Spending a significant amount of money to see your favourite artists is nothing new, but the recent surge in ticket prices for a two-hour concert has become increasingly outrageous.
Over the years, concerts have evolved in many ways. Venues have become bigger, and the lighting, stage effects, and overall performance quality have turned concerts into full spectacles rather than just musical events. Attending a concert was once an affordable and enjoyable night out for everyone, but it has become a luxury reserved for those who can afford the steep prices.
The dramatic rise in ticket costs is evident when looking at major artists like Taylor Swift, Beyoncé, Coldplay, and Oasis, where the price of a single ticket could almost cover the cost of the latest iPhone, or even a holiday.
Coldplay fans reported resale tickets going up for over £700 after it was announced the 10-days London show was sold out (Getty Images for SiriusXM)
In the past, front-row tickets could be purchased for as little as £80, but today, those same seats can cost £400 or more. Additionally, the introduction of VIP and premium packages has driven prices even higher, with some costing thousands of pounds. These packages often promise an enhanced experience, but they ultimately create a financial barrier, making concerts feel less accessible and enjoyable for the average fan.
What’s behind the rising concert ticket costs?
The growing popularity of stadium tours and outdoor festivals has contributed to rising ticket prices, as an increasing number of people are willing to pay exorbitant amounts just to see their favourite artists live. According to reports, concert ticket prices have risen by 42% since the COVID-19 pandemic.
Several factors contribute to this increase, including rising production costs, operational expenses, venue rental fees, touring costs, and increase of demand, which often leads to additional show dates being added to a tour. Other reports have stated that for a major artists with a large-scale production, a world tour can potentially cost hundreds of millions of pounds in total expenses.
However, one of the biggest issues driving up prices is ticket reselling. The rise of ticket scalpers and automated bots purchasing large quantities of tickets has made it even more difficult for genuine fans to buy them at face value.
In many cases, a ticket originally priced at £50 can end up being resold for three times its original cost simply because the event has sold out. This unfair practice has forced many fans to miss out on concerts they would have otherwise attended.
Fortunately, steps are being taken to tackle the issue of ticket reselling. In October 2024, the Labour government initiated discussions in Westminster about introducing restrictions on resale prices to prevent unfair mark-ups. Additionally, some EU countries have already implemented regulations to protect consumers, ensuring that resale prices are capped at a reasonable limit.
While concerts and festivals remain a beloved way of entertainment, as well as seeing and hearing your favourite artist live, the rising costs have left many feeling frustrated.
If ticket prices and resale practices aren’t regulated, attending to them might be an exclusive event for those who can only afford it.
Ukrainian officials say Russia fired a slew of missiles and drones overnight, with one attack on Kryvyi Rih killing a 47-year-old woman and injuring nine others, while an attack on Odesa killed four.
Russia has claimed major gains in the Kursk region with Russia’s Ministry of Defence reporting the capture of five more villages, and Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov saying that “the dynamics are good”.
Chief of the General Staff of the Russian Armed Forces Valery Gerasimov said that Russian forces had retaken about 1, 100sq km (386sq miles) of territory in the Kursk border region, including 24 settlements over the past five days.
Russian President Vladimir Putin said in televised remarks while visiting troops in Kursk that the “region will soon be completely liberated from the enemy”. It was Putin’s , first visit to the region since Ukraine launched its major incursion there in August of last year.
Putin also said that any Ukrainian fighters captured in the Kursk region would be treated as “terrorists” and would not be protected under the Geneva Convention’s provisions for prisoners of war, Russia’s state-run RIA Novosti news agency reported.
Military bloggers on both sides said Kyiv’s forces have begun withdrawing from Kursk, losing their hard-won foothold inside the Russian region.
Ceasefire talks
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said he expects “strong steps” from the United States against Russia if Moscow does not accept the 30-day ceasefire proposal, which Ukraine agreed to in talks with US officials in Saudi Arabia on Tuesday.
