Beyoncé’s Tour Isn’t Selling Out Because The Entire System Needs To Change!

Beyoncé kicked off her Cowboy Carter tour to rapturous acclaim this week. That’s not a surprise. Queen Bey knows how to put on a show and remains one of the most interesting entertainers of her generation. Her Grammy-winning album was one of the most acclaimed of 2024, and there will always be a hunger to see Mrs. Knowles-Carter do her thing. Few people, if any, can beat her at her own game. But amid the great reviews and excited social media buzz, there have been a slew of weirdly negative headlines surrounding the fact that the tour, according to several sources, has not yet sold out.

‘Beyonce mercilessly mocked as tickets for ‘flop’ Cowboy Carter tour reach same price as a McDonald’s meal’, says the Daily Mail. ‘50 Cent takes brutal swipe at Beyonce after finding out almost 4,000 tickets were still available for opening tour date’, sneered Yahoo News. ‘Why Beyoncé fans are fuming over her Cowboy Carter tour,’ claims The Independent. It’s hard to avoid the smugness from certain media outlets over Beyoncé not having sold out every ticket by opening night. Granted, you’ve always been able to tell a lot about the press from how it talks about this particular Black woman. The weird cruelty towards her feels less rooted in any issues regarding cost and accessibility than it does a need to take her down a peg or two. But there is something to get into here, and real issues over how the current system for live music and events at large has become a symbol of economic and cultural change.

When the Cowboy Carter tour tickets first went on sale, fans crashed Ticketmaster trying to access them. The demand was always there. But a lot of people saw how much even the worst seats were going for. Beyoncé turned on dynamic pricing, and suddenly, the farthest away sections were hundreds of dollars, before fees. The tour is also in a limited number of locations, meaning that the lion’s share of fans would need to pay for transport, accommodation, and other related costs. In the midst of a terrifying economic flux, exacerbated by Trump’s tariffs and fears surrounding non-American fans flying into the country, it feels like many fans may not have wanted to take the risk. It’s not just for Beyoncé either. These issues are impacting most entertainers, from Kendrick Lamar and SZA to WrestleMania.

The ticket prices did go down leading up to the tour, and plenty of fans have jumped at the chance. There’s a sense of unfairness among those who paid hundreds, even thousands, for their tickets, seeing them now available for a sliver of the cost. It’s a Catch-22 situation in many ways. If your brand is built on exclusivity and luxury in the way that Beyoncé’s has been for so long, it doesn’t take much for that to become prohibitive for even your devotees.

This has been spun into a stan war, because for some reason every single issue has to be stripped of context and turned into a battering ram against the singers you don’t like as much as your faves. It shouldn’t be a marker of pride for anyone that people have to literally go broke to afford their concert tickets. Why would you ever cheer on multi-millionaires like that? It’s as undignified as buying a Cybertruck to ‘own the libs.’ Whether or not you like Beyoncé’s music is utterly inconsequential to the issue of mainstream entertainment becoming an elitist’s playground.

When a recession hits, luxuries are the first thing to go, and that takes a lot of forms. You cut the streaming service you use the least. You stop going to the cinema. You skip next year’s vacation. Concerts, even the reasonably priced ones, are a no-go. In the post-lockdown era of live music, Ticketmaster and Live Nation have really been trying to ride a non-existent wave of hype and demand. The Eras Tour was a massive exception to the obvious rule of the past five years. That was a capital-E Event that people scrambled to go to, in part because it was one of the biggest stars on the planet, but also because it was a greatest hits tour that promised at least three hours of entertainment and a few surprises specific to each gig. Beyoncé’s Renaissance Tour was less wide-reaching but was her first world tour in several years. Madonna, too, went on her greatest hits tour. Things weren’t great financially, but there’s a world of difference between then and now, with Trump’s carnage. When people are scared about the rising prices of eggs, you can’t put out a $500 obscured-view ticket and expect people to blindly buy it.

But even if the economy was healthy, it wouldn’t justify the concert price hikes, and we’ve seen what happens when acts and their management get cocky. The Black Keys had to cancel and rearrange their entire North American tour because their original arena plans proved, to put it kindly, too ambitious. Attempts to reverse-engineer an Eras Tour for oneself are doomed to fail. Frankly, I wonder if even Taylor Swift could get away with dynamic pricing and $500 obscured-view seats in 2025. 2023 was a lifetime ago.

Two things need to change right now. First, artists and their teams must choose not to use dynamic pricing, if for no other reason than it’s incredible PR to make that choice. Second, we have to up the political pressure against these monopolies and keep it up for as long as it takes. Live Nation is not some scrappy upstart doing what’s right for artists; it’s a purely greed and hubris-driven enterprise that has all but gotten away with murder. And there will come a tipping point. There will be a massive, universally beloved artist with worldwide demand for a tour who suddenly finds themselves unable to fill $500 (plus fees) seats where fans once fought to claim them. It must happen across not only music but other forms of live entertainment like sports (in the UK, MPs are pushing for action to stop working-class football fans from being priced out of their local club’s games).

As for Cowboy Carter? If you can get those cheap seats at the last minute, go for it. It does seem like an unwinnable situation for an artist to decrease their prices lest they be seen as a flop; such is the ridiculous nature of this battle. People dragged Bebe Rexha for having $10 tickets at her tour, as though accessibility was a sign that you were ‘losing’ the stan wars. Come on, why would you mock that good of a deal? I would go to see Bebe Rexha for $10, and I can’t name any of her songs. We should cheer on music for all and not encourage a system that creates a hierarchy of who is and isn’t allowed to enjoy nice things. Live music is for everyone.