Taking out a loan in order to go to Coachella? That’s not probably not a good sign for the economy. Dave Ramsey is punching air right now…
As tickets to concerts and festivals have become increasingly expensive in recent years, ticket sellers have started to offer a “Buy Now, Pay Later” option at checkout. For those that are familiar with how making payments work, that’s just a fancy way of saying that these marketplaces are offering small loans to help concert goers pay for their tickets.
And concert goers are jumping on the questionable opportunity.
These “payment installments” have become more and more commonplace, and Billboard reported that around 60% of general admission attendees at Coachella opted to finance their tickets. The desert concert out in California (Post Malone’s performance there was a tad controversial) that draws thousands of young music fans every year gave festival-goers an option to pay only $49.99 initially for a $600 (or more) ticket.
Sounds pretty good, right? Well, that payment actually just allowed for the ticket buyer to then spread the rest of the $600 payment for the festival pass over multiple installments. In other words, that $50 bucks on the front end is a placeholder for a concert ticket loan of sorts, and the young people attending Coachella were then able to pay off the remaining $600 over time.
NEW: About 60% Of Coachella attendees financed their tickets to attend the festival, according to Billboard.
If you need to take out a loan to go to Coachella, you shouldn’t be going to Coachella.
There have been about 100,000 attendees each weekend for the festival and over… pic.twitter.com/0qARhq9a0y
— Collin Rugg (@CollinRugg) April 14, 2025
Those kinds of options are popping up all over the place as everything seems to get more and more expensive. Hell, you can sign up for a payment plan for a Papa John’s pizza now… it’s insane. And with this latest example of a Coachella payment plan, it appears that the rest of the money owed after the initial deposit for the ticket is interest free. However, if attendees missed a payment after they placed the order (and they don’t fulfill their end of the deal within 10 days), the ticket order was cancelled.
Considering that the ticket price to get in is just the tip of the financial iceberg (festival goers also have to pay for food, beverages, lodging), I don’t know if the payment plans are truly an option that benefits concert goers.
All I do know is that I had a hell of a time laughing my ass off seeing all of The Big Short memes that people used to respond to the news of people financing their festival tickets. If you’ve never seen the movie, it’s based upon the 2008 Subprime Mortgage Crisis (also known as the Housing Crisis) that contributed to the global financial crisis.
I’d highly recommend watching it, if only so you can better understand some of these memes below:
short everything pic.twitter.com/DCwfvUcSGv
— Sam (@futurenomics) April 14, 2025
FOMO causing bad financial decisions again.
— Only2Words (@HaroldMouhan) April 14, 2025
https://t.co/X7csyYWSNt pic.twitter.com/64H4jPyv0j
— Nik (@NikMilanovic) April 14, 2025
Financing tickets to a festival is next level sad
— Sammysunshine (@Sampullitoff) April 14, 2025
pic.twitter.com/tSTWcLRupw https://t.co/okECIutqGr
— SLURM (@_Slurm_) April 14, 2025
