National indicator
Admissions prices vs. consumer prices
The consumer price index for admissions to movies, theaters and concerts, tracked against the all-items index, so admissions inflation can be read against the general price level rather than in isolation.
Current reading
+2.3%
Admissions prices, change over 12 months
July 2026
-1.0 points against all items, which changed +3.3% over the same period.
102.6
Admissions relative to all items, January 2011 = 100
July 2026
Above 100, admissions prices have outpaced the general price level since the base month.
Source: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers (CPI-U), series CUSR0000SS62031; U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers (CPI-U), series CUSR0000SA0. Retrieved by Live Index 2026-08-14.
How to read it
The admissions series is a price index for the ticket line on a consumer's receipt across movies, theaters and concerts combined. It is not a concert-only measure, and it is not a measure of what any individual show costs.
Because both series are seasonally adjusted, month-to-month movement is comparable across the calendar. The twelve-month change remains the more stable read: single months in this item are volatile relative to broad aggregates.
The relative line is the more useful of the two views for live-music work. A flat relative line means admissions prices are moving with the wider economy; a rising line means audiences are giving up a growing share of general purchasing power to attend.
Derivation
Year-over-year percentage change is computed from the two stored seasonally adjusted index levels twelve months apart: (level_t / level_t-12 − 1) × 100. The relative price line rebases the ratio of the admissions index to the all-items index so that a chosen month equals 100; it rises when admissions prices outpace the general price level and falls when they lag it.
Live Index stores the agency's published level for each period and recomputes derived figures from those stored levels on every read. No value is smoothed, interpolated, seasonally re-adjusted or projected, and a period the agency has not published is absent from the series rather than filled.
Limits of the measure
- Movies, theaters and concerts are combined in this CPI item. Concert-specific price behaviour cannot be isolated from it.
- CPI collects the transaction price for a defined item over time. It does not decompose face value, mandatory fees and resale, which is the decomposition Live Index maintains separately.
- Index levels are revised infrequently but seasonal factors are updated annually, which can alter recent seasonally adjusted history.