Yesterday (April 26), the U.S. Senate filed a new bill that would force ticket sellers for sporting events, musical performances, and other live events to offer a breakdown of ticket costs, including any hidden fees that are typically added on during the checkout process.
Numerous significant ticketing mishaps in recent months have made many problems in the live event sector public. Many fans were unable to get tickets for Taylor Swift’s Eras tour when Ticketmaster’s servers collapsed during a presale in the fall. By the time the sale was over, ticket prices on resale sites like Stubhub were as high as $20,000.
In order to expose the lack of competition in the live music and ticketing industries, the Senate held an antitrust hearing on Live Nation and Ticketmaster in the early 2023 period.
The band The Cure said in a statement that they did not engage in Ticketmaster’s Dynamic Pricing system, guaranteeing that they wanted to keep the ticket prices low for fans, when they announced their first North American tour since 2016 earlier this year. To prevent tickets from turning up on resale websites, they also made sure that they couldn’t be transferred.
Fans were astonished to see that for certain venues, the total fees cost more than the face value of the tickets themselves when they bought tickets during the band’s presale.
The new bill, called the Transparency in Charges for Key Events Ticketing (TICKET) Act, is co-sponsored by Washington state Senator and U.S. Commerce Committee Chair Maria Cantwell, and Texas state Senator and raking committee member Ted Cruz. The committee noted that ticket fees can make up anywhere from 21 percent to 57 percent of the total cost of the ticket, according to CNBC.
The TICKET Act aims to allow for competition within the ticketing industry “by delivering ticket fee and speculative ticket transparency for the benefit of all consumers.” Therefore, if the bill is passed, Live Nation and other ticketing vendors will have to reveal the entire cost of the ticket upfront, including all of the fees, so that fans know what the total cost will be before checking out.
“The price they say should be the price you pay. This bill is one part of comprehensive legislation I plan to introduce to rein in deceptive junk fees driving up costs for consumers,” Cantwell asserted in a statement.
“We appreciate the good work of Senators Cantwell and Cruz,” Live Nation acknowledged in a statement [via Ultimate Classic Rock]. “This bill is a good starting point – we support all-in pricing – but in order to protect fans and artists more can and should be done, including ensuring artists can determine how their tickets can be resold, banning speculative tickets and deceptive websites.”
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