Harry Styles is the latest pop star to face fans’ fury over high ticket prices, but the uproar may point to a wider conversation around the cost of putting on a stadium tour in the current economy.
The UK pop star, 31, will perform a string of residencies in support of his upcoming fourth album, Kiss All the Time. Disco, Occasionally, which is scheduled for release on 6 March.
This includes 10 nights at Wembley Stadium, which will tie the record currently held by pop-rock band Coldplay, and 30 shows at Madison Square Garden in New York City.
Tickets go on general sale at 2pm on Friday (30 January) following pre-sales on Ticketmaster for the shows in London, New York and Amsterdam. The pre-sales have sparked anger among fans after ticket prices were revealed.
In the UK, tickets range between £44.10 to £466.24 for seated tickets at Wembley, and standing prices between £144.65 to £279.45. VIP packages range from £468.85 to £725.45.
In New York, the most expensive VIP package is currently priced at $1,667 (£1,208).
Thousands of Styles’s fans took to social media on Tuesday (27 January) expressing their upset upon learning about the prices.
“I fear there must be some miscommunication here. $1,000 per ticket?” one fan in the US wrote. “Taking a breath costs $20 in the economy.” The fan jokingly asked whether the price of the ticket included being able to hold Styles’s hand throughout the show.
“Harry’s ticket prices are so disappointing,” one fan wrote on X. “They’re only asking those insane prices because they know people will pay no matter what, not because they actually need the money. Harry could’ve gone against the increase, but didn’t. This is also on him.”
Other fans called it a “shock to the system”, with one quipping on Threads that “calling a tour ‘Together, Together’ when it’s unaffordable for 99 percent of people is crazy work”.
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Even Liam Gallagher, the subject of a huge international row over the prices of tickets to Oasis’s 2025 reunion tour, weighed in, joking that the rock band’s prices were “reasonable looking back at it now”.
The Independent has contacted Styles’s representatives and Ticketmaster for comment.
The term “eye-watering” is often used around ticket-pricing rows, and at a glance Styles’s tour does seem expensive. But it is worth looking at the wider picture.
For comparison, tickets to the “Watermelon Sugar” singer’s last tour for his Wembley shows in 2023 ranged between £50.65 to £326.20 before fees, meaning the top-tier tickets for his new shows now cost around £140 more.
However, the prices reflect the ever-rising costs for stadium shows. Tickets to Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour in 2023 started from around £58.65, with VIP or special packages going up to around £749 including VAT. Tickets to Beyoncé’s Cowboy Carter tour ranged from £71 to £950.
Standing tickets for Coldplay’s 2025-2026 tour are priced at £112.75 on Ticketmaster plus a £2.75 order fee, while seated tickets are priced between £57.75 to £195.25 per ticket plus fees.
Last year, standing tickets to see Billie Eilish on her UK arena tour cost £145.
Styles’s tour might be another instance of an artist coming under fire for a wider economic situation over which they have no control.
Stadium tours are already a massive endeavour, with around 10 per cent of ticket prices going towards booking and processing fees, plus taxes, with further costs for venue hire, venue staff, power, catering, scaffolding, barriers, medical staff, security, transport and stage hands.
The remainder is divvied up between the artist and the promoter, the latter who will typically take around 15 per cent of the remaining gross.
The artist or band must also cover their own crew, including roadies, sound and lighting engineers, catering, musicians, backing dancers, transport, tour management and production. They must also factor in the cost of rehearsals, costumes and set-building.
This is without factoring in the ongoing price hikes in energy costs. The UK government’s own research showed that typical bills under the January to March 2026 price cap will still be 45 per cent higher than in winter 2021/22.
It’s not just music events, either. Rows have broken out over the cost of West End shows, where seeing a play in central London can set you back hundreds of pounds, while criticism has also been aimed at sporting events. In 2025, Premier League clubs were urged to freeze home ticket prices for two seasons as regular fans struggled to afford attending matches.
Styles is also donating £1 from every ticket sold from his UK stadium shows to small music venues around the country, meaning he will raise around £780,000 for the LIVE Trust, which aims to protect grassroots music venues.
Consternation over ticket prices has done nothing to quell the demand for his tour.
Ticketmaster told The Hollywood Reporter that Styles now represents the largest-ever presale for a single artist in the New York market, with a staggering 11.5 million registrations for pre-sale tickets to his Madison Square Garden residency.
Ticketmaster said this marked the “largest artist presale registration performance ever seen for a single market or residency-style run”.