US President Donald Trump said that reaching a truce is now “up to Russia”.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the US was hoping for a positive response from Russia, and that if the answer was “no”, then it would tell Washington a lot about the Kremlin’s true intentions.
“Here’s what we’d like the world to look like in a few days: Neither side is shooting at each other, not rockets, not missiles, not bullets, nothing … and the talking starts”, Rubio told reporters.
Russia has reportedly presented Washington with a list of demands for a deal to end the Ukraine war and reset relations with the US.
The Reuters news agency quoted sources saying the demands were similar to previous Kremlin terms for ending its war, including no NATO membership for Kyiv, recognition of Russia’s claim to annexed Crimea and four Ukrainian provinces, and an agreement that no foreign troops would be deployed in Ukraine.
Politics and diplomacy
A “very broad consensus” is emerging among European nations on boosting Ukraine’s long-term security through the Ukrainian armed forces, French Defence Minister Sebastien Lecornu said after a meeting with the defence ministers of Britain, Germany, Italy and Poland.
Polish Defence Minister Wladyslaw Kosiniak-Kamysz also welcomed a “real unity of the continent”, referring to the threat from Russia.
United Kingdom Defence Secretary John Healey said Britain and its allies knew that “we must step up” and re-arm. “We are looking to build a coalition”, he said. “We are accelerating this work”.
US State Secretary Rubio said that an expected minerals deal with Ukraine would give the US a “vested interest” in Ukraine’s security, although, he said, “I wouldn’t couch it as a security guarantee”.
The Polish foreign minister confirmed that US weapons are flowing back to Ukraine through Poland after the US lifted its pause on military aid to Kyiv.
Ex En Vogue singer Dawn Robinson has admitted she has been living in her car for nearly three years.
Dawn, whose R&, B group has sold 20 million records worldwide, shared the plights of her homelessness in a candid video, posted on YouTube on Tuesday.
“For the past three – almost three years, I have been living in my car… I said it. Oh my God”, the 58-year-old singer, who had a successful solo career before returning to En Vogue, said in the clip.
Dawn’s struggles began in 2020 when she felt compelled to move out the Las Vegas home she shared with her mother. The musician continued: “I can’t deal with this. I respect her too much. I didn’t understand it. I still don’t and it hurt me. I was just trying to figure it out but I couldn’t… you can’t read someone else’s mind and you can’t figure them out”.
Dawn, 58, revealing she’s been homeless, sleeping in her car for nearly three years (Instagram)
The singer’s band, formed in California, pictured on stage in 2019 (Getty Images for City of Hope)
Her exit led her to spend around a month sleeping in her vehicle in the heat of Las Vegas. During this time, her manager encouraged her to head back to Los Angeles, a city she “loved”.
Initially, the plan was for her to crash with her manager until she found stability, but space issues arose due to both having dogs, reports the Mirror US.
Even so, her manager still aimed to offer support by securing a hotel room for her, where she lodged for an extensive “eight months”, showing a glimmer of kindness during her plight.
Dawn was in need of a new home and her former boss offered a helping hand, suggesting he would go with her to view listings. However, the support fell flat, whenever she consulted her once-manager on the potential places, he always found something amiss.
“I’m trying to make this easier on you because financially I know it’s got to be hard”, she said she told him when discussing her situation. “You’re paying rent and you’re paying my hotel”.
However, as Dawn couldn’t find a suitable home, she began exploring the idea of living in her car and became intrigued by the lifestyle she discovered online.
“There’s a whole community of people who live in their cars and a whole community of people who live in their RVs and a whole community of people who live in their vans”, she remembered. “And I loved what I was seeing. I just thought, ‘ Wow, these people. I could do this, I think. ‘”.
In 2022, Dawn decided to leave hotel life behind and took her car to Malibu. Despite a challenging first night, she declares no remorse over the switch.
As she becomes more adept at car living, mastering tasks like covering her windows, she feels a growing sense of liberation. She detailled: “I felt free. That was a sense of freedom that I had. I was so free”.
