The True Cost Of Gig Going (Part 3) - Q1 Report

Three months ago we started recording our total spend in attending gigs.

Here’s the key headlines from the end of the first quarter:

• We’ve attended 17 shows and seen 51 bands play.
• Of those 17 gigs only 2 have been in our home city of Portsmouth.
• 13 of the 17 shows have involved a round trip of 100 miles or more.
• 59% of our total spend was on travel and accommodation.
• We spent only £5.25 on average at the venue on drinks and merchandise.
• The total average cost of a gig (which varied in size from 100 capacity to 2,500 capacity) including tickets, travel, accommodation and merchandise was £43.35.
• We’re expecting an increase in our % total spend of tickets in September – at nearly £100 Kate Bush’s residency at Hammersmith Apollo was the most expensive ticket we’ve ever purchased for a one off gig (excluding festivals).
• The most popular city for us to attend gigs in this quarter was London, closely followed by Brighton.
• Our total spend on gigs including all costs was £736.90. If we’d saved this money and spent it on buying albums we could have purchased in the region of 80 LPs.

We'll continue with our monthly reports at the end of April 2014.