Elevation Church’s worship group, named Elevation Worship, is going on a West Coast tour, which includes stops in San Diego, Las Vegas, Oakland, Sacramento, Seattle, and Los Angeles. Called “Elevation Nights,” the tour will feature appearances from Elevation Church senior pastor Steven Furtick.
“It’s gonna be me, Holly, Elevation Worship…Unbelievable, these nights,” Furtick said as he stood alongside his wife, Holly Furtick, in a promotional video.
Many have expressed excitement that Elevation Worship, an award-winning musical collective whose songs are used in church worship services around the nation every weekend, is coming to a city near them.
However, after attempting to purchase tickets, some have been left reeling from sticker shock.
Elevation Worship Ticket Prices
While fans can find tickets for as low as $11.43 a seat in a section toward the back of the Oakland Arena and $20 a seat for the very back row of the Desert Diamond Arena in Glendale, Arizona, if worshippers want a front row seat to see Elevation Worship at the Kia Forum in Los Angeles on November 3, they should expect to pay $1,080.25 a seat plus booking fees—which bring the total to $1,240.15 for one seat. Parking is an additional $45 to $60.
For the Kia Forum concert, the cheapest seat still available in the floor section is $84.75, and some other seats one section up are available for between $60 to $70. Seats on the back row of the uppermost terrace cost $44.75.
Given the fact that the concerts will essentially take the form of a worship service, with praise songs accompanied by a sermon, some are questioning why many of the tickets are so expensive.
While critics have been quick to cite high ticket prices as evidence of Furtick and Elevation Church taking advantage of an opportunity to line their pockets, it is notable that the cost of concert tickets has soared across the board in recent years. In fact, the average concert ticket has more than tripled in price since the middle of the 1990s.
In a segment of Last Week Tonight aired earlier this year, John Oliver sought to explain this trend and how companies like Ticketmaster, which are facilitating ticket sales for these Elevation Worship events, may be to blame.
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“It is no secret Ticketmaster is horrible,” Oliver said. “But exactly how it is horrible is genuinely interesting.”
