Coachella Kicked Off Today, With Reportedly More Than 60% of Its Attending Crowds Financing Their Tickets Through New Payment Plans

Dante4/11/2025 6:30 PM

BILLBOARD- Tens of thousands of music fans will descend on the California desert this weekend for the first of two iterations of the Coachella Music and Arts festival outside of Palm Springs, Calif.
Approximately 80,000 to 100,000 fans each weekend will have coughed up the $599 ticket price to see headliners Lady Gaga, Travis Scott, Green Day and Post Malone. But ticket price is often just the cost of entry — many of those fans will spend more than a $1,000 per weekend on lodging and cough up hundreds of dollars more for food, drinks and merchandise. It’s a substantial spend for any of the 20-somethings in Coachella’s target demographic. But festival organizers have increasingly helped finance their purchase through payment plan programs.
Approximately 60 percent of general admission ticket buyers at this year’s festival opted to use Coachella’s payment plan system, which requires as little as $49.99 up front for tickets to the annual concert. The desert festival isn’t alone — Lollapalooza, Electric Daisy Carnival and Rolling Loud all sell the majority of their tickets using some kind of payment plan system.
Representatives at Goldenvoice, which puts on Coachella, declined to comment for this story. One source, who asked to remain anonymous because they weren’t authorized to speak to the media, told Billboard that payment plans have fundamentally changed how festivals are marketed to the public.
“Festivals are now marketing a cheap down payment as their main call to action,” the source says. “The messaging is $20 down gets you in the door, or $50 down gets you started. It’s no longer about the artists, or the festival lifestyle — the message is, ‘You can afford this if you act today.’”
The same source told Billboard it’s not uncommon for some fans to have four or five different festival payment plans hitting their accounts at one time. Typically, fans pay as little as $19.99 to get started on a payment plan that’s extended over a period of several months — three months generally for Coachella, since most buying happens after the lineup is announced, which until 2025 took place in early January.
Ticket buyers are charged a $41 fee for using Coachella’s payment plan, similar to what other festivals charge fans for the use of payment plans.
While some have criticized festivals for using fees as a revenue generator, fest organizer Bob Sheehan with the California Roots Festival in Monterey, Calif. tells Billboard that payment plans “are a critical link between fan affordability and generating the revenue needed to finance a modern multiday festival.”
Sheehan estimates that 65 percent to 70 percent of his festival attendees use payment plans to pay for their tickets and adds “the entire system is built upon trust — trust that we will deliver the experience we promised and trust that our fans will make their payments on time.”

If you’re financing your festival tickets, honestly, who cares? You gotta flex that carefully staged Instagram shot in front of the Ferris wheel somehow, right?

Nothing screams financial stability like throwing a $49 down payment on a $600 ticket, then praying your direct deposit hits before your third installment bounces.

You wouldn’t want your Instagram followers knowing the ugly truth right? That your credit score barely qualifies you to rent a scooter, let alone pretend you’re a VIP at Coachella.

I think we’ve done it folks.

This.

This story right here. We’ve finally reached peak America 2025.

These festivals, man. Coachella, Rolling Loud, EDC- they were at one time, long ago, in a galaxy far far away about music, sketchy substances, and terrible hygiene.

Now they’re full-blown pyramid schemes designed to vacuum every cent from kids who’ve never had to choose between groceries and Post Malone tickets before.

It’s not even close to about the music anymore.

It’s about marketing a payment plan now.

They’re literally selling the concept of going broke in installments.

Sixty percent of these festival kids are financing their tickets now. Think about that.

SIXTY PERCENT!

Thousands of young adults effectively signing up for the “buy now, regret forever” plan, all for the privilege of half-watching Travis Scott through the cracked screen of their iPhone.

Festival organizers have cracked the code to Gen Z’s wallet. You almost have to respect it. And wonder how nobody came up with it sooner.

Low monthly payments for a weekend they’ll be too blackout drunk to remember.

And perhaps the best part is that these festivals actually have the gall to slap you with a $41 “convenience fee” for financing. Charging someone extra for the privilege of paying over time? Awesome.

It’s not convenience, it’s capitalism, baby, pure and simple.

Giphy Images.

These promoters even have the audacity to pretend they’re doing you a favor, calling it “trust.”

Trust?

BOLD.

You’re trusting a kid who still calls their mom to ask how to do laundry to reliably make payments? Good luck with that.

Nothing says trust like charging broke college kids 8% extra because they didn’t learn financial responsibility from their parents who probably also finance their vacations to Cabo.

But not to worry. If you default, Coachella graciously offers you a “credit” towards next year’s festival.

Because the perfect way to teach someone financial responsibility is to force them to repeat their mistakes.

The Woodstock generation has got to be throwing up in their mouths.

There’s no “rebellion” here.

No peace, love, and freedom of expression uniting everybody through music.

This is just corporate vultures picking at the carcasses of broke college kids desperate for social media clout.

You’re not “sticking it to the man”; you’re paying him in monthly installments for a picture in front of a goddamn Ferris wheel.

This is actually the total opposite of everything Woodstock (the og music festival) stood for. And the epitome of America right now. Over leveraged, over extended youth, digging themselves deeper into a hole. All so they can stunt, (in flower crowns), and keep up with the joneses. The definition of whistling past the graveyard.

All while corporate America continues extracting cash from kids who don’t realize their “festival drip” is putting them on a direct path to a 400 credit score.

But all good bro, enjoy that festival flex and crippling debt until your mid-thirties. At least you’ll always have the photo to remember it by. That’s probably all you’ll ever actually own. (Sidebar- actually no, Zuckerberg technically owns that)