President Biden announces concert giants will no longer hide fees for concert & sporting event tickets 

Cantwell’s TICKET Act would ban hidden fees industrywide

Today, U.S. Senator Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.), Chair of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation, heralded President Biden’s announcement that major ticket sellers SeatGeek and Ticketmaster parent company Live Nation have pledged to disclose the full cost of event tickets upfront – including fees – after the senator introduced a bill to require such transparency on behalf of consumers.

In April, Sen. Cantwell joined Ranking Member Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) in introducing the Transparency in Charges for Key Events Ticketing (TICKET) Act which would require all event ticket sellers to display the total ticket price in all advertising upfront. Sellers would also need to show potential buyers the ticket’s base cost along with an itemized list of fees prior to selection of a ticket. The bill would additionally require sellers to disclose if a ticket being offered for sale is not within the seller’s possession.

During a hearing on June 12, Sen. Cantwell called for a crackdown on junk fees, including those imposed on event tickets.

“The price they say really should be the price you pay,” said Sen. Cantwell at the hearing. “The bottom line is we can’t make comparison shopping harder. We can’t reduce competition. And we don’t want to see things that distort the market.”

Last month, ahead of the third game in the National Hockey League playoffs between the Seattle Kraken and the Dallas Stars, KIRO 7 reported that hidden fees drove up the price of game tickets so high, it would cost more to actually attend the game in Seattle than it would to fly from Seattle to Dallas on Alaska Airlines and attend a game there.

“At the time, KIRO 7 reported that the cheapest re-sale ticket available was $294. Or, at least, that’s the price the ticket platform would have you think. After a $61 ticket processing fee and a $3 order processing fee, the real price of the ticket, before tax, was $358 — an extra 22% on top of the advertised price,”  Sen. Cantwell said at the hearing.

Studies from the New York Attorney General’s office and the Government Accountability Office (GAO) show that surprise fees can contribute anywhere from 21% to as much as 58% of the total cost of tickets.  In reviewing the secondary ticket selling market, GAO also found that “speculative ticketing” – in which a seller is not actually in possession of the ticket—can cause confusion for consumers especially when the consumer is not aware that they are buying from a seller who does not have possession of the ticket at the time of sale.

The TICKET Act requires all event ticket sellers, including primary and secondary market event ticket sellers to:

• Display the total ticket price (including all required fees) in any advertisement, marketing, or price list.
• Disclose to consumers the total ticket price (including all fees), including an itemized list of base ticket price and each ticket fee, at the beginning of a transaction and prior to selection of the ticket.
• Disclose to consumers if a ticket being offered for sale is a speculative ticket where the seller does not have actual or constructive possession of the ticket.

The full text of the legislation is available HERE.