Rosalía: who sets the price of tickets?

Thus, despite the great desire of the follower to see their favorite singer -call him X or, in the case at hand, Rosalía-, many of them stay out of the event. There is more demand than supply. And this is the main reason for the existence of one of the industry’s nightmares: resale.

Rosalía is being beaten for what she asks for the tickets of the concerts on the tour of his latest album, the wildly applauded ‘Motomami’. But does she ask? No. But, is she or her team involved / do they know her prices? Yes. The price of a ticket to an event of this magnitude (in the case of Rosalía in Barcelona, ​​two consecutive Palau Sant Jordi, some 15,000 attendees per day) depends on many factors.

There are very obvious things that are gradually added to the ticket. What everything that an artist needs to develop the ‘show’ that he has in mind: venue, sound equipment, lights, the stage itself!… All the material -and personnel, not only musicians- that is needed for the gig, which can be better, bigger, more modern, plus whatever … And that also makes it more… expensive. In short, a multitude of production costs that will depend, in part, on the artistic proposal.

Some vulgar examples. If the singer wants to set off firecrackers after each song, that has a cost. If the artist goes with a large orchestra, that has a cost. If the group wants giant screens everywhere to play visuals designed for the event, there is a cost to that. And so.

First of all, the price range to see the Catalan artist in Barcelona goes from 45.50 to 107.50 euros (in between there are different levels depending on the position in the stands). In addition to these tickets, there are VIP tickets (priority access, parking, good seats, food, drinks…) that go up to 306 euros. General ticket prices change a bit depending on the location of the tour and, in the case of premium tickets, vary depending on what is included.

But, to the point, who sets the price? Well, there are two actors who establish its value taking into account, as we have previously mentioned, the cost of producing a macro-concert: the promoter, in this case the multinational Live Nation, according to the singer, that is, Rosalía. Between the two they have just sewn the artistic decisions and the spectacular nature of the ‘show’, assuming the costs of it.

Beyond those mentioned, there are more variables that fall within the price of the ticket. Let’s continue: the promoter pays a fee to the artist, assesses the venue’s capacity (tickets it can offer), makes a sales forecast (in the case of Rosalía it is difficult not to think of a full house wherever she goes) and, with all this jumble, the business has to, first, cover costs and then manage to make money with it.

Finally, in what the user ends up paying are the distribution costs that are added to the price of the advertised ticket. On Rosalía’s tour, the distribution companies are Ticketmaster and El Corte Inglés. These expenses are understood as the costs of distributing the tickets: technological investment of the platforms and the operational and transactional costs.

In the case of Rosalia, the prices of the ‘Motomami’ tour are higher than those of ‘El Mal Querer’ (We do not know if the new show also supposes an increase in production costs). Resale worked on that tour, something that worried the artist from Sant Esteve Sesrovires.

In Madrid, specifically, the prices were lower than those of other similar concerts also held at the Wizink Center. there, many resales saw the vein. Where is it? In searching for -and buying and reselling- tickets with limited capacity or unbalanced prices. Being a limited asset, in the end, always -or rather, often- there will be someone who will end up paying X+Y, which is what scalpers get. Putting the final price on tickets is never an exact calculator.

For Rosalía’s current tour, they could be purchased ‘pre-sale’ (registering on the Live Nation website) on Wednesday and ‘sale’ on Friday. Maximum four tickets per person, something that is already trying to limit the presence of scalpers. This Thursday on Viagogo, shameless resale portal, tickets are already selling for two or three times their official price. The most exclusive (VIP) for Barcelona go for a thousand euros.