There’s plenty in store for the Front Range concert scene in 2025, from a jam-packed Red Rocks Amphitheatre calendar to higher ticket prices and massive tours at Colorado’s biggest venues.
Here’s a handy preview.
Higher ticket prices
The average ticket price is expected to rise again in 2025, with promoters blaming ballooning costs on unprecedented demand. In addition to inflation, digital scalpers are gumming up the works, prompting false sell-outs the minute many shows go on sale and sending some fans to the secondary market, where prices usually skyrocket. And if you’re able to snag them, solid seats at Ball Arena, Red Rocks or Dick’s Sporting Good Park will rarely dip below the $50 mark, with many tickets topping $100 (or much, much more).
In 2024, the average price of a ticket for one of the top 100 tours was $127.38, which was 9.4% higher than in 2019, and an all-time high, according to Pollstar. Even before the pandemic, prices were creeping skyward: Boulder Weekly reported that Red Rocks tickets jumped more than 60% between 2018 and 2024. Concerts look to increasingly become a luxury item for a society whose wealth gap is growing at an alarming rate.
Tours and cost-reckoning
Canceled shows due to low ticket sales dotted 2024, with embarrassing about faces from The Black Keys, Jennifer Lopez and others angling for full-scale arena comebacks. This year looks to be more measured in its tour launching, with proven acts slotting comfortably into the biggest venues and mid-sized and smaller acts owning the city’s historic theaters and indie clubs.
On the bright side, Colorado consumers can now see the full list of taxes and other fees before buying their tickets, thanks to recent legislation. That helps in the decision-making process and offers more transparency on the true cost of your purchase.
Huge shows are not going anywhere
Taylor Swift dominated the national music sphere in 2024 with an “Eras” tour that sold out a pair of shows at Empower Field at Mile High. Slightly less top-of-mind but still huge acts Coldplay (June 10), Post Malone (June 15), and Metallica (June 27-29) are hitting Invesco Field in 2025. Coors Field is also likely to unveil more concerts on the level of 2024’s Billy Joel, Green Day, Kane Brown and Journey/Def Leppard shows.
At Ball Arena, which remains the metro area’s dominant arena, already-announced shows feature Rod Wave, Sebastian Maniscalco, Justin Timberlake and a multi-night run from Billy Strings — and that’s just in January. More notables include Tyler, the Creator (Feb. 11); Mary J. Blige (Feb. 25); Kylie Minogue (April 29), Andrea Bocelli (June 17); Linkin Park (Sept. 3), and comic Nate Bargatze (Sept. 12-13).
Venues — and their neighbors
As Broomfield’s FirstBank Center has fallen to the wrecking ball, there are glimmers of new venues along the Front Range. What that means for fans is that certain shows may be much closer to home. Colorado Springs music lovers no longer need to drive to Denver to see some Red Rocks headliners thanks to the city’s new Ford Amphitheater. That controversial outdoor venue continues to rankle some neighbors over noise issues, which have prompted critics to take their case to local politicians and the news media. (Venu, the owner of the amphitheater, recently launched a defiant marketing campaign that dubbed itself “Fan Founded. Fan Owned,” and claimed that the AEG Presents-booked amphitheater was a disrupter in the industry.)
In Loveland, the home of Blue Arena, Larimer County in December finalized a 70-acre purchase on which the Ranch Events Complex plans to grow — including building yet another new venue. We’ll see what kind of capacity and booking it has when it’s finished (likely not this year, since it hasn’t even broken ground) but it promises even less of a reason for people who live in the head into metro Denver.
Whither the weather?
Extreme weather will continue to poke holes in the calendar, as it has over the last couple years due to wind, hail and other safety-prompting concerns. Certainly, unpredictable weather has long been a factor at Colorado’s hundreds of annual outdoor concerts, from early-season snow to summer hail and fall/winter ice. And yet, seemingly unprecedented events continue to occur, potentially giving pause to fans who were excited about open-air music. Meteorologists have said climate change in 2024 was largely to blame for the rising number of storms and long bouts of extreme heat.
Red Rocks Amphitheatre’s Louis Tomlinson concert in 2023 turned into a wailing mess as nearly 100 concertgoers were treated for bloody lacerations, broken bones and other injuries due to a solstice-coinciding hail storm (seven people required hospitalization). That year also saw tours in which heat, dust and wildfire smoke affected Pearl Jam frontman Eddie Vedder’s voice in Paris; “Jason Aldean collapsed onstage from heat stroke during a performance in Hartford, Conn.; and Disturbed canceled a Phoenix gig because their equipment wouldn’t turn on in the 117-degree heat,” Billboard reported.
“Fans, meanwhile, have been forced to evacuate to tents, cars and bathrooms amidst storms, and risked overheating both at Ed Sheeran’s Pittsburgh show in July and Las Vegas concert in September,” according to the report. We also saw Burning Man take a major hit from extreme weather in August, from dust storms to mud, which has hurt ongoing ticket sales for the desert festival in Nevada.
In 2024, shows from Foo Fighters, Hozier, Pink, AJR and others were canceled internationally due to extreme weather, Rolling Stone reported, including a May 4 show from Hippo Campus at Red Rocks that was scuttled due to dangerous winds.
Colorado’s outdoor venues, from Red Rocks and Levitt Pavilion Denver to the 18,000-seat Fiddler’s Green Amphitheatre, are all vulnerable to extreme weather. At all of them, consider bringing seats or something sturdy to shelter under, in addition to the usual ponchos and cold-weather gear, and carefully watch weather reports on your phone.