United States President Donald Trump’s handling of the economy is facing growing pushback from Americans amid wild swings in the stock market and growing fears of a recession, new polling shows.
In a CNN/SSRS poll released on Wednesday, 56 percent of respondents said they disapproved of Trump’s economic management – higher than at any point during his first term in office.
The poll had better news for Trump on his other signature issue of immigration, with 51 percent of respondents expressing support for his strict enforcement policies.
A Reuters/Ipsos poll also released on Wednesday found that 57 percent of Americans believe Trump’s economic policies have been too “erratic”.
Trump’s overall approval rating in the CNN and Reuters polls was 45 percent and 44 percent, respectively.
The results come as Trump’s back-and-forth announcements on tariffs have roiled markets and stoked tensions with trading partners, including key US allies.
The benchmark S&, P 500 has lost more than $3 trillion since its February peak as investors struggle to make sense of the US president’s “America First” economic agenda.
On Wednesday, the Trump administration imposed 25 percent tariffs on all steel and aluminium imports, prompting retaliatory duties from Canada and the European Union.
The latest tariffs came after Trump a day earlier threatened Canada with a 50 percent duty on steel and aluminium before reversing course after the province of Ontario agreed to suspend a surcharge on electricity exports to some US states.
Trump, who earlier this week declined to rule out the possibility of a recession this year, and his aides have played down the stock market turmoil as a temporary blip on the road to a stronger economy.
“I think this country is going to boom. But as I said, I can do it the easy way or the hard way”, Trump told reporters on Tuesday.
Tom Fletcher, the head of the United Nations office for humanitarian affairs, has told reporters that with 300 million people in need of assistance, recent cuts to humanitarian aid funds are causing a “seismic shock” globally.
“Many will die because that aid is drying up”, Fletcher, the UN’s under-secretary-general for humanitarian affairs and emergency relief coordinator, said at a news briefing at the UN headquarters in New York on Wednesday.
“Across the humanitarian community, programmes are being stopped right now”, Fletcher said. “Staff are being let go right now. I think 10 percent of NGO colleagues were laid off in the course of February”, he said, referring to people working for nongovernment aid organisations.
Fletcher also spoke specifically of his recent visit last month to Gaza, saying “supplies are clearly running out very, very fast” amid Israel’s renewed blockade on all food, medicine, fuel and other goods entering the strip.
“The fact that we’re not getting fuel in means that incubators are being switched off, so this is real already, and will quickly become a humanitarian crisis again”, he said.
Describing his visit to Gaza last month, Fletcher said one of the “first shocking things I saw driving in is the dogs going through the rubble”.
“I don’t think anything can prepare you for that”, he said, referring to the spectacle of stray dogs in Gaza looking for dead bodies of people trapped beneath bombed-out buildings.
Tom Fletcher, the UN under-secretary-general for humanitarian affairs and emergency relief coordinator, attends a news conference in Geneva, Switzerland, December 3, 2024]Denis Balibouse/Reuters]
A ‘ humanitarian superpower ‘
Fletcher’s news conference came just days after United States Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced that the US had concluded it would be cancelling 83 percent of US Agency for International Development (USAID) programmes worldwide.
While the US cuts to aid have been the most drastic, Fletcher pointed out other countries have also been slashing their relief budgets.
“It’s not just the American government. I’m spending a lot more of my time than I’d expected in other donor capitals trying to shore up the case for what we do”, he said.
“What I can say is that over years, over decades now, the US has been a humanitarian superpower and that US funding has saved hundreds of millions of lives”, he added.
Fletcher, a former British ambassador to Lebanon, did not elaborate on which countries had cut aid specifically, but at the end of February, the United Kingdom announced it was cutting its aid spending to increase spending on its military. UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer said the government would “fully fund our increased investment in defence” by reducing aid spending from 0.5 percent of gross national income to 0.3 percent in 2027. According to The Guardian newspaper, the UK cuts amount to some six billion pounds ($7.7bn).
