As the Backstreet Boys prepare for their Toronto residency next year, Canadian millennials are spending hundreds of dollars to revisit their youth. But the appeal goes beyond the music.
Fri, October 30, 2026 at 6:00 p.m. UTC
·8 min read
Millennials are paying high prices for the Backstreet Boys Toronto residency — and it’s for far more than the music. (Photos courtesy Amanada Hagerman, Getty Images, Charla Brake)
When Amanda Hagerman saw that the Backstreet Boys had added more dates to their 2027 Toronto residency, she didn’t spend much time weighing the financial implications. She bought the tickets first — and figured out the logistics later.
“It was more of a reaction than a decision to buy tickets,” says the 39-year-old Edmonton-based teacher. “Millennial instinct.”
Hagerman, who first saw the boy band perform in 1998 when she was 11, will be travelling to Toronto with her longtime teaching partner for a March 2027 show. Between her $260 concert ticket and $511 flight, she’s already spending upwards of $750 — and that’s before factoring in other expenses like meals. Fortunately, staying with family means she can skip the cost of a hotel.
And despite being on maternity leave, with two young children at home and a tighter budget than usual, she has no regrets.
“Money is tight, and we all know life is very expensive right now,” she says, adding that she’ll be doing some serious saving over the winter to soften the financial blow.
She’s far from alone. The Backstreet Boys’ Into the Millennial – Homecoming: Live in Canada residency has expanded to 12 performances at Toronto’s Rogers Centre in February and March 2027, following overwhelming demand. For millennials who grew up plastering their bedroom walls with posters of Nick Carter and company, the opportunity to relive their boy-band obsession is proving difficult to resist.
But what makes revisiting our teenage years worth hundreds, sometimes thousands, of dollars?
The price of partying like it’s 1999
For Charla Brake, 35, the decision to fly from Vancouver to Toronto for the concert was practically effortless. After seeing footage from the band’s Las Vegas residency on Instagram, she messaged her Toronto-based girlfriends. They agreed on a ticket budget, bought their seats and started making plans.
There are very few things that bring me as much joy as live music, seeing my girlfriends or reliving the ’90s.
Charla Brake
Her ticket cost $300, and she expects to spend another $400 on flights. Like Hagerman, she’ll save money by staying with friends.
“There are very few things that bring me as much joy as live music, seeing my girlfriends or reliving the ’90s,” Brake says. “Since this event combines all of those things it was a no-brainer.”
Toronto-based Meagan Healy, 37, felt similarly, although she admits the $260 price tag for her general admission ticket gave her pause.
Millennials now have jobs and disposable income, making it easier to shell out cash for tickets, flights and merch. (Photo by Pau Barrena/Redferns)
Healy’s earliest Backstreet Boys memories involve elementary-school air-band competitions, where she and her friends would each impersonate a different band member. For her 13th birthday, she attended her first concert with friends, dressed in overalls and tie-dye T-shirts.
More than two decades later, she’s looking forward to experiencing that same collective excitement with a different group of friends.
“We’ll all know the words, we’ll all get into it,” she says, comparing the experience to the enthusiasm surrounding Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour. “We all experienced the phenomenon as millennial women.”
I had posters of the Backstreet Boys on my bedroom walls when I was 14, but I couldn’t necessarily afford to attend their concerts, she says. Now as an adult with a job and disposable income, I can engage with the band and my fandom in a different way.
Katherine Singh
While she’d hesitate to spend that much on a newer artist, Healy considers the Backstreet Boys a rare opportunity. After all, there’s no guarantee they’ll keep performing forever.
For pop culture writer Katherine Singh, there’s another factor at play: millennials finally have the means to indulge in the obsessions they couldn’t afford as kids or teenagers.
“I had posters of the Backstreet Boys on my bedroom walls when I was 14, but I couldn’t necessarily afford to attend their concerts,” she says. “Now as an adult with a job and disposable income, I can engage with the band and my fandom in a different way.”
