Coachella Ticket Prices Drop 12 Percent After Beyonce Cancellation
The worst has happened, perhaps.
Beyonce, the most popular musician on God’s green earth, has canceled her co-headlining spot for this year’s Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival. The announcement comes two months out from Coachella’s April 15-17 opening, the first of two consecutive weekends with Kendrick Lamar and Radiohead topping the bill. While Beyonce will perform at the 2018 edition, the postponement begs the question — what happens now?
Coachella, which is promoted by AEG Live/Goldenvoice, is likely right at this moment scrambling to find a replacement for the singer, who, pregnant with twins and on doctor’s orders, has pushed back her appearance to next year’s festival. (Billboard has reached out to reps for AEG as well as Beyonce for comment.)
The news caused an immediate dip in the price of Coachella tickets on the secondary market, according to TicketIQ, an event ticket search engine and aggregator that tracks ticket sales on the secondary and primary market.
Prices for Weekend 1 dropped 12 percent from an average price of $978 to $872 after the news hit that the Lemonade singer was bowing out of this year’s event. Tickets for the Weekend 2 dropped nearly 3 percent from an average price of $856 to $834.
Coachella is the world’s biggest and most profitable festival. In 2016, it drew some 99,000 paying customers to the Empire Polo Fields in Indio, Calif., for two weekends, bringing in a total of nearly 200,000 fans who doled out $400 for general admission tickets (or $900 for VIP). The consistently top-grossing festival took in $94 million, according to Billboard Boxscore. None of which may deter disgruntled fans who helped Coachella sell out in record time from seeking refunds.
If history is any indication, fans are not likely entitled to recompense. When Beastie Boys were forced to cancel…