Concert tickets are skyrocketing. Fans have come up with a worrying solution

When Bianca Wilmott wanted to surprise her boyfriend with two expensive tickets to Lady Gaga's upcoming Australian tour, she knew exactly how she was going to do it. The 32-year-old social media manager from Sydney's inner west turned to the buy now, pay later (BNPL) service Afterpay to cover the cost of her two $600 tickets.
'It's part of my budgeting, to be able to split the payment up … I wouldn't have [purchased tickets without Afterpay] because I wouldn't have wanted to make that big payment in one go,' says Wilmott, who was one of 11,500 people to purchase Lady Gaga tickets through the BNPL platform.
Data provided by Afterpay showed that 1.5 million transactions were made in live entertainment in Australia over the 12 months to April 2025 amid a flurry of big international acts such as Katy Perry, Billie Eilish, Dua Lipa and Olivia Rodrigo, as well as our own Kylie Minogue. Later this year there's Gaga, Metallica, Kendrick Lamar, Bad Bunny, Oasis and Usher.
And they are getting more expensive – last year, a Live Performance Australia report revealed that in 2023, the average concert ticket price jumped to $128.21, from $87.01 in 2022.
And a report by Music Australia this year found that 'despite feeling less financially secure, young Australians are spending larger sums on entertainment and leisure in 2024 than they were in 2019' and are increasingly purchasing last-minute tickets that might 'break the bank'.
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The report, titled Listening In: Insights on live music attendance, found that young people were driven by FOMO – fear of missing out – when it came to shelling out for international touring artists, often to the detriment of ticket sales for local talent.
A fall in ticket sales for pub and club concerts, often featuring emerging artists, corresponded 'with a spate of big international acts touring Australia after the pandemic', the report says.
While the report did not address how audiences bought tickets, it did find that 79 per cent of under 24s had saved money to purchase concert tickets, compared with 31 per cent of those over 40.

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