Live Nation and Ticketmaster to Reveal All Ticket Fees

Discovering that a concert ticket you purchased for $30 actually costs three times that amount due to a multitude of vague fees is always a disappointing experience. For years, this has been the driving force behind consumer dissatisfaction with companies such as Ticketmaster. However, there are now indications that this situation may finally be undergoing a transformation.

Ticketmaster and Live Nation promise to give US consumers the actual price of a ticket before they make a purchase, not a make-believe price they use to lure customers. President Biden is expected to formally announce the move at a meeting with live entertainment industry leaders later this afternoon, as originally reported by the Wall Street Journal.

Biden has made this a central part of his “kitchen table” economic agenda after announcing he would push businesses to eliminate hidden fees and surcharges during February’s State of the Union address. Live Nation Entertainment, the company formed through the merger of Live Nation and Ticketmaster, has officially committed to making these transparency changes by September.

While Live Nation/Ticketmaster has committed to the change and promises “clear total pricing,” Biden will lead a White House roundtable later today to encourage other companies like SeatGeek, Airbnb, DICE and more to do the same. . It is expected that most of the companies participating in the roundtables will commit to some form of consumer transparency. Airbnb has been particularly unfriendly to consumers in this regard with all these mysterious cleaning fees, but began to address the transparency issue late last year.

“Today’s voluntary action shows that businesses both large and small understand the importance of offering consumers honest, upfront comprehensive pricing instead of being ripped off with surprise fees at the checkout. It’s also just the first step toward reducing junk fees in the economy,” the White House said in a statement. .

While these changes won’t eliminate spam fees (companies make companies), they will provide consumers with important information to help them make informed purchasing decisions, which is a start. In February, Biden proposed legislation called the Junk Fee Protection Act to reduce the occurrence of these hidden fees, including excessive fees when buying digital tickets to concerts and sporting events. Senators Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) and Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) introduced similar legislation in Congress, but it has not come up for a vote.

Ticketmaster recently came under fire after encountering a number of issues selling Taylor Swift tickets for her ‘Eras’ tour, which resulted in customers experiencing website outages, bot overloads and extreme wait times. In the end, the company canceled the sale entirely because the supply was not enough to meet the demand. This led to a Senate hearing into the company’s perceived monopolistic behavior.