Amanda Hagerman and her friend is Kristen will be travelling from Edmonton to Toronto. (Photo courtesy Amanda Hagerman)
The expense isn’t just about revisiting an old favourite. It’s also about fulfilling a childhood dream.
Why we’re paying the price to relive our youth
It’s not just Backstreet Boys fans willing to pay for nostalgia. Last year’s Oasis reunion tour brought the band back together after 16 years apart, with sold-out performances around the world, including two Toronto dates.
And the appetite for these experiences extends beyond a particular generation. According to Live Nation’s Living for Live report, which surveyed 40,000 people across 15 markets, 80 per cent of fans would rather spend money on experiences than material possessions. The report also found that millennials reported the highest emotional intensity from attending concerts. But nostalgia offers something that goes beyond a good night out.
A 2022 research review published in Psychology of Music found that music-evoked nostalgia can strengthen feelings of social connection, improve self-esteem and create a greater sense of continuity between our past and present selves. It can even make us feel younger.
Some fans say the concert will be an opportunity to reconnect with a less-complicated version of themselves. (Photo by Pau Barrena/Redferns)
For a generation now navigating careers, mortgages, parenthood and other “adult” commitments, the opportunity to reconnect with a less-complicated version of themselves may be particularly appealing.
“There’s a feeling that you can re-live or recapture that period of time by engaging with them or at least be transported back to that feeling,” Singh explains.
And with so much uncertainty in the world, she believes the pull of familiar pop culture is especially strong. It makes sense that people would turn to the artists, art and fandoms that make them feel good, even just as a brief escape from reality.
Things from the ’90s seemed to have imprinted on my brain and I can’t shake them loose.
Meagan Healy
“Being an adult really reduces the capacity, in my case anyway, to become obsessed with frivolous fun things anymore,” Brake echoes. “This is something that I was obsessed with as a kid and still enjoy as an adult that can take me back to that childlike frivolous fun.”
She also points to the overwhelming pace of modern life, where trends come and go almost as quickly as they appear, leaving less room for the shared cultural obsessions that defined her childhood.
“Things from the ’90s seemed to have imprinted on my brain and I can’t shake them loose,” she says.
For Healy, the appeal is partly about getting older and wanting to recapture what it felt like to be young. “I think we’re at an inflection point in life,” she says, “that makes us feel like we’re half way between fully grown up and little kids again.”
It’s about more than the music
All the women I spoke with say their excitement has as much to do with people they’re attending the concert with as the band itself. That sense of connection is part of what made the Backstreet Boys so meaningful in the first place. For many millennials, the band represented an introduction to fandom and the community that comes with it.
Brake’s trip is an opportunity to reunite with girlfriends she rarely gets to see now that they live in different cities. She anticipates revisiting not only her childhood, but also her 20s, when getting together for a night out required considerably less coordination.
Charla Brake, Megan, and Priya (Photo courtesy Charla)
For Hagerman, who has a baby and a four-year-old at home, the concert offers something equally valuable: a weekend away from her everyday responsibilities.
“Putting aside ‘teacher,’ ‘wife’ and ‘mom’ for a weekend,” she says.
It’s a sentiment that helps explain why these experiences can feel worth the expense, even when money is tight. The ticket buys admission to a concert, but it also creates an occasion to prioritize friendship, fun and parts of ourselves that can become harder to access with age.
Putting aside ‘teacher,’ ‘wife’ and ‘mom’ for a weekend.
Amanda Hagerman, on the chance to get away from her everyday responsibilities
The financial trade-offs are real. For Hagerman, the weekend requires months of saving, childcare arrangements and careful planning. But she’s hoping the memories will more than make up for the cost.
She still remembers attending the band’s 2019 Edmonton concert and watching the surrounding bars fill with adults singing Backstreet Boys songs together after the show.
Healy, meanwhile, has already imagined her ideal ending to the Toronto concert: “I hope me and my friends leave frolicking down the streets and singing our favourite songs.”
That’s what millennials are paying for. Not simply a chance to hear the soundtrack of their childhood — but a few hours when adulthood feels a little less serious, their closest friends are beside them and they still know every word to every song.
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