Harry Styles’ Presale Isn’t Going Well for Fans
Harry Styles’ new music is crushing on streaming. But, fans are irate that they can’t get tickets to his “Together, Together” tour.
Presale launched this week, and it’s harder to get your Ticketmaster confirmation for these dates than a reservation to a Michelin-starred restaurant. With social media broiling over other controversies, it’s interesting to see tour ticket discourse managing to cut through other pressing topics affecting the United States at the moment. But, all of these recent tour shenanigans with other artists has the topic at the top of our feeds once again!
It’s been 4 long years since we got a new Harry Styles record. “Aperature,” the lead single on Kiss All The Time, Disco, Occasionally, had iced-over living rooms across the United States in a chokehold when it was released last week. So, the anticipation for the new tour was at a fever pitch from the jump. That’s when things would get interesting for the former One Direction band member. Styles is set for 30 shows at Madison Square Garden in New York City. There’s also six nights in London taking over Wembley Stadium.
Remember, his “Love on the Run” tour back in 2023 grossed over $600 million. But, Ticketmaster being Ticketmaster, the rollout for these tickets was woeful. Fans from New York, London, Amsterdam and beyond all struggled with the astronomical prices.
How much are the Harry Styles tour tickets?
For people playing at home, New York’s prices began at around $94 for standing room. It gets wilder from there, lower bowl seats are going for around $650-$1100. You can only imagine how upset folks are about these numbers. It’s been a long four years for a lot of the fans out there. They were hoping to see Styles in one of the only stops he’s going to have here in the United States. ( You’d imagine there would be some other availability down the line to see him perform. But, not necessarily on this tour!)
If you’re willing to go the extra thousands of miles, London remains an option. An expensive one, but an option. Nosebleeds at Wembley Stadium are selling for about $126. You can bet that those will be gone in short order here. Various VIP packages mirror their counterparts across the Atlantic at around 600 to 1000 dollars. It’s also worth keeping in mind, these tour stops would also require you to spend hundreds if not thousands of dollars on airfare and somewhere to stay while you’re across the pond too. It’s a situation that folks online are rightfully annoyed by.
One passionate fan on Twitter said, “as much as i used to love harry, seeing the prices he’s charging is actually heartbreaking,” @eics99 wrote. I literally saw him 4x and never paid more than 1k combined. insane”
What will fans do?
Tomorrow, Wednesday January 27 will see the general sale for Harry Styles’ new tour begin in earnest. Then, it’s going to turn into The Hunger Games on the Ticketmaster app. How do we know? Well, did you try to get tickets to The Eras Tour with Taylor Swift or Beyoncé’s Renaissance Stops? It was a disaster then, it might be worse now. Different changes to a dynamic pricing system that fans have problems with back then have only exacerbated the grief a lot of folks feel online.
For their part, Ticketmaster isn’t backing away from any of the stuff in the short term. Other large artists have started to figure out other ways for themselves to get on the road without pricing out their core fanbase. But, all of this remains tricky. Remember, Ticketmaster’s CEO once said this about ticket prices going up. So, good luck everyone! I’m rooting for you.
“We have a lot of runway left,” he added. “So when you read about ticket prices going up, the average concert price is still $72. Try going to a Laker game for that, and there’s 80 of them. The concert is underpriced and has been for a long time.”
(featured image: Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty Images for The Met Museum/Vogue)
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