I feel for Harry Styles’s fans, tickets for West Brom’s ’68 cup final were out of my league too

Now that the Oasis tour is over, it’s time we started moaning about some other much-loved music act’s outrageous ticket prices. Harry Styles is set to play 12 nights at Wembley Stadium. I am, I admit, largely unfamiliar with his work – most of the music I listen to sounds like scaffolding collapsing – but I do know there’s been the usual fuss about tickets. In brief, if you’re happy to stand up, they range from £144.65 to £279.45, and if you want to go VIP, it’s £749. One fan said, in an online post, that these gigs were now “inaccessible” for many true devotees.

I experienced similar Wembley heartache back in 1968, when West Bromwich Albion got to the FA Cup final. Maybe my dad could have afforded tickets for us but it probably seemed such a waste when the money could be spent on beer. To me, those tickets were also “inaccessible”. The difference is, back then, everyone I knew saw inaccessibility as pretty much their lot in life. You couldn’t even get a job on the bins unless you knew someone who knew someone.

Styles’s fans, tortured by Fomo, have even brought up the sordid subject of his other earnings. Apart from the, I’m guessing, £3.78 a year he gets from streaming revenue, Harry’s regular cash comes from deals with Gucci, Apple and Pepsi, his own record label, and his lifestyle company, Pleasing, which sells cosmetics, clothing and, with a distinct lack of under-the-counter discretion, “a double-sided vibrator” for what I feel I must call an eye-watering £68. There is also an accompanying lube, presumably to avoid burning the candle at both ends.

Styles could have afforded to offer a few thousand cheaper seats, but let’s see if we can cut the multi-millionaire some slack. Firstly, one has to admire him for risking complete estrangement from the showbiz community by paying tax. He recently came straight in at number 54 on “Britain’s Top 100 Taxpayers” chart. His accountant must be ashamed to leave the house. Secondly, pop music is a fiercely fickle business, its stars carved more often in ice than in marble. He might feel he has to fill his boots – or at least his ballet flats – before the bubble bursts. Thirdly, he says kind things. And, fourthly, he’s just announced a one-off gig in Manchester with tickets at £20. Mind you, I’m not sure someone who has just sold a kidney to see him at Wembley will be shouting “Good old Harry” when they hear someone else is seeing him for 20 quid.

Sadly, massive venues eventually realised that if they became more like first-class airport lounges, the sort of people who frequent those places would start going to gigs. They wouldn’t baulk at paying first-class prices, either. Some of them might even like the artist they’d come to see. This ultimately resulted in making those gigs inaccessible to a lot of people who really love that artist, but an income statement has no column for love.

Let me bring things back down to earth. Before my stand-up tour, in 2024, I had the usual debate with my manager about tickets. I always want to charge less than average, while he feels cheaper tickets suggest I’m not promising much in return. We finally agreed on £28 across the board. The tour was a stormer – well except for the Isle of Man, where a newspaper headline actually proclaimed:  “We find the man who laughed at Skinner gig”.

I doubt anyone who saw that tour paid £28. If you book through a ticket agency you expect to pay extra – they tend to wear their capitalism on their sleeve – but theatres tend to add charges like a grocer adds his thumb to the weighing scales. I asked one venue, which had stuck a mighty £9 on top of my £28, for an explanatory list of these charges. This was its response:

£1.75 theatre levy

10.8% per ticket fee – £3. 21

£3.95 transaction charge

I felt it was more like an avant-garde poem than an explanation. I was upset because I didn’t want my audience paying more than I felt was right, or not coming at all because they couldn’t afford the new price. Also, understandably, they’d be blaming me. My manager was upset, of course, because the theatre gets its previously agreed share of my takings, but I don’t get a share of its extra charges. I don’t want one. I realise that, like Harry’s vibrator, the story has two sides, but its charges should be in brackets after my £28 and, ideally, that avant-garde poem should appear on their online booking page. Personal gripe over.

I wonder if Harry’s playing the Isle of Man? It’s a great leveller.

Photograph by Kevin Mazur/Getty Images for Harry Styles