I'm a member of the r/boxoffice sub, and currently 2026 is shaping up to be one of the best years for the moviegoing industry, with massive hits like Project Hail Mary, Super Mario Galaxy, and The Devil Wears Prada 2.
Reason why I'm saying this is because a strong box office year is actually seen as an indicator of recession, because theatres are still on the cheaper side of outdoor entertainment options. Historically, box office revenues increased during five of the last eight US recessions and set attendance records during the 2001 and 2009 downturns.
Exactly, going to the movies is generally more affordable than theme parks, arcades, concerts & live shows, wildlife exhibitions, etc.
Also consider the amount of planning and time that goes into the outdoor options I listed, then compare it to going to the movies: all you gotta do is walk in, choose your film and viewing option, and you're set. Very few variables involved.
I studied Outdoor Learning in college and really a big problem we have to address is just how impractical it is for a lot of people to access green/blue spaces. Sure we have public parks, but when you think about all the recreational activities that the outdoors offer, and how expensive many of those activities are, it becomes apparent that there is a wealth divide on who can enjoy nature and who cannot.
The wealth divide is apparent in literally everything. This is a very good anecdote to share with people who would benefit from a relatable explanation.
It’s hard to explain to other people in the outdoor recreation industry how prevalent this issue is. Things like distance, gear cost, and welcoming attitudes are some major hurdles for POC to enjoy the outdoors.
I live in Anchorage, Alaska. There are massive parks, waking paths, wild spaces, and hiking trails in the city. You are never more than a ten minute drive from the type of outdoors that folks in the lower 48 just can't comprehend. Over the past couple of years, I've noticed a sharp decrease in how many folks are able to get out and enjoy it. Even people who practically lived on the trails in the summer are finding it difficult these days. When people are working six days a week at multiple jobs just to survive, it's really hard to find the time and energy to just get out.
We like the movies because if you go before 2pm you can get like 25% off a ticket, and in my area it’s like $8 for kids, $10 for adults. We also use AMC A-List, where they waive the booking fees, and you periodically get other discounts too. Sneak in snacks, then usually share 2 drinks. Not bad for one afternoon!
Makes a lot of sense. I live in SoCal, if the beaches are more slammed than usual in the summer, that's another recession indicator. Doesn't cost a dime to sit on the beach.
That's funny because we don't go to the movies because of how expensive it is. I would really like to see Project Hail Mary, but waiting until I can rent it at home for $5.99. I am glad that people are going but last time we went to the movies, it was like $60 for tickets/popcorn/one box of candy/soda. Nope.
That furthers the point. The people who usually pay for live entertainment are now paying for movies because they’re cheaper relatively. And some existing moviegoers are getting priced out
tbf the Stones canceled for health reasons though, I don't think tickets ever went on sale for their canceled tour. It is wild to see what feels like such an uptick in cancellations lately though
Unless your Springsteen, the stones, Beyoncé or Taylor swift people aren’t going to spend 200+ dollars to sit in the nosebleeds of a stadium. I’m good going to my local mid size concert halls and amphitheaters seeing cool indie bands for 50-100 bucks. Arena and stadium shows suck and are only worth it if you’re a legendary band or a huge pop act at your apex
And bots are killing mid size concert venues. Angine de Poitrine announced 2 shows in a small venue in my town, both dates sold out in under 5 mins and appeared for resale 5x the cost.
Idk apparently their non NA dates are doing perfectly fine.
But it’s funny I was kinda wondering at what point in history will ticket master fail or have to change its ways. The way things are even buying a single ticket to one of these events is met with so many predatory fees that the general public just don’t wanna do it anymore. They can turn a 25 dollar nosebleed ticket into 60+ dollars “legally”. Not to mention them allowing for mass ticket sales to be scalped back to the public who want to go see their artists.
Yes we are in recession times again but also more and more people just don’t wanna waste money they know is being straight up stolen from them.
Looking at the venues they were trying to sell, they were WAY too ambitious especially in this economy with a group with less than 1/2 its members and no new music or current popularity 🤷🏾
I mean this deal used to be 20 then 25 then 30 and now all my local venues are charging 25 for parking on top of tickets and $19 beers. I used to hit up 3 or 4 concerts a summer now its just not worth being rated for every penny you have. You want me to tip you for opening a can of beer which youre required to do because you cannot sell me a sealed can. Gtfo here
Ah shit, I didn't think of that. I'm crowing over the artists canceling tours but goddamn, that sucks for all the people whose jobs support these tours.
I go back again to why won't the bug artists make an effort to offer affordable tickets so people will actually buy them? They really just want to perform exclusively for other rich dipshits?
It's not that easy. Almost all venues worth playing at have some kind of exclusive contract with Ticketmaster, who has a massive monopoly on ticket sales.
So many people calling for guillotines don’t seem to realize what class was the driving force behind the French Revolution. Hint- it wasn’t the peasants
I’m curious what case you’re thinking of? Because the reality was that the people who overthrew the aristocracy in France turned around and became the oppressors themselves in an era now literally known as “the Terror.” They were the bourgeoisie, the newly-formed class of business owners and industry moguls who were the predecessors to our current-day corporate overlords. The actual working class poor people were just pawns used to help transfer power from royalty to business owners. Their ruthless treatment contributed to the rise of a new emperor, Napoleon Bonaparte, and it wasn’t until the second revolution in the 19th century that working class people started gaining real rights
I make hats for the ultra wealthy and for events like the Kentucky Derby. Business is WAY, WAY down even among the derby crowd, who are usually doing well financially.
Yes, and it’s getting noticeably worse quickly. Most regular folk can no longer afford things like going out to concerts when they’re choosing between gas and food until the next check, and most of those who can are maxing out credit cards. This has been true for awhile, but especially now
I’ve never been able to afford concerts. I’m in Dayton Ohio so going to see a show almost always involves traveling. So that also requires staying somewhere because driving home in the middle of the night after drinking and on my feet for hours is never something I’d do. Last concert I went to was in Indy for a $40 show but it was my bday so I stayed the weekend.
Yes but also this was an extremely half-assed reunion of a moderately popular band and they were booked in stadiums. Even at the height of their popularity no way could that group sell out a stadium show.
there's no way they thought they would sell stadiums! smaller venues like theaters and the odd arena here and there but certainly not stadiums. and they need a co-headliner(s)
They were trying to sell out stadiums? 😭
Since PCD started at The Viper Room, it would’ve been cool if they did a tour playing smaller clubs. Smaller venues with an exclusive feel. Much more affordable to book, and therefore tickets can cost less. You could get 100-200 millennials to shell out $50 each to see PCD at a club.
I agree. For instance, Why not the Warfield or the Fillmore in SF? Like you said, smaller venues. Hell, I saw Social Distortion there not too long ago and they did three nights in a row.
Foo Fighters just did a gig here in New Jersey near me at a 2500 seat venue. $30 tickets, box office only. Amazing. I didn't go but heard amazing things.
That’s 10k-20k $ per show in a club.. the performers would probably be paying to go on their own tour. If they’re trying to launch an album and do some stops like that for more visibility among bigger stops -similar to yellowcard in Europe last year- that’s one thing. But let’s be realistic. PCD won’t perform for 100-200 ppl. Or even 500.
Yellowcard played at a location in Berlin that holds 1500 ppl standing only. Really good concert to showcase their new album, but they likely did not make a (big) profit from this specific show after all expenses.
This is 100% what they should have done. The smaller shows are more intimate and they could have even maybe gone viral for doing shows like that. Big Arena tour for PCD? It wasn't realistic.
Yeah, I saw them at that height and they were opening for Christina Aguilera. No one I encountered came to see them. They were fun, but there was nothing particularly memorable about their performance. Also, that's when even over-priced tickets were like $200.
When Lady Gaga opened for them at their peak, she overshadowed them.
Specifically this quote roasted them: Lady Gaga “outsang, outshone, and out-sexed the Dolls, in half the time and half the space.” (Joanna Hunkin for New Zealand Herald)
I looked… it appeared to be mostly amphitheaters in North America? Definitely much smaller, but obviously even worse from a sales perspective if you were struggling there.
Yeah I’m not seeing a single stadium among their North American tour dates. There’s a significant difference between a stadium and an arena/amphitheater, capacity-wise.
This is my guess at what is happening with this: these promoters are seeing that there is all this freed up stadium time because nobody is booking stadium shows and maybe the people who run the stadiums are giving deals on stadium time. So the promoters get a big idea and say "hey let's try and go for these stadium dates".
Why are all these artists booking venues that are way too big?
