E. Woodrow Eckard and Marlene A. Smith
Economic Letters, Vol. 118, Issue 1, January 2013, Pages 222–224

We estimate consumer surplus gains and losses from concert ticket price discrimination. Fans purchasing low-priced tickets enjoy a surplus gain of about $9.26 per ticket while high-priced ticket buyers suffer a loss of about $17.63 per ticket. We estimate consumer surplus gains and losses resulting from price discrimination. A demand-based model provides the counterfactual uniform price and tickets sold. The sample includes 45 popular music concerts in the U.S. Our results suggest an estimated net consumer surplus loss of about $1.3 million. The dollar loss to high-income fans is more than twice the gain to low-income fans.