Buyer beware: Experiangst is real
Florencia Vallejo couldn’t afford Taylor Swift tickets, so she decided to see the next best thing: an Olivia Rodrigo concert.
“I’m not someone who spends a lot,” said Vallejo in an email interview. But after being shocked by Swift tickets for as high as $5k, ~$400 for two Rodrigo tickets for her and her kid sister didn’t seem too steep.
The Montreal show was exciting, providing a bonding moment for Vallejo and her sister and giving Vallejo an opportunity to see opener Chappell Roan before she blew up. But afterward Vallejo, who’s 25 and works in the nonprofit sector, thought about her refrigerator, which is “so old and broken that the whole back is literally just a frozen block of ice.” Months later she has yet to replace it.
“Do I regret the concert? A little. I regret the price. I could’ve spent much less and [pocketed] the extra cash for at least a mini fridge,” said Vallejo, joking only slightly.
It’s a story that captures a distinct 2023-2024 sensation: a coveted, expensive purchase for an experience followed by guilt.
Chappell Roan and Olivia Rodrigo at a concert in Los Angeles. (Christopher Polk/Billboard via Getty Images)
The Hustle surveyed 350 people who said they’d splurged on an experience or event in the last couple of years. While just over half reported the high prices didn’t dampen their satisfaction level, nearly 37% said their experience was at least a little bit of a letdown because of the expense.
Their high from the experience turned into what we should just call experiangst.
Experiangst is similar to buyer’s remorse. Experiangst is dissatisfaction that strikes before, during, or after an experience. Experiangst can remind you of something else you should’ve bought. And experiangst can be just plain exhausting.
“I felt like I had to continually go go go to get the most out of my money,” said a guy who spent $300 per day to ski at Keystone Resort. “Any break was flushing money down the toilet.”
All this experiential spending has helped keep the economy humming, and earlier this year some 38% of Americans said they’d even go into debt to travel, dine out, or see live entertainment. But is it worth it?
High prices and high expectations
In a cycle that’s been termed “funflation,” consumers over the last couple years have willingly shelled out money to musicians, venues, promoters, and sporting franchises who are incentivized to push prices — and fees — higher and higher.
- Year-over-year growth of the Bureau of Labor Statistics consumer price index for sporting admissions, which had already grown ~2x as fast as all consumer prices from 2015 to 2020, came in at 21.6% in May and has registered above 5% every month this year.
- Concert admission prices, which are grouped by the BLS with movie and theater admissions, were up ~6% YoY during much of 2023. Concert ticket price increases have moderated this year but are still higher than general inflation.
The Hustle
Just in the past few weeks, nosebleed seats for late round US Open matches went for $300, and Oasis reunion tickets soared in price as fans waited their turn online. Oasis fan Emma Dickinson, who was as far back in the queue as position 168,931, watched the cheapest tickets go from ~$200 to ~$450. Even though she felt cheated at first, she decided to buy them, wanting to have the experience to celebrate her son’s 18th birthday.
“I’m now determined to enjoy [the show] twice as much,” she said over email, “to reflect that I paid twice as much!”
There are good reasons to crave experiences. Researchers who study them have consistently found that they make people feel happy — at least more than material things do.
One reason why, says Amit Kumar, a University of Texas Austin professor of marketing and psychology who’s studied experiences, is that people are less susceptible to comparing an experience to somebody else’s the way they easily could with, say, a handbag. Experiences also often reflect a person’s sense of self, “an investment that contributes to who we are,” Kumar says.
Most of all, experiences are social and long-lasting. We spend time with others at concerts and dinners and on vacations and share stories about them weeks, months, maybe even years later.
“One type of critique that you hear in everyday conversations about people spending tons of money on concert tickets and things like that is you’re spending your money on something that’s fleeting,” Kumar says. “But what I think is important to point out from a psychological perspective is that our experiences actually do endure. They actually live on in our memories. They live on in the stories that we tell other people.”
That doesn’t mean an experience guarantees satisfaction. The expectation that experiences will affirm one’s identity can set people up for disaster. When Kelly Kandra Hughes went on a trip to Churchill, Manitoba, to see polar bears, fulfilling a lifelong dream, she became disenchanted as the tour group harassed a bear that was trying to nap. It didn’t jibe with her expectations or with her view of herself as an empathetic person who values nature.
