Luke Thomas Gets Political: Ticket prices to concerts, shows and sports have gotten so absurd that nearly $800 for the last row and $150 for a park seat does not even feel like an outlier anymore, it feels like the new baseline.
Normal working - and middle! - class fans are being priced out of the culture they built while venues and brands quietly pivot to a smaller pool of wealthier customers who can absorb the pain.
That first ticket pricing rant opens into a bigger point about how modern businesses are changing incentives. Instead of filling every seat, the goal becomes extracting maximum dollars per customer, even if the crowd shrinks. The Vegas example makes it concrete: tourism and foot traffic can drop while casino owners still feel great, because they are catering to higher spenders. The same logic shows up in premium airline cabins, luxury upgrades, and the “VIP economy” that treats regular people as noise.
#lukethomas #ticketprices #rippoffUSA
Listen to the full conversation over on Luke’s Substack: https://lthomas.substack.com/
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Chapters
00:00 Ticket prices shock
00:25 Working class fans priced out
01:09 Vegas shifts to wealthy tourists
02:05 Premium seats replace mass crowds
02:43 F1 blocks views controversy
03:36 Brands chase fewer rich customers
04:16 Birth rate and immigration reality
06:53 People leaving the U.S. signal
08:47 Who the real enemies are
