There was a time when buying concert tickets meant walking into a grocery store, standing in line, and walking out with a physical ticket in your hand. Maybe you waited overnight. Maybe you called Ticketmaster and prayed you didn’t get a busy signal. But at least you knew you were fighting other humans.
Now? You’re fighting algorithms.
I jumped into the queue for the Ella Langley and Kaitlin Butts show in August at Dickies Arena — a building that holds about 15,000 people. Sounds reasonable, right? One big arena. Plenty of seats.
Except when I entered the queue, I wasn’t number 1,203…
I wasn’t even number 20,000.
I was behind over 74,000 people.
Seventy-four thousand.
That’s not a line — that’s a small city trying to see a concert.
This is what buying concert tickets has become: you log in early, refresh like a madman, get placed into a “virtual waiting room,” and then stare at a little spinning wheel while your hope slowly drains away. You’re told, “Don’t worry, your place in line is secure.” Which is corporate speak for: good luck, buddy.
By the time you finally get in, every affordable seat is gone. What’s left? A $327 ticket in Section “Binoculars Required,” courtesy of the resale market that somehow already has hundreds of tickets available — five minutes after the sale starts.
And that’s the part that really stings.
Because it’s not just fans buying tickets anymore. It’s bots. It’s resellers. It’s people who never intended to go to the show in the first place — they just intend to profit off of people who do.
So instead of paying $40 or $50 to see an artist you love, you’re staring at a resale price that looks like a car payment.
The wild thing is: concerts used to be the most accessible way to support artists. You bought a ticket, maybe a t-shirt, sang along, and went home happy. Now the hardest part of the entire experience isn’t parking or beer lines — it’s just getting through checkout.
It shouldn’t feel like you need NASA-level timing and a fiber internet connection to see live music.
But here we are.
Fifteen thousand seats.
Seventy-four thousand people in line.
And somehow, the “verified resale” section is fully stocked.
That’s not demand. That’s dysfunction.
I’ll still try again next time — because that’s what fans do. We set alarms. We log in early. We cross our fingers. We curse the queue. And we hope, just once, we beat the system.
But man… buying concert tickets in 2026 feels less like buying entertainment and more like surviving a digital rodeo.
And right now?
The bots are riding bulls — and the fans are getting trampled.
