Originally posted by miryclay:[..]
A different economy really. Japan is expensive.
So it's more than just that. As Remy says.
Doing a bit of research before the shows I expected tickets in Japan to be a bit more expensive than Australia, but not much. I was pretty shocked by the price of GA's! It's forced me to re-evaluate, & only go to one Japan show. Conversely, I was pleasantly surprised by the price of GA in Oz, where they hadn't increased too much since 2010.
It's the price of the floor that's the real difference. High floor prices are common with many artists, but this is very unusual for U2 (excluding RZ).
Here's a comparison of Japan to the SCG (Sydney).
Other than the very cheap nosebleeds & obstructed seats in Sydney (42 USD), seats are quite comparable.
For Japan they are priced at 155 USD, 183 USD & 359 USD.
Compared to Sydney's 135 USD, 185 USD, 257 USD.
Sydney also has the more expensive VIP tickets, for 321 USD & 392 USD, & the VIP party, for 577 USD! I don't think these are available in Japan.
As I said, it's the floor that is the real difference.
Red Zone is 555 USD in Japan, while they are 356 USD in Sydney.
GA tickets are double the price in Japan! 183 USD in Japan, 91 USD in Sydney.
So price-wise, Japan is not the place to see the show from the floor! Much better to do that in Australia.
I'm used to my cheap GA's being supplemented by the expensive seats, VIP packages, & the very expensive VIP party. This isn't the case in Japan, so those of us on the floor are being stung with higher prices.
As Remy says, venue size will make I big difference too. Not just the number of seats, but the numbers of people in GA. The floor size in Saitama will be very small for this tour. Field sizes of most of the venues in Australia are huge. Upwards of 16,000sqm which is over 1.5 times the size of a football field, 10 times the size of an average arena floor!