Dave Mustaine: "Complaining about ticket prices is unfair, because touring is just expensive!"

A lot of artists have been shouting about how much it costs them to go on tour these days! Anyone who’s purchased concert tickets recently knows just how expensive they’ ve become. We’ ve seen plenty instances of the financial reality, forcing bands to cancel their touring plans or losing money in the long run, which sucks in both ways.

The prices seem to just keep going up and up, but Megadeth’s frontman Dave Mustaine has justified the cost, and thinks it’s “unfair” when people complain about it. He says that “as consumers, fans have to realize that the band also has to make money on tour”. And when you consider that, he admitted that even off days on tour cost MEGADETH roughly $50,000, that all has to come from somewhere – hence, raising ticket prices.

Dave Mustaine discussed the high costs of touring, emphasizing that a lot goes into it beyond just the music and noted that all of the behind-the-scenes crew members, such as bus and truck drivers and caterers, on top of the travel expenses, such as hotel rooms and food for everyone, gets paid daily. Imagine that kind of cost proportionately brought to smaller, younger bands that may not be drawing as many fans as MEGADETH.

Dave Mustaine says no his interview at The SDR Show:

“What happens is – you have each individual, and whether they’re working or not working, they get paid on a per-day basis… So you have whoever is out on the road.

For us, it’s a lot of people we have a light man, a sound man, a monitor man. And then you go on to the deck. We’ve got a bunch of people up there. You’ve got a drum tech, guitar tech, and bass and guitar tech, another monitor guy.

And then, there’s people backstage, there’s the drivers, the bus drivers, the truck drivers, the caterers, all that stuff. And then there’s all the hotels, all the money to get the hotel rooms for all these people. And then you got to feed them.

So the cost just keeps going up and up and up. And a lot of people look at the ticket price, and they think, ‘Man, I’m not paying 75 bucks to go see these guys.’ And it’s unfair to say that.

Even if you had a choice in the matter, it’s kind of what it is nowadays if you want to go see a live band. Because you just can’t get from point A to point B anymore without spending a lot of money.”

At the video below you can watch Dave Mustaine’s full interview at The SDR Show on December 9th, 2023: