Ticket Buyers Stay Cautious Concerning Music Events

Belgian EDM festival Tomorrowland has announced its plans to go through with this year's event after postponing the 2020 edition for two times in a row due to the Covid-19 pandemic. Even though this news might be exciting for concertgoers in Europe, it's hard to gauge whether the attendance numbers will reach their previous high of 400,000 visitors in 2019.

As data from our Statista Global Consumer Survey shows, music fans in some of the biggest global markets have been cautious when it comes to buying advance tickets for upcoming shows. Even though the touring circuit has slowly picked up speed at least in the U.S. over the last couple of months despite Delta and Omicron still being very real obstacles for large gatherings of people, only nine percent of survey respondents in the United States claimed to have bought a ticket to a concert or festival in 2021. This is another sizable decrease from last year, where the hopes of a successful and rapid vaccination campaign caused 19 percent of U.S. Americans to buy a ticket to a music event. Germany, one of the countries currently hit hardest by the Omicron wave in Europe, is similarly wary of planning ahead when it comes to live shows: In 2021, only eight percent bought tickets to concerts or festivals. China, on the other hand, leads the group with 14 percent of participants claiming to have a bought tickets to a show in 2021.

According to Pollstar, the gross revenues accumulated with touring amounted to roughly $5.6 billion worldwide in 2019. This branch of the music industry, which heavily relies on social interaction and in-person gatherings, was among those hit the hardest by the impact of the coronavirus pandemic. In 2020, live events around the globe only generated about $1.2 billion in revenues.