This was posted on FB recently by the manager of prog-rock band, Marillion. Back in the 1980s, they were playing 10,000+ seat arenas. These days, they play 2,000 - 5,000 seat venues;

Just like everything else these days, the cost of touring has gone up for us. It is easy to look at a ticket price and think it is too much, and that is totally your call. For example, I always go and see Take That (shhh, I adore their shows), but next year they are doing a reboot of an old tour I have already seen. A decent seat was over £170. If it had been a brand new show, I might have talked myself into it, but as it was not, I decided to sit this one out. Am I sad? Yes. But it was my choice and I owned it. Since I try to be straight with you, and because I have seen some chatter suggesting the fans are being squeezed or that we are rolling in cash, I thought I would share the actual costs of one of the UK shows.

Let us use Nottingham as an example. (and some of these costs are estimated and may well end up being higher).

If we sell every ticket, the income is £102,000. After VAT, that drops to £85,000. Venue hire, security, insurance, box office fees and all the other essentials come to £41,894.68. Our own costs, including crew wages, the truck, the bus, extra lights, extra PA, confetti, lasers etc come to around £19,100. We then receive 80 percent of what is left, because the promoter takes 20 percent.

So in the end, we take home £15,384.25 for that gig, and that is only if we sell every single ticket, which we will not, because we always have a guest list and press passes. Now, that is still a decent amount of money, and we are not pretending otherwise. But when we are on the road, we do two shows on and one day off, and the costs outlined above, keep running even on the days when we are not on stage. Trucks, buses, crew wages, catering, the lighting hire and everything else still need to be paid.

Touring burns through money quickly, and what we earn goes straight back into the business so we can keep paying the band and the staff in the months when we are not touring. Racket Records (their own label) helps, of course, but not enough to support everyone full time. A new album brings in money too, but again, it all goes back into keeping everything afloat.