Taylor Swift and other marquee performers can sell out stadiums for multiple consecutive nights in any city on Earth. She has extraordinary market power and can charge whatever she wants. So why doesn’t she charge the market-clearing price?

Charging the $1,000+ market-clearing price would eliminate scalping, maximize revenue, and maximize aggregate consumer welfare. But it would also destroy the artist’s relationship with their fans, as they would be seen as the greedy artist who priced out their true fans.

Artists and sports leagues know the market-clearing price for their tickets is $1,000+. They know that direct pricing would eliminate scalping and maximize revenue. But they also know that directly charging these prices would destroy their carefully cultivated relationship with fans. Nobody wants to be seen as the greedy artist who priced out the true believers.

Ticketmaster offers a platform where artists can capture premium pricing and the economic value they create without taking the reputational hit. Side deals via secondary market and convenience fee kickbacks enable artists to capture more economic value.

Ticketmaster gets perpetually blamed for high fees, angering loyal fans while sniping economists to write lengthy papers about optimal ticket pricing, while they are fully aligned with their actual customer base: high-value artists like Taylor Swift.

— Human Invariant, Blame as a Service (BaaS), 2025