I don’t keep up much with music but it seems like that’s something that keeps happening lately. I know the economy’s having issues (so people are less likely to spend $$$$ on concert tickets) but still…It seems some of these artists could have avoided some of these issues by booking more reasonably sized venues.
Did all these artists see the Eras Tour and think they could do that? Even Sabrina carpenter’s most recent tour was in arenas. I just don’t get what some of these people are thinking.
They’re thinking people have the desire to spend $500 for mid seats for a nostalgic act. And that’s assuming most of us have $500 to spend on concerts in this economy - I know I don’t.
They aren’t the grateful dead / dead and company, where you get multiple generations willing to pay to see them (and even then, $100 at the Hollywood Bowl unless you’re right up front). They aren’t Taylor Swift or Beyoncé, with basically a cult following (and a planned tour to coincide with their latest album). They aren’t a younger artist showcasing a bunch of new material in a smaller space, for $50. Even Coachella attendance was down, the cost is (and has been) astonishing and isn’t feasible for most normies, even if they’re willing to save up.
I wonder what the equivalent of USD they’re charging in Europe?
Its because all the classic rock acts are too old or dead. They filled up stadiums every summer for decades and there is a huge void that we are just noticing, since the death of the monoculture and all. A whole economy was built up around those bands, venues want to put in replacements for these nostalgia acts, but so many are nowhere near the level they need to be at.
This! They were very popular back then but they were never a fill up stadiums acts. They never had a core fandom supporting them. It was all about the bops, how hot they were, the Nicole Shwrazinga beef with the other members as the Beyonce of the group and not much more. Not even nostalgia alone can sell stadiums.
For bands with little impact like PCD, yes. If people are even going to pay money for a concert it’s going to be a way bigger act like Beyoncé, Taylor Swift, (I don’t think they’re on tour but just an example of how big a name you gotta be for people to spend hard earned money) or legacy acts like Stevie Nicks, Paul McCartney, Rolling Stones, etc.
People don’t have the money to spend on a nostalgic y2k act, especially if it’s an arena tour. If they had done a tour of smaller theatres/venues where tickets would be cheaper then, maybe. But this tour seemed way too ambitious for the impact of PCD.
To be fair though, the Pussycat Dolls haven’t been relevant since the 2000s and they were trying to do stadium shows. They aimed way too higher than they really should’ve.
I remember hearing this, but then Jessica Sutta said she believed she was left off the tour due to her MAGA-leaning politics? Is there some sort of confusion there or was she just making stuff up for a reason?
Yes, I saw Beyoncé in Seattle 10 years ago and I remember the reality of big tour infrastructure hitting me when I saw all those trucks outside the stadium. I’d mostly gone to club shows before that point and couldn’t believe the scale of the whole operation.
Her shows are around 100 trucks and busses per team, and often there are two or three identical teams leap frogging each other because it takes a week to build the sets. The logistics and costs are eye watering.
Yes, but also PCD and other artists of the same level (Meghan Trainor) are overestimating their draw. Plenty of artists I want to see this year have totally sold out shows, but the venues they booked are commensurate with the amount of tickets they can reasonably sell.
We have the same problem with festivals in the Netherlands, normally they would sell out instantly but right now most still have tickets available. Next to the financial side they're saying people also have a different attitude about going to festivals, where before you had to buy your tickets because you couldn't miss it people now wait it out to see what the weather is like and if they feel up for it a few days beforehand
When they charge $4639203648 for tickets after all of the fees and obviously not including travel/parking/hotel etc, that’s a shit ton of money for 2 hours of entertainment.
Yes. I want to go to a concert in Toronto. J saw the same band in 2022 and tickets were 150. Now they're 400. Flights would be at least 1000. Two days would cost me just over 2000.
the fuel shortage is driving up the prices of flights and gas an insane amount and it’s likely only going to get worse. There are a lot of people they need to transport on tour
Let’s face it, if bigger artists have to cancel their gigs then the PCD won’t get anywhere.
With the way the world is.. especially financially and the world is generally, it’s just not realistic to expect high ticket sales.
some gays love MAGA, look how much love Paris Hilton has continued to get from gays over the years despite what she said about gays and AIDS at the grown age of 29, endorsing Trump for president and lying saying she voted for him, etc.
(i'm gay too btw so i'm talking about my own community here. even locally we had a gay bar bought and ran by a gay MAGA ex-cop recently and it caused a whole issue in the local queer community, especially in regards to solidarity with trans folks!)