“There I am surrounded by all these people having this life experience come true, and I had never felt more alone in my life,” says Hughes, a psychology and neuroscience professor at the University of Colorado Boulder who studies human flourishing and behavior change.
The Hustle
Studies that evaluate how people feel about splurging for an experience versus saving their money, Hughes says, are lacking. But researchers have found that people with less financial stability feel worse about their purchases.
In 2016, they also found that more expensive purchases of material items correlated with increased satisfaction. “Virtually everyone will get more out of driving a Lexus than a Camry, and more out of driving a Camry than a Corolla,” study authors Thomas Mann and Thomas Gilovich explained. But the correlation was far weaker with more expensive experiences.
Since the pandemic, of course, many experiences have gotten more expensive. But they haven’t necessarily gotten better. Although many concerts are more elaborate and sporting franchises — often aided by taxpayer dollars — have gold-plated their stadiums with premium seating, prices have mostly increased because artists, promoters, and teams have taken advantage of the high demand, aided by dynamic pricing. Bots scrounging for tickets for resellers haven’t helped.
Nosebleed seats are still a Corolla experience — but now cost the price of a Lexus.
Last week, Brooke Mosack paid $350 each (including ~$100 in fees) for six tickets to the Cleveland Browns home opener to celebrate her 9-year-old son’s birthday. The Browns got destroyed by the Dallas Cowboys, her son cried (not an unusual occurrence at a Browns game), and they left in the third quarter — a tough decision given the ticket prices.
“You paid all this money,” she says. “You feel guilty.”
And still we spend
I asked Mosack if the price shocks had led her to cut back on events. Her answer was relatable: No. Her family plans to attend another Browns game this year, and she paid ~$500 so she and her daughter could see the Gold Over America gymnastics tour.
A recent survey from McKinsey indicated that roughly two-thirds of Americans intend to spend the same or more than they usually do over the next three months on entertainment away from home, international flights, and meals out.
I’ve had trouble turning down pricey experiences, too. My wife and I went to the US Open in 2022, tacking it on to the end of a New York visit for her family member’s wedding. We paid face value — ~$200 each — for mid-level Taylor Swift tickets in 2023. Last month, I booked a trip to Cincinnati to watch the final of the Cincinnati Open tennis tournament — a visit that, even with relatively cheap flights and lodging, cost ~$500.
I have no experiangst. But as I scoped out ticket prices for the Cincinnati Open and saw that tickets approached $100 for the early rounds of the tournament it was clear that event and experience prices were out of control. Not only do high prices nearly shut out the middle class from seeing concerts and sporting events, they constrict experience opportunities for people with limited disposable incomes.
Per CNN, courtside tickets for the Frances Tiafoe-Taylor Fritz US Open semifinal match were priced on resale sites for as much as $56k. (Jamie Squire/Getty Images)
Vallejo, who saw the Rodrigo concert, says she attends fewer concerts because of high prices. Seats that once cost $50-$75 now go for ~$175.
In a social climate where loneliness is on the rise and hanging out is at an ebb, more experiences are vital, Kumar says. He’d like to see policymakers step up to make experiences more accessible and affordable. (US and UK officials have targeted Ticketmaster and Live Nation’s fees and failures with bots, but they’ve accomplished little so far.)
He also says that the benefits associated with experiences accrue regardless of cost. So if a local indie band playing a $20 show feels like part of your identity you can enjoy yourself and develop memories to share with your friends similar to how you would at a $500 Taylor Swift show. The same is true when spending an evening at a favorite hole-in the-wall restaurant versus a Michelin Star restaurant.
Still, sometimes the lure of a big-ticket experience, and the fear of missing out, outweighs any concerns of experiangst.
Vallejo, who recently got a quote for a refrigerator repairman in hopes of avoiding the expense of a new purchase, would go to great lengths to see Swift when she plays in Canada later this year.
“If any of the readers wants to sell me their TS tix,” she joked, “I'm ready to sell my liver to buy them.”
