Beyoncé's high ticket prices to Taylor Swift’s snub: Why concert tours look different for Canada

Canadian music lovers may be feeling disregarded when it comes to big acts touring the country post-pandemic — particularly fans of Taylor Swift and Beyoncé.

Beyoncé kicked off the North American leg of her Renaissance tour with two Toronto shows on July 8 and 9. She had been touring Europe since May. The only other Canadian stop on her tour is Vancouver on Sept. 11, where tickets range from $181 to nearly $2,000 for premium sections, fees and tax included. At her Seattle show just days later, where in the U.S. Ticketmaster is not required to show post-fees final prices to customers until checkout, tickets range from $130 to more than $1,400 USD.

But fans are happy that at least they’ll have a chance to see Beyoncé perform in two major Canadian cities on this tour. It’s a contrast to Taylor Swift, who recently made headlines after Prime Minister Justin Trudeau pleaded with the singer to touch down in Canada, after it wasn’t included in the recent announcement of her world tour. (Swift didn’t respond to the world leader’s attempt to persuade her.)

Experts say these unfortunate trends in musicians' touring schedules and pricing come down to a few factors that don’t benefit their bottom line.

Dalton Higgins, entertainment publicist and author, says high ticket pricing comes down to a dynamic pricing model. Similar to price surging on Uber, ticket prices will fluctuate based on supply and demand.

“The more demand there is for something, corporations are raising their prices accordingly,” he tells Yahoo News Canada. “Ticketmaster and all the monopolies do.”

The eye-popping prices for prime concert tickets are also part of the post-pandemic reality. Concert promoters and festival producers are trying to make up for the massive loss they took over the last couple of years, when COVID-19 forced the shutdown of large gatherings.

When it comes to artists like Swift, who are bypassing Canadian tour dates, Higgins says a tour is about making money and sometimes these decisions are made based on the economics and logistics of touring Canada. In simple terms, Canada’s exchange rate and vast geography are big drawbacks.

“When the Taylor Swifts of the world are used to playing 60,000 seat venues, Canada doesn’t have many of those kinds of venues,” he says. “When you tour Canada, it’s already hard as it is. The transportation logistics of playing Canada doesn’t make sense. Promoters in Canada can’t compete with promoters in America or Europe for that matter, because we have a weaker currency.”

Daniel Tsai, a lecturer with the University of Toronto's Institute of Communication, Culture, Information and Technology explains that artists and concert producers expect to receive the same money in terms of sales and profits as they would in the U.S.

"Because of the exchange rate, the cost of tickets in Canada can be a lot higher and therefore a turnoff for concertgoers here and the aim is to fill as many seats as possible," he says.

Touring Canada also isn’t the same as touring America or Europe because artists can’t just jump from state to state, or country to country and perform for large audiences without having to endure a lot of commuting, along with moving equipment and crew around.

"It costs a small fortune,” says Higgins. “It’s a very different reality doing dates in Canada. Playing Canada is insane to max out your profitability. It’s very tough. But a lot of Canadians don’t know that. They just wonder why they’re not playing Edmonton or Winnipeg.”

World tours are also exhausting and a physical strain, as artists like Shawn Mendes and Justin Bieber can attest. Both recently cancelled world tours that were set to be underway in 2023.

Catherine Moore is an Adjunct Professor in the Music Technology & Digital Media Program at the University of Toronto. She says there’s anticipation from fans that Swift will continue touring in the future, which could mean good news for Canada down the line.

“Looking at longer terms, in the next two or three years…Taylor Swift will continue to tour and that could mean there will be Canadian dates,” she says. “But trying to speculate, absent from comments from the artist’s team or the record label, it’s hard to know why in this particular case Canada isn’t included.”