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Sorry for leaving you hanging! – Winnipeg Free Press
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Sorry for leaving you hanging! – Winnipeg Free Press

The macro

For live music fans in Canada, it’s an unprecedented embarrassment of riches.

From late October to early December, Bruce Springsteen and Taylor Swift tour the country.

The Boss — who I saw in Toronto last week — has already given concerts in Montreal, two shows in Toronto and a single in Ottawa. He arrives in Winnipeg this week before heading to Calgary, Edmonton and finishing the Canadian leg of his tour in Vancouver.

Swift performs six notable shows in Toronto, starting Thursday night, before wrapping up her work in Canada early next month with three shows in Vancouver.

If you like big stars playing big shows, it doesn’t get better than this. Or more expensive. Tickets for both tours were very, very expensive at face value and astronomical on the resale market.

On Stubhub, the cheapest ticket for Swift’s November 14 concert is $2,336 and it’s a standing room only ticket with an obstructed view.

Want a place to sit during slow songs? The lowest ticket, seated/unobstructed, will cost you around $3,400.

Want a seat on the floor right in front of the stage? Tickets currently cost between $4,235 and over $8,000.

Bruce Springsteen will perform Wednesday at the Canada Life Center. (Charles Sykes / Invision / Associated Press files)

Bruce Springsteen will perform Wednesday at the Canada Life Center. (Charles Sykes / Invision / Associated Press files)

Springsteen tickets are a steal by comparison.

For tomorrow night’s concert in Winnipeg, you can score a limited view seat for as little as $109 and lower bowl tickets for just under $300.

(If you plan to sit behind the stage, where tickets are cheaper: the setup allows for a full, relatively unobstructed view from behind. And be aware that Springsteen spends quite a bit of time interacting with the crowd in what is otherwise its rear view.)

Of course, tickets are only a fraction of the cost of attending a big show like this, especially if you’re coming from out of town.

In Toronto, where six shows attract fans from around the world, the hospitality industry is completely out of whack. Hotel and Airbnb accommodations, which would normally cost hundreds of dollars, are now running into thousands of dollars.

Hotels.com is currently listing condos for rent during the first three nights of Swift’s Toronto concert for between $1,800 and – wait for it – $9,800. But this latest listing seats six people and it costs a much more reasonable $1,633. Per person, per night.

Even hotels in the Greater Toronto Area are getting the Swift boost. THE Toronto Star reported that hotel prices in Hamilton (where you can easily get to Toronto using the GO Train network) have almost doubled.

In the city center, the Star According to reports, prices have increased fivefold, taking a $400 four-star hotel from around $400 to more than $2,000. Other reports showed hotels whose prices had increased tenfold.

The price gouging continued from the moment Taylor Swift announced the dates for her 21-month Eras World Tour. (Lewis Joly files / Associated Press)

The price gouging continued from the moment Taylor Swift announced the dates for her 21-month Eras World Tour. (Lewis Joly files / Associated Press)

Yes, these are last minute prices. But it’s important to note that the price hikes continued literally from the moment Swift announced the dates for her 21-month Eras world tour, and in every country she visited.

In Europe and the United Kingdom, hotel rates exceeded normal rates by 9 percent in London and 154 percent in London. Warsaw. In Australiahotel prices in Sydney jumped by 300 percent and in Melbourne by up to 500 percent.

The government’s weak response to evidence of gratuitous price gouging has also been consistent.

Toronto news media reported that the federal government is concerned about rising hotel prices, but that consumer protection is a provincial issue. The Ontario government has acknowledged that its legislation prevents companies from engaging in unfair practices, but has not indicated that it is undertaking a review of Swift’s impact on hotel prices.

Why this disinterest? This is where the government clearly finds itself in a conflict of interest.

Back to our $9,800 Toronto condo. In addition to the base rate of $8,100, there is a cleaning fee of $81, an undefined local tax of $16.18 (which I was unable to identify) and then $1,600 of additional taxes and fees.

A large part of this latter levy is the commission the owner pays to Hotels.com, which can be up to 25%. And then there’s a municipal lodging tax of six per cent ($492) and a GST of five per cent ($405).

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This is just one example, but it’s clear that if you extrapolate that to thousands of hotels and other rental properties, you’re talking about a pretty significant windfall for the government.

It should be noted that hotel prices in Winnipeg during the Springsteen show are higher than normal, but only marginally. But considering he’s only playing one night and right now Swift is the biggest music act on the planet, it’s not really a fair comparison.

At some point, something has to give in this equation. Stories started popping up last week about Swift fans who had tickets but couldn’t manage the accommodation costs and were doing the “unthinkable”: selling their tickets.

It’s hard to imagine fans doing this in sufficient numbers to impact overall support for a world tour. But then again, if costs continue to rise, we could reach a point where there are only so many Swifts a Swiftie can afford.