How do venues function? They book acts or they are closed.
They submit offer sheets. Presumably, generally, artists go with the higher offer. If they were just going to go with Venue A they wouldn’t ask for offers and just ring up Venue A. Some bands have established relationships with area promoters and they just go with that regularly. Live Nation owns venues in many cities and can do package offers like “Hey Black Crowes why don’t you spend all summer touring our outdoor sheds?” But in general you have more and more venues going after a somewhat similar number of artists I think simple rules of supply and demand tell you price goes up. In a former life I saw breakdowns and some artists got a very high amount of the ticket revenue. I remember Mark Knopfler was a crazy amount like 70-80%!
I didn’t say the sky fell and I think it’s pretty clear that even in the changing landscape must be doing ok or they wouldn’t have opened the Anthem.
Because other things are going on…. The DC area has been doing very well….until covid at least more people were moving to area, more people with higher incomes etc And I actually think I have noticed a widening spread between ticket prices in DC and some other area markets but it’s anecdotal. Anyways point is even if prices have gone up people seem able to pay them (which is why they keep going up)
You also see more and more cover bands being booked every day at venues that didn’t used to do that much
I admit this is mostly conjecture. One would need to talk to a booker I guess