The change from aid to defence would see the UK spending 13.4 billion pounds ($17bn) more on the military every year from 2027, Starmer said.
Several other countries have also cut back on aid spending, including the Netherlands ‘ right-wing government, which announced in November last year it would cut its foreign aid budget by about one billion euros ($1.09bn) over a five-year period.
Fletcher said the UN humanitarian agency’s response to its reduced funding prospects will be to focus on “utterly essential life-saving work, in the areas of direst need”, including Gaza.
But several organisations are warning repercussions could be more widely felt.
The World Health Organization last week warned US cuts could set back efforts to treat the world’s “deadliest infectious disease”, tuberculosis.
Ebola surveillance work in Africa is also under threat as NGOs that used to be funded through USAID have been forced to stop their work.
Taipei, Taiwan – Until recently, Southeast Asia’s Mekong sub-region seemed to be on track to reach its goal of eliminating malaria by 2030.
Named for the 4, 900-kilometre (3, 000-mile) river that runs from southwest China through Myanmar, Thailand, Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam, the area has long been afflicted by the mosquito-borne illness.
From 2010 to 2023, the number of cases caused by the most common malaria parasite declined from nearly half a million to fewer than 248, 000, according to the Global Fund, a United States government-funded organisation that is the world’s largest financier of programmes to prevent, treat and care for HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria.
Nearly 229, 000 of those cases were reported in a single country, Myanmar, where the illness exploded with the outbreak of a civil war in 2021 and the displacement of millions of people.
As US President Donald Trump’s administration severely scales back foreign aid with the effective dismantling of the US Agency for International Development (USAID), health campaigners now fear that the progress made in the Mekong will be lost after officials targeted Myanmar’s anti-malaria initiative for elimination.
“We were throwing all our resources at]Myanmar], but by stopping this, malaria is going to spill back into Southeast Asia and the Mekong sub-region”, Alexandra Wharton-Smith, who worked on USAID’s Myanmar programme until being laid off by the Trump administration, told Al Jazeera from Thailand.
Myanmar’s government has estimated that cases have risen 300 percent since the start of the civil war, but Wharton-Smith said independent research indicates the real figure is more than double that.
New cases are also emerging in parts of Thailand that had not seen malaria for years as refugees and migrants from Myanmar cross the border, and are likely to rise further following the suspension of programmes to combat the disease, Wharton-Smith said.
A public health official holds blood test slides taken from children living on the Thai-Myanmar border, at a malaria clinic in the Sai Yok district, Kanchanaburi province, Thailand]File: Sukree Sukplang/Reuters]
The rollback of funding for anti-malaria efforts in the Mekong is just one of many examples of cuts that are raising alarm among humanitarian workers across the Global South, where the collapse of USAID threatens decades of progress against health crises such as tuberculosis, HIV/AIDS, Ebola and malnutrition.
On Wednesday, a top United Nations official for humanitarian affairs said the Trump administration had delivered a “seismic shock” to the global aid sector.
“Many will die because that aid is drying up”, Tom Fletcher, the head of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), said at a news conference on Monday.
Once the world’s top source of international aid, USAID is set to slash 5, 200 of its some 6, 200 programmes – about 83 percent of the total – according to US Secretary of State Marco Rubio.
“The 5200 contracts that are now cancelled spent tens of billions of dollars in ways that did not serve, (and in some cases even harmed), the core national interests of the United States”, Rubio said on X on Monday.
The remaining contracts will be overseen by the US State Department, he said.
The announcement capped six weeks of turmoil for the agency that began on January 20 when Trump issued a 90-day “pause” on US development assistance.
Thousands of USAID employees, contractors and support staff were put on leave or furloughed as projects around the world received a “stop work order” and ground to a halt.
Confusion followed as NGOs scrambled to fill in budget gaps and understand which programmes qualified for an announced waiver for life-saving partners.