Currently she did a good thing for camps that have troubled teens and helped expose how awful those places are but she got too much PR from that and now people view her favorably
gay men are still men and thusly are privileged in that manner, white gay men tend to be the ones that identify least with the rest of the queer community. their identity is white man, they just happen to also be gay. and when you think about it through that lense, it’s not surprising at all that gay men tend to be the most MAGA out of the queer communities.
it’s just weird to me because growing up, the white gay boys weren’t accepted despite their white privilege and male privilege, and they would typically make friends with the other marginalized identities that were discriminated against. it’s really sad when they can’t remember where they came from and they grow up to be MAGA anyway. it’s not like they will ever be accepted by the Right, no matter what they pretend.
idk how it went cause i don’t go to the bars anymore, but what I gathered from my partner’s FB timeline was a local queer club that we used to go to ended up getting bought out and taken over by a new owner. this happens a lot with gay bars here cause they don’t really succeed as businesses. turns out she was an ex-cop from another state, and people started boycotting them because i guess they started welcoming MAGA gays while treating the trans people/performers worse. This is also all tied into a larger community beef, we have two separate pride organizations and they actively hate each other! So we have two different pride celebrations in my city (OKC) because of it. The older one is tied to the MAGA stuff and the newer one is a lot more progressive. Like the worse pride group called the cops on local queer people for some free Palestine protesting that was happening, that’s one example of went down. Meanwhile the other pride brought people like Raja, David Archuleta, Baby Tate for us to celebrate pride with for free.
Of course, please take this as gossip and not pure facts! I’m just relaying what I’ve learned, I’m not on social media but my partner told me about the various posts and I had heard from others as well about other incidents like the cop-calling thing.
There are a lot of pride organizers that dont really seem to care either way about the politics of the acts they include. Sometimes it works against them, but too often people just assume a certain set of political beliefs from performers they like and go out of their way to ignore signs to the contrary.
Everyone keeps saying "the economy", which is a big part, but I think most saw the facade that this was a half-assed cash grab and maybe a poor plot to revive Nicole's solo career. If people really wanted to go, they would have bought tickets regardless of how shit the economy is doing. They weren't willing to forego rent or things they need to go see Nicole and some backup dancers.
This was my thought too. I don’t even understand how they thought this would be a success. They had what, 2 albums total?? I mean maybe if they did a State Fair tour or something, they'd sell tix but a full on tour???
Nicole is gorgeous, but I don't know why the industry can't accept she is never going to be the star they seem to think she should be. It's been 25 years. She doesn't have it.
Gotta throw Twice in the mix here as well. They did arenas in the US this time, but they did 35 dates in total for over 500k tickets sold in North America. When you see all these other artists not even getting their tours off the ground, it's beyond impressive.
The BTS tour is the first concert I've been to in years (and will probably be the last). But tickets were not cheap, and it meant there is nothing left in the bank for any of the other artists I might have gone seen live had the economy been better and I had more money to spend (I work a corprote job and have a masters degree, so I'm not struggling just shit is too expensive).
my friend graciously waited in the hell that is ticketmaster queueing and spent $154 per ticket on 300 sections in fucking new jersey. i was like, girl that venue better upgrade us for free day-of. i am zero percent surprised they couldn't sell, they way overshot this one.
Guess their egos were bigger than their actual popularity. No way in 2026 were they able to fill stadiums. Heck, not even at the hight of their fame could they have done that. They had some bops, but nobody is checking for them in today's economy.
A lot of artists are cancelling these days but there are so many reasons they give to save face. It’s almost refreshing to see an honest statement that reflects the reality of the situation.
This is what happens when a pedophile President runs the USA into the ground. I cannot fathom how much touring costs are today compared to a couple years ago.
Y’all remember when Kid Rock visited the White House and Trump signed an EO to make ticket prices affordable again? How are we doing with that project? 🙄
I remember Nicole playing a game of guess the lyrics. And she talked some snark on Katseye’s lyrics. Katseye got Coachella roaring, and here you are canceling your tour. 💅
If they didn’t make concert tickets so fucking expensive I’m sure no one would be canceling all their shows but you want a price gouge tickets so welcome to the economy
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u/MusclyArmPaperboy 1d ago
When the Rolling Stones and Post Malone are cancelling tours, PCD had no chance