Ignacio Vasquez spent the last year saving money for tickets to Beyoncé’s Cowboy Carter tour, which will kick off next month. Mr. Vasquez, 20, a full-time student from Modesto, Calif., was on the lookout for tickets to one of the tour’s five shows at SoFi Stadium in Los Angeles for him and his sister.

“I went to go see Beyoncé on the Renaissance tour, and since I knew this was coming up, I knew I had to be saving,” Mr. Vasquez said.

On Feb. 11, Mr. Vasquez got on Ticketmaster’s online queue for the BeyHive presale, offered exclusively to those who signed up on Beyoncé’s website. After waiting his turn, Mr. Vasquez was surprised to see tickets listed at a minimum of $600 each and many at more than $1,000.

“The prices were just outrageous by the time I got in there,” Mr. Vasquez said. “I was like, ‘Oh, no, this is not going to work — I’m not going to do that,’ so I just quit it.”

In recent years, concertgoers have paid eye-popping prices for tickets to see popular artists like Beyoncé, Taylor Swift and Oasis on tour. But Gen Z fans — those born between 1997 and 2012 — are paying much more for concert tickets than previous generations did when they were young adults. In 1996, the average ticket price for the top 100 tours was $25.81, or about $52 adjusted for inflation, according to data compiled by Pollstar, a trade publication that covers the live music industry. By 2024, average ticket prices had risen to $135.92. The live music industry has put today’s young adults in an impossibly expensive position.

For Gen Z, spending on concerts can be budget busters. In a survey of 1,000 Gen Z respondents published last year by Merge, a marketing agency, 86 percent admitted to overspending on live events. Fear of missing out, or FOMO, was cited as a top reason. Another survey by AAA, the automobile owners group, and Bread Financial, a financial services company, found that Gen Z and millennials were willing to spend more and travel farther to attend live events than older generations are.