The Supreme Court last week ordered the Trump administration to comply with a lower court’s ruling ordering the government to release $2bn in back pay owed to USAID partners and contractors from before the pause.
On Monday, a federal judge again called on the Trump administration to release the “unlawfully” impounded funds, arguing they had already been appropriated by the US Congress for a specific purpose.
US development assistance has been a primary target of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), led by Elon Musk, the world’s richest man and a close adviser to Trump.
Former USAID employees gather to support current staff as they retrieve their personal belongings from USAID headquarters in Washington, DC, the United States, on February 27, 2025]Manuel Balce Ceneta/AP Photo]
Catherine Kyobutungi, executive director of the African Population and Health Research Center in Nairobi, Kenya, said that while she agreed USAID should be reformed, the Trump administration’s gutting of the agency demonstrated a “total lack of understanding in how the world works”.
“We’ve made the case that the USAID funding mechanism was very, very inefficient. There was not too much attention paid to impact, to long-term sustainability and things like that, so it was not a perfect system. The problem is that you don’t upend an imperfect system overnight”, Kyobutungi told Al Jazeera.
“It’s not just that people show up and dispense pills for medical resistance, there’s a whole structure” to humanitarian assistance, Kyobutungi said.
“It’s the total disregard of how things work, how the world works, how projects are run, that is just astounding”.
Politicised aid
While the full impact of the USAID cuts is yet to be seen, a humanitarian worker at a leading nonprofit that works on malnutrition in multiple regions, including Africa and the Middle East, said any delay in funding could be deadly.
Among those most at risk are children being treated in intensive care units at emergency feeding stations for complications such as organ failure and hypoglycaemia, said the humanitarian worker, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
“The global humanitarian community has thousands of stabilisation centres around the world, supported by US government funds”, the person told Al Jazeera, asking not to be named due to fears of repercussions.
“This is crucial because with all the ups and downs of people awaiting waiver requests to resume programmes, the cash flow problems … we can’t allow these centres to close for even a day. Because if the lights go off in these centres, we see children dying”.
“Up until now, this was never a political issue. Feeding starving children was a bipartisan issue, and humanitarian aid was apolitical. Now they’ve politicised it”, the worker added.
It is also unclear how major US projects like the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) and the President’s Malaria Initiative will fare in the future.
Founded by Republican President George W Bush 20 years ago, the projects are credited with saving more than 32 million lives, according to the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) and archived USAID data.
They are both funded by Congress but implemented through government agencies such as USAID and the US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention, which has also been targeted by DOGE’s cost-cutting measures.
UNAIDS, a major partner of PEPFAR, said last month that it was notified the US government was terminating its relationship effective immediately. The agency said HIV programmes in at least 55 countries had reported cuts in funding.
Sibusisiwe Ngalombi, a community health worker, shows a USAID jacket she used to wear in Harare, Zimbabwe, on February 7, 2025]Aaron Ufumeli/AP Photo]
Grants for UNICEF programmes targeting polio were also terminated, according to the UN, as was funding to the UN Population Fund, which oversees reproductive and sexual health programmes.
USAID has explicitly denied waivers for any programmes linked to family planning or so-called “gender ideology”.
NGOs on the ground in Asia, Africa and elsewhere are now struggling to fill gaps in funding and are facing major disruptions in service since they were issued a “stop work order” during the 90-day USAID “pause”.
Rubio’s most recent pronouncement on USAID has done little to clear up the confusion, while USAID-funded food and essential items remain locked in warehouses, according to two NGO sources.
Back in the Mekong, Wharton-Smith, the former adviser to USAID’s Myanmar programme, said she was concerned that a trickle of malaria cases over the Myanmar border over the last two years could turn into a flood with the withdrawal of USAID.
“We’re going to have more malaria where there hasn’t been malaria before. A lot of people have lost their immunity, so that could mean deaths”, she said.
