Female Fans First in Line for Concert Tickets

Star studded K-pop group, BTS, had a break out week last Friday when their first world tour, Love Yourself: Speak Yourself, sold out four major stadiums across the U.S. and Europe, including Wembley in London, Stade de France in Paris, and the Rose Bowl in LA. The tickets were sold out within hours of going up. Female ticket viewers drove about 75 percent of traffic to the site on the morning of the tour announcement.

Touring has become paramount for bands and artists looking to turn a profit. Streaming services, like Spotify, make recorded music accessible and cheaper for consumers, which puts greater importance on the role that touring plays in how celebrities make money. In 2017, 90 percent of the money Beyoncé made came from her world tour. The people flooding onto ticket sites the day major tours go on sale is indicative of who ends up buying those tickets that help keep the music industry’s wheels turning.

Particularly for Ariana Grande and BTS, young women between the ages of 18 and 24 were the ones coming onto Vivid Seats ticketing site. While the K-pop band and the worldwide celebrity have some similarities, even for artists that aren’t obviously similar, like Taylor Swift and Drake, most site traffic was driven by women. The Rolling Stones was the only band this wasn’t true for, where about 56 percent of site traffic was driven by men on the day that the Stones’ No Filter tour aired.