Montrealers outraged over high ticket prices to see touring artists

Many big-name artists are coming to Montreal, like Lady Gaga and Ariana Grande, and ticket prices are very high.

Nathaniel Villanueva took the plunge and bought two tickets to Lady Gaga’s “Mayhem Ball” Tour as it stops in Montreal for 3 shows in April 2026.

“I ended up paying $1,600 for two tickets and that we know the original price was about $150 per ticket,” says Villanueva.

The average person has little chance if ever paying face value because tickets are often gobbled up by third-party companies and resold at greatly inflated prices.

Villanueva saw it online.

“Most of the tickets were bought by some company that then decided to resell them again through Ticketmaster as well,” he says.

Those tickets are listed as “verified resale” tickets and top prices for Lady Gaga exceed $2,000. For Ariana Grande’s three shows in July 2026, the top tickets cost $3,000.

Digital expert Mitch Joel suggests artists can have a say.

“If a promoter and a manager and an artist is seeing that a ticket they’re selling for $150 is going for $600 on a secondary or third market, what should their reaction be?”

He says when the artist is in high demand, resellers will capitalize.

“When you have that level of demand and what it brings forward is this idea that they can basically charge whatever they feel the market’s worth,” he says. “And that’s where you have all of these algorithmic dynamic pricing engines at play.”

Dynamic pricing, he says, is pervasive across many industries and can be seen in airplane tickets and hotel prices.

Record producer of Uplift Productions Kevin Jardine says there needs to be some controls of resellers, especially since the artists aren’t pocketing those extra dollars.

“The ticket pricing initially, yes, is set by the artists and their management and their team to come up with a figure that makes sense to bring the show into town,” explains Jardine.

Villanueva believes ticket resellers are squeezing the fans too hard.

“They’re going to find themselves with an empty venue because people just don’t want to be abused this way ever again,” he says.

Rather than pay a big ticket, Jardine says do some research and discover the next big thing — in a smaller venue.

“You can support something early on and then you can be the one to say ‘Hey, I remember going to see so-and-so when they played at Foufounes Electriques and now they’re playing at The Bell Center. And I saw them!’ you can be that person,” he says.

As for the big-name concerts, they’re out of reach for many fans, other than the ones with very deep pockets.

CTV News reached out to both Evenko and Ticketmaster for comment but did not hear back at time of publication.