The bland and massive indoor show lacks the sweaty closeness of a smaller venue or the eye-popping scale of a stadium – it’s time we celebrated more characterful alternatives
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It seems barely a month goes by without some viral tweet or news story on the cost of, and resultant lack of appetite for, arena gigs. At the end of May, the Black Keys cancelled their autumn US arena tour amid reports of disastrously low ticket sales. Around the same time, Jennifer Lopez also cancelled her arena tour, citing personal reasons – though she too was struggling to shift seats. And there was concern that Charli XCX’s joint tour with Troye Sivan might go the same way – though the arrival of brat girl summer seems to have alleviated those fears a little.
That was followed this week in the UK by a spasm of outrage over the cost of tickets for Billie Eilish’s six-night residency at the O2 as part of her Hit Me Hard and Soft tour. A hyperventilating Daily Mail article suggested that Eilish had failed to sell out the dates after “fan outrage” over £388 tickets. That angle was quite misleading: those £388 tickets were for the plummest of plum seats, and when I looked there were tickets in less desirable blocks of the arena available for the slightly more palatable (but let’s be honest still pretty hefty) sum of £107. Overall, Eilish’s residency seems to be selling fairly steadily, especially given that it’s still more than a year away.
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