Beyoncé, Kendrick Lamar: Stadium tours are on the rise. Do you love fans?

When we see how our favorite artist appears at a stadium concert, we expect a divine experience. After all, it is the next that the average person could experience for a holy pilgrimage: strangers from all areas of life that come together to share their worship for a musical deity. We should end the night and feel enlightened if not completely changed.

This is the only way to rarely do these shows actually go. A more common stadium experience nowadays is to argue and broke before preliminary events, to buy a ticket, and then fight to see the stage or to hear the musician you listen to. It is his own headache only with other people thousands of other people.

This reality has never been clearer thanks to social media. Only a few data in Beyoncés with excitement awaited Cowboy Carter Tour have flooded the feed with their less ideal experiences that took part in the show. While most raved about the quality of production, it seems that the three-hour concert in a stadium has some remarkable inconvenience, from unsuspecting views to chaotic VIP sections.

The fans held Beyoncé, Ticketmaster and his parent company Live Nation Entertainment for a lack of communication and transparency (but mainly live nation and ticketmaster). In general, it seems as if these large concerts do not serve the fans as they should. Instead, you need a lot of money and effort for an experience that is often difficult to simply enjoy the music.

When Kendrick Lamar, Sza, Post Malone, Billie Eillish and Ed Sheeran come to stadium tours in the stadium this year or save on living conditions, this raises a crucial question about the future of the concert: Does anyone actually want to see a concert with 80,000 other people?

Stadium tours are the must-have-social experience of whether we like it or not

If you ask Z why you spend so much for concerts, you will quote fear of missing the miss. According to a study of 2024 from Merge, ze Z tends to hand over live events-and impulsive, although it is a particularly cost-conscious cohort. The participants in the study also listed peer influence and social pressure as reasons for the splash.

Stadium tours have become MUST events in recent years. According to Pollstar, the stadium concert for the 100 best facilities of $ 1.48 billion increased to $ 2.68 billion in 2022 in 2019.

Beyoncé and Swifts respective stadium tours, from 2023, consolidated this boom. The two-year tour of Eras was the first over $ 2 billion, while the Renaissance World Tour brought in almost $ 600 million. After four decades of rock bands that dominated the venue, the top stadium tours were run by Pop -Aacts in the 2020s. Now it seems that these large concerts have become mandatory experiences, not only for fans, but also for artists. Live Nation recently reported that shows that are playing in stadiums this year rose by 60 percent compared to 2024.

Now stadium concerts are the ultimate summer destination and often require as much effort and money as an actual short vacation. Stadium tours – especially if they are guided by huge pop artists – can bring with you through hectic pre -sale factors, budgeting of tickets for exorbitantly price, planning of outfits and even international trips.

“Stadium concerts almost feel like Halloween, where they spend weeks to decide what they will wear, with whom they go with and what they will do before the show,” says Rolling Stone writer Tomás Mier.

It is easy to see how young people are influenced in participating in these shows because experience is prioritized in experience. From the moment you buy tickets, share your order confirmations on social media. On the way to the concert, they upload their topics. When they finally arrive, the fans publish entire sequences of the show, both spoil them for future participants and change experience for themselves.

However, Mier argues that stadiums offer more than just social currency in the form of an Instagram post and claims that these shows can feel “local”. Brian Mirakian, senior director and co-director of the live Venue design company Populous, says that the sheer quantity of people who are packed in a stadium can have a unique emotional influence that is similar to a festival.

“There is something that around 80,000 fans have gathered, cheered, screamed and sing in harmony,” says Mirakian. “There is almost a spiritual energy that is really difficult to replicate.”

Nevertheless, even this increased level of emotions apparently has some disadvantages. According to Swift's Eras-Tour, many participants reported “Amnesia after the concerts”, which the researchers are associated with an overwhelming feeling of excitement and thus the inability to process what they consumed. This seems to be a swift-centered problem, but it feels meaningful that even the purest experience that could be in this environment could ultimately be fleeting.

States tours are ideal for artists, but not for fans

The advantages of these large -scale tours are more obvious to the actors than the participants. According to Mirakian, the stadium tours have proven to be efficient for artists to “compensate for time loss and income that were overlooked during pandemic”. Other seats mean more ticket sales. You can also produce cheaper. For example, if you carry out several shows at an event location, they lower the travel expenses. Of course, no artists and ticket sellers prevented this from calculating ridiculous prices for tickets.

Beyond profits, stadium tours for artists have become in order to assert their status in the industry and in pop culture. “It has become this incredible moment for her to establish this kind of dominance,” says Mirakian. “If an artist can sell several nights [at a stadium]It becomes this evidence of the influence. ”

In some cases, it is exciting for certain, visually qualified artists to create immersive worlds from these venues.

“I have had great experience to see artists in stadiums,” says Mier. “I saw how Beyoncé and Bad Bunny fly around the Sofi Stadium, BTS drives mobile stages through the crowd and Taylor Swift occurs with fire and rain.”

Nevertheless, with massive pictures and impressive stunts there is a strong reality that stadiums are simply not designed for the best acoustics.

“There are all kinds of challenges with open-air event locations,” says Mirakian. “Above all, they are designed for sports and not for concerts first.”

This problem showed itself during the Eras tour when the fans reported their inability to hear Swift's singing against the singing of the massive crowd. In a football game, fans may want to be overwhelmed by the sound of the crowd. Even if the artists' attempts to offer the best possible sound can cause a visible obstacle. For example, TikK creators who took part in the Cowboy Carter Tour complained about huge speakers on the site of the stadium that blocks their view.

In addition to these visual and sound problems, stadiums can also be physically exhausting. Entering and outgoing an event location can take a long time. The purchase of a standing ticket consists with the risk of complaints and, in the case of some Cowboy Carter Tour participants, complete disorder.

A concert visitor named Jordan said that on April 28th she paid $ 1,800 for a VIP ticket for Beyoncé's first Cowboy -Carter show at the Sofi Stadium in Los Angeles and finally “cheated” by the most important concert experience.

“We came across a dangerous situation of the audience, while the security took several steep ramps down,” she says Vox. “People crowded and cut. There were some verbal arguments.” She said that the employees had led ticket holders in the wrong section for their VIP pit. When they were moved to the right pit, fans who had later arrived were when they took the first DIBs behind the barricades.

The problems started as soon as the tour did. Participants who bought soil tickets – which cost up to thousands – shared their complaints after the opening after the opening evening. A concert visitor who was in a VIP pit claimed that he could not see Beyoncé for long periods because the band blocked his view. Many pointed out that the VIP pits were further away from the stage when they say that they were advertised on Ticketmaster (a problem that the tour operator apparently addressed). Others claim that Ticketmaster does not notify her that your tickets have a disabled view.

“Nothing of this size can be ideal for everyone involved,” says Jordan. “Ideally, Beyoncé appears in my back yard. However, I believe that there should be a final effort to take up those who have paid a VIP experience.”

The HOOPLA around the Cowboy Carter Tour has fans and industry forecasts who are wondering whether the Stadium Tour bladder will finally burst. The ticket sales for the tour were overwhelming, although the singer is still on the way to hundreds of millions of dollars. In the meantime, the Ministry of Justice is suing the live nation for supposedly operated illegal monopoly of the live music industry.

At the moment these tours seem to work for great artists. Until they do not do it, we will continue to publish selfies from the stadium hell.