Green Day is Next in the Hot Seat — Ticketmaster Dynamic Pricing Pushes Tickets Past $500 in Australia

Photo Credit: Green Day, WMG, Crush Music by Greg Schneider

Tickets to Green Day’s tour in Australia go up to $500 in the initial presale thanks to Ticketmaster’s dynamic pricing structure.The first presale for Green Day’s Saviors tour in Australia went on sale this week for three locations: Melbourne, Sydney, and the Gold Coast. But those wanting specific seats were gobsmacked with prices as high as $500 as Ticketmaster’s “In Demand” pricing strikes again.

The cheapest general admission tickets for these shows were capped at $200, plus a booking fee. But fans who wanted seated tickets were stuck paying upwards of $500 — leading to posts on social media calling the pricing scheme “a joke.”

“What in the dynamic pricing is going on here?” one fan asked. “Ticketmaster, explain why your seats for Green Day [are] at $400-$500?” They continued, “I got a golden circle collector ticket for $280, but my mum can’t get seats because they’re literally pushing $500.” Others said they’d have to give this tour a miss due to the high priced tickets.

On its website, Ticketmaster states that In Demand tickets “give fans fair and safe access to sought-after seats at market-driven prices.” Further, a spokesperson for Ticketmaster said tickets cap out at $500, and that Ticketmaster itself does not set the prices — the artists and their teams do.“Rather than fans paying limitless prices on the secondary market and being unsure if tickets are actually genuine, the relatively small number of tickets that some tours price at ‘market value’ enable the general price of the majority of tickets to be more affordable by a larger number of fans,” the Ticketmaster spokesperson explained.

This means the revenue benefits the artist rather than scalpers, the spokesperson said, which is important as artists become more reliant on touring as their primary source of income. “Pricing isn’t about charging people more; it’s about looking at prices fans are already paying on secondary [markets] and shifting that value back to the artist.”

If nothing else, the Green Day tickets shift the focus away from Oasis, whose reunion tour saw demand for the limited tickets skyrocket, leading to prices jumping from £135 standing-only to £355 due to the same dynamic pricing structure. The backlash led to an investigation from the UK competition regulator, while the EU Commission said it was looking at dynamic pricing and ways to potentially ban the practice.