect with her and … see her live in concert is shared by a lot of people."

For Sharon Appelt, it was Elton John's music that pushed her to go out of her way to watch the musician live.

She ended up watching his shows six times and even flew to England to catch a show.

Appelt recalled a particularly memorable concert in Lethbridge that prompted her to wait overnight for a chance to buy tickets.

"When we heard he was coming to our little city of Lethbridge, we camped out overnight in -25 below to secure third-row floor seats," she wrote in an email.

"We managed to get three albums signed by him. It was well worth it."

Likewise, John McCombie and his best friend, Dean Mergel, waited for hours outside Edmonton's Southgate Mall on a cold night in 1987 to watch Bon Jovi perform. Their hard work paid off — they were successful in procuring tickets to the concert.

"We had to wait outside from about 9 p.m. until 10 a.m. the next morning," McCombie wrote in an email.

"It was a really fun night! Obviously, this was a long time before you bought things online. I miss those days."

While watching a popular musician live in concert is a dream come true for many, it isn't easy to secure concert tickets especially if you're aiming to catch someone as popular as Swift.

According to Ketsa, none of her friends have managed to get tickets to any of her six Toronto concerts that are scheduled to take place next year. 

The tickets went on sale Wednesday. Fans hoping to purchase them had to pre-register through a verified fan program launched by Ticketmaster.

"I don't know anyone personally who actually got tickets," Ketsa said. "Lots of people got waitlisted for this round."

High demand

Pascal Courty, an economics professor at the University of Victoria who studies the economics of ticket sales, believes that things are slightly more complicated than they may seem.

"The demand and the enjoyment that people receive from [a] concert has increased dramatically," he said.

"People are willing to pay very large amounts to have to experience these moments." 

However, artists have limited tour dates, which makes it difficult for many fans to access popular concerts. According to Courty, a singer as well-known as Swift would have to make room for as many as 400 concerts to keep the tickets affordable.

Additionally, resellers make things messier because they purchase the tickets with only one goal in mind — to make a solid profit by selling the tickets to desperate fans at astronomical prices.

"You want to think about it as Taylor Swift making a gift to her fans and you want to make sure the gifts end up in the right hands. But then because the gift is valuable, resellers are trying to sneak in," Courty said.

Don't despair, though. There is a way out, according to Courty, who believes that the ticket-buying process can be tweaked to stop resellers from getting access.

"The most effective step is to just…print the name on the ticket, " he said.

"So when you buy a ticket, you have to put [a] name and only that name can come to the concert. So then you see, there would be no benefit for a reseller to buy the tickets because now they have to attend and that's not what they want to do."