In October 2024, Heat magazine’s list of the UK’s 30 richest celebrities under 30 ranked Harry Styles at the very top, with an estimated wealth of £200m. (He’d doubtless have fared well in last year’s survey, too, but he’s 31 now.)
Whatever your views on the fabulous wealth accrued by a small elite of megastars, and regardless of your opinion of Styles’ musical merits, that figure doesn’t sit well next to the headlines he is now making.
Styles announced a record-breaking 12-date residency at Wembley stadium this week, with ticket prices for seats ranging from £44.10 in the faraway stands right up to £466.24, while bog standard general standing tickets will set you back £144.65 – and a berth in the fancy Circle, Disco, Square and Kiss standing enclosures up to £279.45. Furthermore, access to the presale was restricted to American Express cardholders and anyone who pre-ordered Styles’ new album, Kiss All the Time. Disco, Occasionally, which will be released on 6 March. The pricing has sparked an enormous backlash among Styles’ fans for making the shows inaccessible to vast swathes of his audience, a significant proportion of whom are very young.
But Styles is no outlier. The attitude towards ticket pricing in the entertainment industry seems to be, overwhelmingly, simply to charge as much as you can get away with charging. In recent years, Adele, Taylor Swift and Oasis have, like Styles, received intense criticism for their steep ticket prices. The last of those three came under particular scrutiny when it became apparent that dynamic pricing was at play, meaning that the original stated face value of tickets for Oasis gigs was essentially meaningless.
In November 2025, the government made it illegal to resell tickets for above face value, preventing ripoffs by ticket touts, while the Competition and Markets Authority is making sellers like Ticketmaster be more clear about pricing – all heartening measures. But there is a broader problem, one the government will find it much harder to intervene in: the rising cost of those face-value tickets in the first place.
The age of streaming has had an extraordinary impact on how money is made in the music industry. Everyone understands this, and nobody begrudges musicians jacking up their prices by a modest amount. Rising prices since the pandemic have also made it significantly more expensive to go on tour, due to huge rises in costs for fuel, visas, transportation, labour and more. However, a small elite of megastars have gone cash-crazy on their concert tours.
The knock-on effect on the rest of the industry is immense. In these cash-strapped times, people’s pockets aren’t bottomless when it comes to leisure activities such as gigs. VIP types may be able to spend, spend, spend – but many other people make choices. If they pay for one very expensive ticket, will they be less likely to buy others?
The average touring band is struggling. At a recent gig, Shirley Manson of Garbage put it well: “You see all these big pop stars, and they’re making billions and billions and billions of dollars and they’re rich and they’re glamorous and they’re amazing. But the problem is that most of the music industry is not made of these big pop stars. They’re made of working musicians.”
As well as musicians, smaller venues are also having a torrid time due, at least in part, to the trickle-up economics of the megaconcert industry. During 2023, one in six small venues closed according to the Music Venue Trust (MVT), and its 2025 report found that more than half of the surviving venues failed to make a profit. And it’s also due in part to the era of the supertour. “If you’re paying £150 or £200 for a stadium ticket,” MVT chief executive Mark Davyd has said, “that inevitably eats into the budget you have to see new or emerging artists.” The end result is that up-and-coming artists have fewer and fewer places to hone their craft on the way to becoming the next Wembley headliner.
Even if they do make it through, will the next generation of fans be waiting? What the practice of gouging gig prices fails to take into account is the emotional effect it has on the purchaser. Yes, they’ll pay, but reluctantly and begrudgingly. It leaves a sour taste and can put people off going to gigs entirely, of whatever size. “OK, this is good … but is it £200 good?”
Because it’s not even as if the premium-priced experience feels especially luxurious. In my years as rock and pop critic for the Independent on Sunday, my job involved countless trips to the O2, that soulless enormodome where you’re charged captive-audience prices for your drinks and chain-franchise snacks on top of the extortionate ticket, all for the privilege of watching a band so far away that they might as well be on TV. It has all the charm of a night out in terminal five.
I’m done with those shows now. I honestly don’t think there’s an artist alive who could drag me to a megaconcert. The most I’ve personally paid for a ticket was £75, for Stevie Nicks in Hyde Park in 2024 – and though she was great, I’m not even sure I was in the same postcode. And while the shows I saw Prince play at the O2 in 2007 were among the best I’ve seen, it was despite, not because of, the surroundings.
In fairness to Styles, he’s donating £1 for every ticket he sells at his own UK megaconcerts to the Live Trust, which works to protect small venues. This shows that deep down he knows something’s wrong. It could be, as some have claimed, that his fanbase is non transferable to other kinds of music and other kinds of venue. But still, I think the greatest gift he could give would be to slash his prices, and leave enough money in the pockets of those of his fans who might actually visit one of those threatened venues.
It can be done. And it’s often the older generation that leads the way. The 21 shows Prince did at the O2 were priced at £31.21. More recently, Paul Heaton capped his arena tour tickets at £35. And in 2023, Robert Smith went to battle with Ticketmaster over excessive booking fees on the Cure’s US tour, insisting that tickets should cost no more than $35, arguing: “You don’t want to charge as much as the market will bear, and squeeze everyone. It doesn’t sit well with me at all.”
Of course different shows cost different amounts to stage, but still the point remains. The likes of Lady Gaga, Britney Spears, Christina Aguilera, Kylie Minogue and Justin Timberlake have at various points staged hi-tech extravaganzas without charging fans the earth. Artists have a duty of care to fans.
So, Harry, don’t go poor: but be more Robert Smith, be more Paul Heaton. Leave the money for someone else who needs it more.
