Olivia Rodrigo has added Silver Star tickets to her concert setup, offering a cheaper entry point at £20 ($26). The move follows a wider push by artists to answer backlash over ticket prices with limited lower-cost options.
Silver Star at £20
The pricing is the part that matters most: some Silver Star tickets cost £20, and the seats are not assigned in advance. Fans only learn where they will sit or stand when they arrive at the venue, which keeps the price down but removes any choice over location.
Jared Braverman, senior vice president of global touring at Live Nation, said, “It’s not a ton in most cases, but it’s enough to make the program meaningful.” That is the operating logic behind these cheaper schemes: they are small in scale, but they create a visible lower-priced lane inside a ticket market that has kept moving up.
Live Nation and Mick Management
Jonathan Eshak, co-president of Mick Management, said, “the trend right now is making sure that the audience feels heard as they become more vocal about how they’re getting access to tickets.” He added, “You’re potentially forfeiting revenue, but you’re also trying to create a good experience for people who are more price conscious.”
That trade-off is built into Silver Star. The policy applies only to a limited number of tickets for each show, so it is not a broad discount and it does not reset the market price. For price-conscious buyers, it is a narrow opening rather than a general reduction.
UK ticket prices and Gen Z
Luminate found in a survey that 75% of Gen Z respondents called the cost of tickets the main barrier to concerts in 2024, and by this year that share had fallen to 57%. Over the longer run, the average UK concert ticket price rose 521 per cent, from £16.99 ($22.85) in 1996 to £105.60 ($142) in 2025. If prices had tracked inflation instead, the figure would have been £34.18 ($46).
The result is a market where cheaper programs do not replace standard pricing, but they do give artists a way to show they are responding to the pressure around access. Jared Braverman put it plainly: the program is meaningful even when the allocation is small, because the alternative is leaving every seat in the higher-price lane.
For buyers, the practical takeaway is simple: Silver Star is a limited low-price option, not a guaranteed upgrade and not a choice of seat. Olivia Rodrigo has opened the door to cheaper access, but the structure still keeps the supply tight and the assignment until arrival.
Coldplay and Lucky Dip
Braverman said the Stones inspired Coldplay to introduce Infinity Tickets priced at £20, and that Coldplay’s move led Olivia Rodrigo to introduce Silver Star tickets. The sequence shows how quickly cheaper-ticket experiments can spread once one major act tests them and another decides the audience reaction is worth the revenue sacrifice.
