Hurled phones, Ticketmaster queues, dodging ashes: How live gigs became a living hell

Between the eye-watering ticket prices and the rise in crowd violence, going to see your favourite artist in concert has never been more miserable, writes Ed Power. Could things get even worse from here?

Technical glitches forced the French arm of Ticketmaster to halt Taylor Swift ticket sales while some 700,000 people were still in the queue (Shutterstock)

Under the bruised steel sky of London at sunset, Abel Tesfaye walked among his people. But had the artist – who performs as The Weeknd – taken a moment to look around at his London Stadium show this week, he might have noticed a minor disturbance a few feet away. An annoyed fan stepped forward and snatched a handmade sign from the grip of another concert-goer. The footage went viral on TikTok with the caption, “No signs blocking our view here.”

It was just the latest concert flashpoint to create a thunderclap on social media. Days earlier, in Vienna, pop princeling Harry Styles was struck in the eye by an object hurled from the crowd. On 30 June, a sell-out date by folk messiah Hozier welcomed a group of enthusiastic rugby players. “I’m sorry but the rugby squad who were at Hozier tonight were the worst,” tweeted one Hozier-head. “[They] talked all the way through, went on shoulders… and just kept making weird hand gestures.”

Ripped signs, hurled objects, rugby players making weird hand gestures… has concert-going turned into a living hell? Surveying these and other incidents that have rippled across Twitter and Instagram, it would be easy to conclude that attending a gig has become a collective punishment ritual. If someone with a sign doesn’t block your view, there’s a decent chance a rugby player might try to sit on you.