Bruce Springsteen Tickets For Houston Now Cost The Same As Two Gallons Of Gasoline

It’s fun to pick on the price of tickets. Everyone was so upset when they read about $5,000 Springsteen tickets being sold. Fun tip: when something is overpriced, responsible adults say “no.” The ones who say “yes” either have too much money or not enough common sense. Neither of those situations can be remedied by legislation.

Bruce Springsteen is playing the Toyota Center in Houston tomorrow, February 14^th 2023. That’s Valentine’s Day, a day when many couples go out to celebrate. So, what does it cost to buy a ticket? As little as $10. There are currently 188 tickets available for less than $25 and hundreds more between $25 and $100. Price fixing fixes nothing. What works in a brutally efficient manner is letting sellers and buyers wrestle it out in the open market

TickPick is a well-respected secondary ticket market which displays costs including their own fees. Here’s what they have for sale at 9am PST on February 13, 2023

The whole basis of our economy is that goods and services trade at market value. Market value is what willing buyers voluntarily pay to willing sellers. There are certain exceptions in the case of vital necessities in which utilities are precluded from price gouging consumers who have no alternatives. Curiously, this does not extend to Insulin, which is necessary for diabetics to survive. The government continues to block meaningful price caps here for anyone other than senior citizens.

For almost anything else, the free market balances value against demand. Want to go from San Diego to Las Vegas? Buy a flight in advance on Southwest and you can fly for $59. Buy your ticket the day of travel and it will likely cost between $149 and $340. The drive is approximately 300 miles. Take a big SUV and that’s around $100 in gas, although you can seat six passengers. A more fuel efficient car can make the trip in 10 gallons of gas. Drive an electric car and your cost is $25, or free if you have unlimited supercharging. If you’re lucky enough to have private jet money the cost is between$5,000 and $12,500, depending on the size of the plane. No matter which you choose, it will take around three hours door to door flying private, four hours by Southwest or five hours in the car. The choice is yours, dictated only by preference and how you decided to spend your money.

One last thing, as to Taylor Swift, whose fans kicked off the letter writing campaign to change ticketing rules: Forbes just published a list of top ten earning artists in 2022. Swift was in 9^th place, having earned $92 million from record sales, licensing fees and streaming royalties. Bruce Springsteen was not on the list, although he did sell his song catalog in December of 2021. The New York TimesNYT
reported that Springsteen received $550 million in the deal.

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The music business makes money from fans by selling them digital access to music, recorded music, merchandise and tickets. Fans control what they buy and what they’re willing to spend. The market finds equilibrium when there are enough buyers to consume what is put on sale. Let it work.